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Where the rose-spirit derived from we shall later on enquire. Here we must note a point of the utmost importance. The seed of this Rosa persica is imbued with the spirit of Rosa persica. It has this ideal working within it. But it is not confined within the rigid limits of that ideal.
The rose-spirit had latent in it, and was unconsciously stretching out to, all the beauties which roses have since attained to, and beyond that again to all the beauties that are yet to come. The horizon of the rose-spirit was never confined by a single plan the plan of the Rosa persica as the builder is confined by the plan of the architect, beyond which he cannot go.
The rose-spirit could reach out along the line of roses to an unlimited extent. It could produce nothing but roses; it could not produce laburnums. But it could produce roses of unlimited variety, provided favourable conditions were available. But the Rosa persica was itself the outcome of a long line of development from a far-away primordial plant-germ.
And we have dwarf roses and roses climbing 50 or 60 feet in height. From all this it is evident that within the original seed of Rosa persica was a rose-spirit which refused to be confined within the limits of Rosa persica only, but stretched out far beyond as well.
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.
And that system of these groups of particles which is enclosed within the rondure of the seed must have within it the ideal of the rose to be. Each particle will act on its own initiative, but all will act under the mutual influence of one another, and in their togetherness will make up the rose-spirit, being informed by the ideal of the rose which in its turn will suffuse the whole.
And this rose-spirit this rose-disposition as it gives itself play, so controls and directs their movements that eventually the full-blown rose comes into being. What happens is, we may imagine, much the same as what happened in the case of Australia. A handful of settlers from the mother-country formed the germ-seed from which the Australia of to-day has grown up.
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.
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