106 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



savage, sour, unlovely elements of human nature came about 

 by the same divine process of creation, and are to be turned 

 to sweetness, fragrance and beauty, in the same glorious and 

 blessed process. The ferocity of man, the selfishness of man, 

 the fierce self-assertiveness of man, came in answer to the same 

 demand, in answer to the same environing conditions. Those 

 thorns will all be changed to branches of peace, bearing fra- 

 grance and fruitful bloom of kindliness, generosity and love. 

 There we have the secret of the great sore puzzle of man's self- 

 ishness and hardness. Let the rose interpret the problem for 

 us. 



The baser side of human nature came in answer to the neces- 

 sity that he plant himself, first of all, firmly and tenaciously as 

 a creature of the earth, just as the old wild rose had to do ; to 

 root himself deeply in that soil upon which he must live and out 

 of which he must be able to wrest a living. The physical man 

 had to be first a wild, fierce animal in order that by and by he 

 could ofi'ow to be a nobler man. The fact is that strono;, fierce 

 self-assertiveness, at that time, was the law and condition of 

 his survival. He came into a world of savage beasts ; he came 

 into a world where he had to fight cold, storm and hunger. No 

 armor-plate for his protection, no speed like that of the horse, 

 no strength like that of the lion and elephant, and he had to 

 put in its place strength of brain, to have cunning, obstinacy, 

 fierce self-assertiveness, tremendous masterfulness. Man had 

 to look after number one or else some lion or tiger would have 

 been the foremost creature of the earth. He had to assert him- 

 self, to resent injury, to establish himself, as I have said, with 

 strong passions and strength of will. He became as hard and 

 savage and thorny and unassailable as that first crab-bush. He 

 became all that, not merely passively as the crab-bush did, but 

 he became it aggressively and made himself master of every 

 creature in the world. There followed from that a result of 

 vast, of sacred significance. Thus he won dominion over the 

 creatures of the earth. Thus he secured freedom, leisure and 

 opportunity to rise out of these animal beginnings to something 

 finer and nobler. These passions of the wild beast rose to 



