be in vain to think of shutting them up in the narrow prison
walls of strict reason; they would die wishing to attempt an escape.

"To these we can prescribe the dream under its most august form, that
of science.

"Each inventor has pursued an illusion, but those whose names have lived
to reach our recognition, have caught a glimpse of the vertiginous course
they were following, and no longer have allowed themselves to get too far
away from their base--science.

"Yes, illusion can be beautiful, on condition that it is not constantly
debilitated.

"To make it beautiful we must be its master, then we may attempt
its conquest.

"It is thus that all great men act; before adopting an illusion, as
truth, they have assured themselves of the means by the aid of which they
were permitted first to hope for its transformation and afterward be
certain of their power to discipline it.

"Illusion then changes its name and becomes the Ideal.

"Instead of remaining an inaccessible myth, it is transformed into an
entity for the creation of good.

"It is no longer the effort to conquer the impossible, which endeavor
saps our vital forces; it is a contingency which study and common sense
strip of all aleatory principles, in order to give a form which becomes
more tangible and more definite every day.

"We have nothing more to do with sterile efforts toward gaining an object
which fades from view and disappears as one approaches it.

"It is no longer the painful reaching out after an object always growing
more indistinct as we draw near it.

"It is through conscious and unremitting effort that we attain the
happy expression of successful endeavor and realize the best in life,
for slow ascension in winning this best leaves no room for satiety in
this noble strife.

"We must pity those who live for an illusion as well as those whose
imagination has not known how to create an ideal, whose beauty illumines
their efforts.

"It is the triumph of common sense to accomplish this transformation and
to banish empty reveries, replacing them by creating a desire for the
best, which each one can satisfy--without destroying it.

"The day when this purpose is accomplished, illusion, definitely
conquered, will cease to haunt the mind of those whom common sense has
illumined; vagaries will make place for reason and terrible disillusion
will follow its chief (whose qualities never rise above mediocrity) into
his retreat, and allow the flow