A child will travel some distance and wear itself out in overcoming any number of obstacles, if it be started off in pursuit of some alluring object by someone whose word its experience has not yet taught it to doubt. The alluring object may be entirely mythical--no matter! Granted that the object has been made to appear sufficiently desirable, the child will pursue its quest, sometimes with heroic perseverance. But is there anyone prepared to maintain that the full-grown adult would behave any differently under the influence of similar inducements? Allowing for the difference between the minds of children and of adults, and postulating for the adult an object which, though quite as chimerical as that chosen for the child, is yet of a kind calculated to fire his imagination, does anyone really question whether the adult’s pursuit of it would be fully as eager and tenacious as that of the child? Consider, for instance, the time-honoured method of obtaining votaries and adherents for any anti-social scheme. Certain states of mind or body are first posited by the agitators, or would-be reformers, as highly desirable; they are then shown to be unrealisable in the social scheme which it is [p181] proposed to destroy; and finally humanity is told that by destroying the social scheme already existing, those desirable states of mind or body will be procured and enjoyed. These hypothetical states of mind or body which are unrealisable in the social scheme selected for destruction may be entirely fantastic and unrealisable anywhere or how, but this objection the agitators do not trouble to discuss; all they say is: “Here we hold up before you certain desirable states of mind or body” (call them, if you will, “etherealness” and “imponderability,”--qualities that would enable those possessing them to overcome gravitation and all its concomittant inconveniences) “these desirable states of mind or body can be obtained only by breaking up certain traditions. Break up these traditions, and you will possess them.” It will be seen at once that the examples chosen, “etherealness” and “imponderability,” are sufficiently extravagant to strike even the meanest intelligence as being absurd, and an anti-social agitator depending upon such desiderata alone would stand but a poor chance of gaining followers. Substitute the words representing these vaporous qualities, however, by another word which, though representing a quality equally illusory, nevertheless does not strike the average man immediately as being unrealisable, and the insidious operation of false desiderata straightway becomes evident.