not to be readily distinguishable. The reverie is a reflection of our
longings, exultations, and complacencies, our fears, suspicions, and
disappointments. We are chiefly engaged in struggling to maintain our
self-respect and in asserting that supremacy which we all crave and
which seems to us our natural prerogative. It is not strange, but
rather quite inevitable, that our beliefs about what is true and
false, good and bad, right and wrong, should be mixed up with the
reverie and be influenced by the same considerations which determine
its character and course. We resent criticisms of our views exactly as
we do of anything else connected with ourselves. Our notions of life
and its ideals seem to us to be _our own_ and as such necessarily true
and right, to be defended at all costs.

_We very rarely consider, however, the process by which we gained our
convictions_. If we did so, we could hardly fail to see that there was
usually little ground for our confidence in them. Here and there, in
this department of knowledge or that, some one of us might make a fair
claim to have taken some trouble to get correct ideas of, let us say,
the situation in Russia, the sources of our food supply, the origin of
the Constitution, the revision of the tariff, the policy of the Holy
Roman Apostolic Church, modern business organization, trade unions,
birth control, socialism, the League of Nations, the excess-profits
tax, preparedness, advertising in its social bearings; but only a very
exceptional person would be entitled to opinions on all of even these
few matters. And yet most of us have opinions on all these, and on
many other questions of equal importance, of which we may know even
less. We feel compelled, as self-respecting persons, to take sides
when they come up for discussion. We even surprise ourselves by our
omniscience. Without taking thought we see in a flash that it is most
righteous and expedient to discourage birth control by legislative