fourths of the mind still sleeps. That little atom of it
needed to conduct the daily routine of the world is, indeed, often
strained to the utmost. That small part of it, again, occasionally
exercised in re-learning ancient thoughts, is scarcely half
employed--small as it is. There is so much more capacity in the
inner mind--a capacity of which but few even dream. Until favourable
times and chances bring fresh materials for it, it is not conscious
of itself. Light and freedom, colour, and delicious air--sunshine,
blue hill lines, and flowers--give the heart to feel that there is
so much more to be enjoyed of which we walk in ignorance.

Touching a flower, it seems as if some of this were absorbed from
it; it flows from the flower like its perfume. The delicate odour of
the violet cannot be written; it is material yet it cannot be
expressed. So there is an immaterial influence flowing from it which
escapes language. Touching the greensward, there is a feeling as if
the great earth sent a mystic influence through the frame. From the
sweet wind, too, it comes. The sunlight falls on the hand; the light
remains without on the surface, but its influence enters the very
being. This sense of absorbing something from earth, and flower, and
sunlight is like hovering on the verge of a great truth. It is the
consciousness that a great truth is there. Not that the flower and
the wind know it, but that they stir unexplored depths in the mind.
They are only material--the sun sinks, darkness covers the hills,
and where is their beauty then? The feeling or thought which is
excited by them resides in the mind, and the purport and drift of it
is a wider existence--yet to be enjoyed on earth. Only to think of
and imagine it is in itself a pleasure.

The red-tipped hawthorn buds are full of such a thought; the tender
green of the leaf just born speaks it. The leaf does not come forth
shapeless. Already, at its emergence, there are fine divisions at
the edge, markings, and veins. It is wonderful from the
commencement. A thought may be put in a line, yet require a
life-time to understand in its completeness. The leaf was folded in
the tiny red-tipped bud--now it has come forth how long must one
ponder to fully appreciate it?

Those things which are symbolized by the leaf, the flower, the very
touch of earth, have not yet been put before the mind in a definite
form, and shaped so that they can be weighed. The mind is like a
lens. A lens ca