Note 11 — Chapter VIII

"It is impossible," says the Abbot Moses, "for the mind not to be approached by thoughts, but it is in the power of every earnest man either to admit them or reject them. Their rising does not depend upon ourselves, but their admission or rejection is in our own power.... The movement of the mind may well be illustrated by the comparison of a mill-wheel. The headlong rush of water whirls it round, and it can never stop its work so long as it is driven by the water. Yet it is in the power of the man who directs it to decide whether he will have wheat, or barley, or darnel ground by it. For it must certainly crush that which the man in charge of it puts in. So the mind is driven by the torrents of temptation which pour in on it from every side and cannot be free from the flow of thoughts, but we control the character of the thoughts by the efforts of our own earnestness."—Cassian, Conferences, I, 17, 18.