MIND AND SOUL 209 



burst and crack the bark, or should so dry up the sap that 

 the fruit would not be able to properly ripen the seed, and 

 leave it unfit and too much inclined to rot in the ground before 

 sufficient rain fell to ensure its re-growth ; so in the summer 

 some of the leaves drop off, while the rest remain on till the 

 end of autumn when winter's winds begin to blow, and frost 

 and snow drive the remaining nitrogen down into the sap and 

 roots to ripen the sugar and glucose, etc., for next year's 

 growth, the better to fit the tree to grow fresh crops of boughs, 

 leaves, fruit and seed the following year. During the winter 

 months this nitrogen turns the saccharine matter in the roots 

 back into starch, to rise again in the spring, when it will cause 

 the buds of leaf and flower to shoot anew, and if there is not 

 enough nitrogen returned in the autumn, the fruit blossom 

 will not set. 



So it appears to me that the same lines must be likewise 

 the most logical and reasonable modes of procedure to be 

 adopted by the creator in the evolution of the mind and soul of 

 mankind, and that, therefore, in the individual lives of man- 

 kind, their minds and souls are, as it were, the leaves, fruit and 

 seeds of the family trees that grow in the forest of humanity, 

 whose duty it is to perform like functions, and that an indivi- 

 dual life and soul are like a flower and seed in the growth 

 and development of human existence, so that each generation 

 of mankind is only, as it were, a season's growth of the family 

 to which it belongs, whose duty it is to bear its crop of useful 

 actions and virtues, and each individual life being the leaf of 

 the tree has to feed and mature the flowers of mind, the fruits 

 of wisdom and the seeds of soul till the family plant shall Bloom 

 at last in the gardens of immortality when mankind, after con- 

 tinuous seasons of life and death, shall have at last so perfected 

 himself in his family growth in all the virtues that each respec- 

 tive family strives to produce as to be no longer subject to 

 death, the penalty of folly and opportunities wasted and of sin 

 in the sense of failure and neglect, not in our ordinary accept- 

 ance of the term, but of such crimes as are foolish enough to 

 injure others or our own health and chances of re-creation ; for 

 when all is said and done, all that is wise is good, and all that 

 is foolish must be wrong (subject, nevertheless, as to whether 

 it is a necessity of the particular stage of evolution or not 

 which may turn evil into good, or vice versa). 



O 



