Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/343

Rh another's poison. As we rise in the scale of animal life we find more and more complicated reaction upon stimuli from without; then, finally, rudimentary reasoning. But even animals gifted with this last capacity usually prefer to keep their minds as empty as possible. The idyllic stupefaction of the cow in the stall, or of the dog upon the hearth-rug, betrays the vacuity which is theirs so much of the time, and into which they contentedly fall when not pricked to action by sensational spur. This beatific inanity of the brutes is close of kin to the Buddhist height of holiness,—Nirvana.

When we come to man we find that even that so-called reasoning animal thinks as little as he may until pretty well up in the line of development. He is for the most part content to let circumstances pull the sensational trigger and make snap-shots at life. Even when he takes to thinking, it is thinking for things' sake that he usually indulges in. Thinking for thinking's sake is the employment of the highest few.

As a side light upon this we notice how, when a person becomes weak from some drain upon the system, he grows less and