Min] AND SYMBOLS. 225 



The Function of Mind. 



Lakes receive water from various sources, and some of the 

 rivers which enter them are turbid and muddy. Yet the water 

 which flows out from a lake is limpid and clear as crystal. 

 The reason of this is that the lake precipitates all the sand and 

 mud, and settles it down in depositions of silt. Only water 

 which is bright and pure is sent forth. Now the human mind 

 resembles the lake in that the information which it receives 

 comes to it, like streams, from all sorts of sources, pure and im- 

 pure. Like the lake, it can arrest the further circulation of 

 whatever is bad and base. It can filter everything which 

 passes through it. It can insist that any stream of influence 

 which issues from it shall be pure and good, and free from all 

 that is of the earth earthy. AD. 



The Vigorous Mind requires a Healthy Atmosphere. 



A weak enervated mind may live in a sickly atmosphere of 

 cant or artificiality, which would be incompatible with the life 

 of a healthy mind. In this case, weakness and enervation, 

 paradoxical as it appears, are able to endure more than strength 

 and vigour. A sparrow left in a bell-glass to breathe over and 

 over again the same air, will live in it for upwards of three 

 hours ; but at the close of the second hour, when there is con- 

 sequently still air of sufficient purity to permit this sparrow's 

 breathing it for more than an hour longer, if a fresh and vigor- 

 ous sparrow be introduced, such an one will expire almost 

 immediately. The air which would suffice for the respiration 

 of the one sparrow suffocates another. Nay more, if the sparrow 

 be taken from the glass at the close of the third hour when 

 very feeble, be restored to activity and to sufficient vigour to fly 

 about again, and then once more in its now healthy state intro- 

 duced into the atmosphere from which it was taken, it will 

 perish immediately. The poisonous action of a vitiated air 

 is better resisted by the feeble, sickly organism than by the 

 vigorous, healthy organism. PH. 



