“The worship of illusion,” says Yoritomo, “presents certain dangers to the integrity of judgment, which, under such influence, falsifies the comparative faculty, and sways decision to the side of neutrality.

“This kind of mental half-sleep is extremely detrimental to manifestations of reason, because this torpor excludes it from imaginary conceptions.

“Little by little the lethargy caused by this intellectual paralysis produces the effect of fluidic contagion over all our faculties.

“Energy, which ought to be the principle factor in our resolutions, becomes feeble and powerless at the point where we no longer care to feel its influence.

“The sentiment of effort exists no longer, since we are pleased to resolve all difficulties without it.

“In this inconstant state of mind, common sense, after wandering a moment withdraws itself, and we find that we are delivered over to all the perils of imagination.

“Nothing that we see thus confusedly is found on the plane which belongs to common sense; the ideas, associated by a capricious tie, bind and unbind themselves, without imposing the necessity of a solution.

“The man who allows himself to be influenced by vague dreams,” adds the Shogun, “must, if he does not react powerfully, bid farewell to common sense and reason; for he will experience so great a charm in forgetting, even for one moment, the reality of life, that he will seek to prolong this blest moment.

“He will renounce logic, whose conclusions are, at times, opposed to his desires, and he will plunge himself into that false delight of awakened dreams, or, as some say, day-dreams.

“Those who defend this artificial conception of happiness, like to compare people of common sense to heavy infantry soldiers, who march along through stony roads, while they depict themselves as pleasant bird-fanciers, giving flight to the fantastic bearers of wings.

“But they do not take into account the fact that the birds, for whom they open the cage, fly away without the intention of returning, leaving them thus deceived and deprived of the birds, while the rough infantry soldiers, after many hardships, reach the desired end which they had proposed to attain, thus realizing the joys of conquest.

“There they find the rest and security, which the possessors of fugitive birds will never know.

“Those who cultivate common sense will always ignore the collapses which follow the disappearance of illusions.

“How many men have suffered thus uselessly!

“And what is more stupid than a sorrow, voluntarily imposed, when it can not be productive of any good?

“Men can not be too strongly warned against the tendency of embellishing everything that concerns the heart-life, and this is the inclination of most people.

“The causes of this propensity are many and the need for that which astounds is not the only cause to be mentioned.