The true adept thinks the
training of the mind in intellectual pursuits no less necessary than the
moderate and reasonable mortification of the flesh, and higher Buddhism
pays as much attention to the one as to the other."
"Excuse me," said I, "if I make a digression. I think there are two
classes of minds commonly to be found among thinkers all over the world.
The one seek to attain to knowledge, the others strive to acquire it.
There is a class of commonplace intellects who regard knowledge of all
kinds in the light of a ladder; one ladder for each science, and the
rungs of the ladders are the successive facts mastered by an effort and
remembered in the order they have been passed. These persons think it is
possible to attain to high eminence on one particular ladder, that is,
in one particular science, without having been up any of the other
ladders, that is, without a knowledge of other branches of seience. This
is the mind of the plodder, the patient man who climbs, step by step, in
his own unvarying round of thought; not seeing that it is but the wheel
of a treadmill over which he is labouring, and that though every step
may pass, and repass, beneath his toiling feet, he can never obtain a
birdseye view of what he is doing, because his eyes are continually
fixed on the step in front.
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