ape the causes of disillusion, which lead us through fatal paths of
error, to the brink of despair.

"That which is above all to be shunned," said the philosopher, "is the
encroachment of discouragement, the result of repeated failures.

"Rare are those who wish to admit their mistakes.

"In the structure of the mind, inaccuracy brings a partial deviation from
the truth, and it does not take long for this slight error to generalize
itself, if not corrected by its natural reformer--common sense.

"But how many, among those who suffer from these unhappy illusions, are
apt to recognize them as such?

"It would, however, be a precious thing for us to admit the causes
which have led us to such a sorry result, by never permitting them to
occur again.

"This would be the only way for the victims of illusion to preserve the
life of that element of success and happiness known as hope.

"Because of seeing so often the good destroyed, we wish to believe no
more in it as inherent in our being, and rather than suffer repeatedly
from its disappearance, we prefer to smother it before perfect
development.

"The greater number of skeptics are only the unavowed lovers of illusion;
their desires, never being those capable of realization, they have lost
the habit of hoping for a favorable termination of any sentiment.

"The lack of common sense does not allow them to understand the folly of
their enterprise, and rather than seek the causes of their habitual
failures, they prefer to attack God and man, both of whom they hold
responsible for all their unhappiness.

"They are willingly ironical, easily become pessimists, and villify life,
without desiring to perceive that it reserved as many smiles for them as
the happy people whom they envy.

"All these causes of disappointment can only be attributed to the lack of
equilibrium of the reasoning power and, above all, to the absence of
common sense, hence we cannot judge of relative values.

"To give a definite course to the plans which we form is to prepare the
happy termination of them.

"This is also the way to banish seductive illusion, the devourer of
beautiful ambitions and youthful aspirations."

And, with his habitual sense of the practical in life, Yoritomo adds the
following:

"There are, however, some imaginations which can not be controlled by the
power of reasoning, and which, in spite of everything, escape toward the
unlimited horizons of the dream.

"It would