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