life. It cannot be harmful for us to acknowledge at times that
action begins with reality only, though our thoughts be never so
large and disinterested and admirable in themselves. 'For all that
goes to build up what is truly our destiny is contained in those of
our thoughts which, hurried along by the mass of ideas still
obscure, indistinct, incomplete, have had strength sufficient--or
been forced, it may be--to turn into facts, into gestures, into
feelings and habits. We do not imply by this that the other thoughts
should be neglected. Those that surround our actual life may perhaps
be compared with an army besieging a city. The city once taken, the
bulk of the troops would probably not be permitted to pass through
the gates. Admission would be doubtless withheld from the irregular
part of the army--barbarians, mercenaries, all those, in a word,
whose natural tendencies would lead them to drunkenness, pillage, or
bloodshed. And it might also very well happen that fully two-thirds
of the troops would have taken no part in the final decisive battle.
But there often is value in forces that appear to be useless; and
the city would evidently not have yielded to panic and thrown open
her gates, had the well-disciplined force at the foot of the walls
not been flanked by the hordes in the valley. So is it in moral
life, too. Those thoughts are not wholly vain that have been unable
to touch our actual life; they have helped on, supported, the
others; yet is it these others alone that have fully accomplished
their mission And therefore does it behove us to have in our
service, drawn up in front of the crowded ranks of our sad and
bewildered thoughts, a group of ideas more human and confident,
ready at all times to penetrate vigorously into life.

61. Even when our endeavour to emerge from reality is due to the
purest desire for immaterial good, one gesture must still be worth