"To these we can prescribe the dream under its most august form, that of science.
"Each inventor has pursued an illusion, but those whose names have lived to reach our recognition, have caught a glimpse of the vertiginous course they were following, and no longer have allowed themselves to get too far away from their base—science.
"Yes, illusion can be beautiful, on condition that it is not constantly debilitated.
"To make it beautiful we must be its master, then we may attempt its conquest.
"It is thus that all great men act; before adopting an illusion, as truth, they have assured themselves of the means by the aid of which they were permitted first to hope for its transformation and afterward be certain of their power to discipline it.
"Illusion then changes its name and becomes the Ideal.
"Instead of remaining an inaccessible myth, it is transformed into an entity for the creation of good.
"It is no longer the effort to conquer the impossible, which endeavor saps our vital forces; it is a contingency which study and common sense strip of all aleatory principles, in order to give a form which becomes more tangible and more definite every day.
"We have nothing more to do with sterile efforts toward gaining an object which fades from view and disappears as one approaches it.
"It is no longer the painful reaching out after an object always growing more indistinct as we draw near it.