l, or a knave.

In the Eastern literature is a fable of a frog. The frog lived in a
well, and out of his little well he had never been. One day a frog whose
home was in the sea came to his well. Interested in all things, he went
in. "Who are you? Where do you live?" said the frog in the well. "I am
so and so, and my home is in the sea." "The sea? What is that? Where
is that?" "It is a very large body of water, and not far away." "How
big is your sea?" "Oh, very big." "As big as this?" pointing to a
little stone lying near. "Oh, much bigger." "As big as this?" pointing
to the board upon which they were sitting. "Oh, much bigger." "How much
bigger, then?" "Why, the sea in which I live is bigger than your entire
well; it would make millions of wells such as yours." "Nonsense,
nonsense; you are a deceiver and a falsifier. Get out of my well. Get
out of my well. I want nothing to do with any such frogs as you."

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," is the
promise. Ye shall close yourselves to truth, ye shall live in your own
conceits, and your own conceits shall make fools and idiots of you, would
be a statement applicable to not a few, and to not a few who pride
themselves upon their superior intellectual attainments. Idiocy is
arrested mental growth. Closing one's self for whatever reason to truth
and hence to growth, brings a certain type of idiocy, though it may not
be called by this name. And on the other hand, another type is that
arrested growth caused by taking all things for granted, without proving
them for one's self, merely because they come from a particular person, a
particular book, a particular institution. This is caused by one's
always looking without instead of being true to the light within, and
carefully tending it that it may give an ever-clearer light.

With brave and intrepid Walt Whitman, we should all be able to say--

"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits
and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the
holds that would hold me."

Great should be the joy that God's boundless truth is open to all, open
_equally_ to all, and that it will make each one its dwelling place in
proportion as he earnestly desires it and opens himself to i