154 THE NATURE OF NATURE 



leaves, flowers, fruit, seed. In all their activities 

 they were actuated by this ideal. It was always 

 constraining them in the given direction. By 

 reason of the working of it in the particles they 

 could by no possibility arrange themselves into a 

 may tree or a lilac bush. There was an inner core 

 of activity which persisted through all the countless 

 changes of the process, which permeated the whole 

 and which kept it directed to the particular end it 

 had all the time in view. That activity had, in fact, 

 a well-defined disposition, and that disposition was 

 defined by the ideal of the rose, and was to form a 

 rose-bush bearing roses. 



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 per- 

 sistently 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. 



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. 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 

 not only into the rose-flower, but through the 

 flowers into numerous rose-seeds. And from the 

 original Rosa persica seeds have sprung roses of 



