For common-sense tempts men to be contented with their lot, to get the most from what is theirs, and not to hanker nonsensically after the unattainable. At the elbow of each of us lurks always this enchantress, with luring rhapsodies, more treacherous than ever any siren lilted, in praise of the firm worth of money and conformity. "Let us be rational," she whispers; "and let us remember that, whatever we might prefer, in this world two and two make four." And with many gaudy enticements does she prompt the unwary to yield homage to her insensate paramour, the doltish and vain idol of mathematics.... Thus tirelessly, thus unabashedly, does common-sense urge every man to obtain in this world, such as it is, the permitted uttermost from that life which stays peculiarly his own: and to the wheedling solicitings of common-sense the literary artist can answer but one word. That word is "Bosh!" And having uttered it, the artist proceeds to divert himself by living dozens upon dozens of lives which in nothing resemble the starveling and inadequate existence allotted him by the mere accident of birth. § 23 Yes: the creative romanticist alone can engineer a satisfying evasion of that daily workaday life which is to every man abhorrent. I am convinced, upon several grounds, that the motive of the literary artist is wholly unaltruistic: he blazes for his own pleasuring the trail upon which any number of readers may, so far as he cares, follow or not follow, just as they elect, and be hanged to them! Whenever he journeys into some such improbable country as, let us say, Poictesme, it is, I know, for his own recreation. But I choose here, entirely from the viewpoint of a reader of books, to consider with less scrutiny his selfishness than my firm grounds for gratitude.