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It has that ideal, but something beyond also something in the direction of that ideal, but stretching on ahead to an illimitable distance. The rose-seed developed riot only into the rose-flower, but through the flowers into numerous rose-seeds. And from the original Rosa persica seeds have sprung roses of scores of varieties.
It is only effected by strong, persistent, determined effort. It was no easy matter for the particles in the rose-seed to battle their way through the hard seed-case, strike down into the soil, send up shoots into the air, stand steadfastly to their ideal of the rose, and produce a seed capable of bringing forth a still more perfect flower.
When did a rose-seed make itself into a rose-bush on any past occasion? "I answer this question with another. 'Did the rose-seed ever form part of the identity of the rose-bush on which it grew? Who can say that it did not?
"Then, if rose-seed number two is a continuation of the personality of its parent rose-bush, and if that rose-bush is a continuation of the personality of the rose-seed from which it sprang, rose-seed number two must also be a continuation of the personality of the earlier rose-seed.
I likewise distributed fruit-stones and almonds for planting among the chiefs, who I hope will endeavour to make them succeed and, as they are very fond of sweet-smelling flowers with which the women delight to ornament themselves, I gave them some rose-seed. Thursday 6.
Neither rose-seed, therefore, nor embryo should be expected to show signs of knowing that they know what they know if they showed such signs the fact of their knowing what they want, and how to get it, might more reasonably be doubted."
In the great world as a whole, as in the rose-seed, must have been operating an ideal at least of what is on the Earth to-day, and of what this Earth will become and of what it might become; and possibly also of greater things which have already been realised, or will be realised and might be realised in the planets of other suns than our Sun.
That the rose-seed developed into the rose was due, therefore, not to the operation of any outside agent, but was due to the operation of the rose-spirit that it had within it, and which was persistently driving it to bring into actual being that ideal of the rose which was the essence of its spirit. The ideal of the rose was the motive-power of the whole process.
The rose-seed did what it now does in the persons of its ancestors to whom it has been so linked as to be able to remember what those ancestors did when they were placed as the rose-seed now is.
In the same way these particles of the rose-seed, each acting of itself, in their collectivity formed the rose-spirit. And each was in turn imbued by the rose-spirit. They had in them unconsciously the ideal of the rose-bush with its roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, seed. In all their activities they were actuated by this ideal. It was always constraining them in the given direction.
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