Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered

“Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.” — Émile Durkheim

In this solemn saying, Durkheim, the great seer of the human soul, warns of a peril that has haunted all ages—the peril of illusion. When the heart burns too fiercely with desire, when the mind is consumed by fantasy, the world as it is—the stones, the sky, the toil of ordinary days—begins to seem worthless. The spirit grows drunk on its own dreams, forgetting that even the grandest vision must take root in the earth to live. Thus, mankind, entranced by its own imaginings, often turns away from reality, leaving behind the humble soil from which all true greatness must rise.

Long ago, in the golden age of Athens, there lived a man named Icarus, whose story speaks to this very truth. Possessed by the dream of flight, he and his father crafted wings of wax and feather. But the son, fevered by the ecstasy of his imagination, rose higher and higher, beyond the limits of mortal law. The sun melted his wings, and the dreamer fell—his dream shattered by the reality he scorned. Durkheim’s words echo in that descent: when one abandons the real for the imagined, the fall is inevitable, and often fatal. The dream, once radiant, becomes a cruel mirage.

Yet Durkheim does not condemn the dream itself. No—he understood that dreams are the seeds of civilization, the fire that moves men to build, to seek, to transcend. But when dreams consume, when the imagination grows fevered and denies the discipline of truth, then man loses his compass. The poet who ceases to see the world as it is becomes a prisoner of his own verses; the reformer who despises the imperfect world forgets the slow, sacred work of building justice one stone at a time. The dream without balance is madness, and the imagination without restraint becomes delusion.

There is a deep sorrow in Durkheim’s observation, for he witnessed an age in which men fled from the real into false heavens—ideologies, romantic fantasies, utopias. He saw that when reality is abandoned, societies lose their soul. The farmer’s work, the teacher’s duty, the quiet acts of love—these become “valueless” in the eyes of those who worship the imagined world. Thus are nations undone not by fire or sword, but by the erosion of reverence for the ordinary, the imperfect, the true.

And yet, there is also a call to wisdom here. The wise man does not reject his dreams, nor does he live chained to the dust. He walks between them—his feet upon the ground, his eyes lifted to the stars. He tempers the fire of imagination with the cool hand of reality, fashioning from both the sacred balance of a full life. For even the gods, if they exist, must dwell somewhere between the infinite and the actual, between what could be and what is.

Let us then remember this: reality, though often harsh, is the vessel in which the dream must take form. To shape the world, one must first touch it, bear its weight, and love its limitations. The artist who paints the sky must know the color of the earth; the thinker who dreams of justice must understand the hearts of men. Dreams that rise too high without roots in the real become clouds—beautiful, but empty. Dreams that grow from reality become mountains—majestic, enduring, eternal.

So take this teaching to heart, O listener of ages yet unborn: Dream fiercely, but do not flee the world. Hold fast to your visions, but let them be tempered by truth. Wake each day not to escape reality, but to shape it anew. For only when imagination serves the real, and the real nourishes imagination, can mankind walk upright between heaven and earth—and be worthy of both.