The one great defence of humanity against the charge of unfulfilled duties is "lack of time." The constant clamoring for time would be pathetic, were it not for the fact that most individuals throw away more of it than they use. Time is the only really valuable possession of man, for without it every power within him would cease to exist. Yet he recklessly squanders his great treasure as if it were valueless. The wealth of the whole world could not buy one second of time. Yet Society assassins dare to say in public that they have been "killing time." The time fallacy has put more people into air-castles than all other causes combined. Life is only time; eternity is only more time; immortality is merely man's right to live through unending time. "If I had a library I would read," is the weak plaint of some other tenant of an air-castle. If a man does not read the two or three good books in his possession or accessible to him he would not read if he had the British Museum brought to his bedside, and the British Army delegated to continual service in handing him books from the shelves. The time sacrificed to reading sensational newspapers might be consecrated to good reading, if the individual were willing merely to live up to his portion of opportunity. The man who longs for some crisis in life, wherein he may show mighty courage, while he is expending no portion of that courage in bearing bravely the petty trials, sorrows and disappointments of daily life, is living in an air-castle. He is just a sparrow looking enviously at the mountain crags where the hardy eagle builds her nest, and dreaming of being a great bird like that, perhaps even daring in a patronizing way, to criticise her method of flight and to plume himself with the medals he could win for flying if he only would. It is the day-by-day heroism that vitalizes all of a man's power in an emergency, that gives him confidence that when need comes he will and _must_ be ready. The air-castle typifies any delusion or folly that makes man forsake real living for an idle, vague existence. Living in air-castles means that a man sees life in a wrong perspective. He permits his lower self to dominate his higher self; he who should tower as a mighty conqueror over the human weakness, sin and folly that threaten to destroy his better nature, binds upon his own wrists the manacles of habit that hold him a slave. He loses the crown of his kingship because he sells his royal birthright for temporary ease and comfort and the showy things of the world, sacrificing so much that is best in him for mere wealth, success, position, or the plaudits of the world. He forsakes the throne of individuality for the air-castle of delusion.