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perceptions on which their theories are reared. Generally speaking, man is so far a prisoner of ideas that it requires much wrestling with the facts of experience to make this discovery. From infancy to old age, man is making his life in accordance with ideas---in so far as he has any power over it. To become a conscious idealist does not mean the acquisition of new and entirely different power. No man could ask for more or greater power than he is using or misusing moment by moment, and day by day. It is not a question of changing from power to power. By making the transition above described one does not in reality lift the mind over the barrier from the world of things to the world of ideas. There is no such barrier. One is already present where all ideas and all powers are. It is primarily a question of consciousness, of substituting good philosophy for bad theory.

An important cause of our trouble, then, is our beliefs. We have accepted ready-made convictions instead of reasoning for ourselves. Hence we have put ourselves at the mercy of creeds and dogmas. We have not seen life as it is; we have regarded it with the eyes of opinion. We have not pursued what was real; we have gone in quest of illusions, simply because others had gone in pursuit of them. We have not lived for ourselves; we have worried through the wearisome