thought. Read the system, and with the last word it is
over--the mind passes on and requires more. It is but a crumb tasted
and gone: who should remember a crumb? But the wind blows, not one
puff and then stillness: it continues; if it does cease there
remains the same air to be breathed. So that the physical part of
man thus always provided with air for breathing is infinitely better
cared for than his mind, which gets but little crumbs, as it were,
coming from old times. These are soon gone, and there remains
nothing. Somewhere surely there must be more. An ancient thinker
considered that the atmosphere was full of faint images--spectra,
reflections, or emanations retaining shape, though without
substance--that they crowded past in myriads by day and night.
Perhaps there may be thoughts invisible, but floating round us, if
we could only render ourselves sensitive to their impact. Such a
remark must not be taken literally--it is only an effort to convey a
meaning, just as shadow throws up light. The light is that there are
further thoughts yet to be found.

The fulness of Nature and the vacancy of mental existence are
strangely contrasted. Nature is full everywhere; there is no chink,
no unfurnished space. The mind has only a few thoughts to recall,
and those old, and that have been repeated these centuries past.
Unless the inner mind (not that which deals with little matters of
daily labour) lets itself rest on every blade of grass and leaf, and
listens to the soothing wind, it must be vacant--vacant for lack of
something to do, not from limit of capacity. For it is too strong
and powerful for the things it has to grasp; they are crushed like
wheat in a mill. It has capacity for so much, and it is supplied
with so little. All the centuries that have gone have gathered
hardly a bushel, as it were, and these dry grains are quickly rolled
under strong thought and reduced to dust. The mill must then cease,
not that it has no further power, but because the supply stops.
Bring it another bushel, and it will grind as long as the grain is
poured in. Let fresh images come in a stream like the apple-scented
wind; there is room for them, the storehouse of the inner mind
expands to receive them, wide as the sea which receives the breeze.
The Downs are now lit with sunlight--the night will cover them
presently--but the mind will sigh as eagerly for these things as in
the glory of day. Sooner or later there will surely come an ope