norant of this blessing.

"There are dependent souls who, for want of the necessary strength to
escape from vassalage to the external impressions will always drag on,
feeble and opprest by the exactions of a mental servitude from which they
can not free themselves.

"Others rise proudly, ready to command circumstances, which they dominate
with all the power of their volition governed by reason.

"It is common sense which will guide them in this ascent by keeping them
within the limits assigned to those things pertaining to reason and
rectitude of mind.

"Before everything, it is well not to forget that this faculty invites
those who cultivate it to seek always for exact facts.

"Knowledge, in all its aspects is, then, a perfect educator for those who
do not wish to build on the flimsy foundation of approximate truth.

"In pronouncing the word knowledge, we do not wish to speak of abstract
studies which are only accessible to a small number; we wish to express
the thought of instruction embracing all things, even the most humble
and ordinary.

"A man from the city was walking in the country one day, not far from a
vast swamp.

"All around it were a few miserable huts, the shelter of some peasants
whose business it was to gather the reeds from the borders, weaving them
into large baskets to be sold afterward in the neighboring country.

"Little by little twilight descended, slowly enveloping all things in a
mist of ashy gray, and vapors arose from afar over the stagnant water.

"The man from the city trembled, believing that he recognized fantoms in
this moving vapor; he sought to flee, but, unfamiliar with the locality,
he ran along the side of the swamp without finding the end of it.

"Exhausted from fatigue and trembling with fear, he resolved to knock at
one of the cabins.

"He was welcomed by a basket-maker, to whom he related his fright, adding
that he was unable to understand how this man found the courage to live
in a place haunted in such a terrible way.

"The peasant smiled and explained to the man, whose intellectual culture
was, however, infinitely superior to his own, by what phenomenon of
evaporation these mirages were produced.

"He demonstrated to him that these fantoms were only harmless vapors, and
the city man admired the knowledge which common sense had taught the
ignorant one."

And Yoritomo concluded:

"This peasant gave there a proof of what self-control allied to common
sense ca