44 LITERAEY VALUES 



how they wither and fall, and how much more sober 

 the aspect which life puts on before any solid 

 achievements can be pointed to ! There is usually 

 something more fresh and pristine about the earlier 

 works of a man — more buoyancy, more unction, 

 more of the " fluid and attaching character ; " but 

 the ripest wisdom always goes with age. 



There are, no doubt, many strict and striking ana- 

 logies between the mind and the body, their growth 

 and decay, their health and disease, their assimila- 

 tive, digestive, and reproductive processes. 



The mind is only a finer body. It is hardly a 

 figure of speech to speak of wounded feelings, of 

 a wounded spirit. How acute at first, and how 

 surely healing with time. But the scar remains. 

 Then there are real analogies, real parallels, be- 

 tween the mind and outward nature, in the laws 

 of growth and decay, nutrition and reproduction. 

 " The mind of Otho," says Tacitus, " was not, like 

 his body, soft and efi'eminate." There are minds 

 that are best described by the word masculine, and 

 others by the word feminine. There are dull, 

 sluggish minds, just as there are heavy, sluggish 

 bodies, and the two usually go together. There 

 are dry, lean minds, and there are minds full of 

 unction and juice. We even use the phrase " men- 

 tal dyspepsia," but the analogy here implied is prob- 

 ably purely fanciful, though mental dissipation and 

 mental intemperance are no idle words. Some per- 

 sons acquire the same craze for highly exciting and 

 stimulating mental food that others have for strong 



