156 THE NATURE OF NATURE 



actuating it unconsciously, of course, but most 

 effectively for all that. The particles of that 

 original germ in their individual activities and in 

 their mutual influence upon one another were in 

 their togetherness actuated by a plant-spirit which 

 had in mind so to speak not only the reproduc- 

 tion of a plant precisely similar to the original 

 plant, but one with the possibilities of develop- 

 ment and of reproducing others with possibilities of 

 still further development. All that plant life has 

 so far attained and all that it will attain to in future 

 perhaps also all that it might have attained to 

 must have been present in the plant-spirit of that 

 original plant-germ. And it is through the work- 

 ing out the realising of this ideal which actuated 

 that plant-spirit, and through the response which 

 this spirit made to the stimulus of its surroundings 

 that all the wonderful development of plant life has 

 taken place. The plant-spirit had to keep within 

 the lines of plant life ; it could not stray beyond it 

 to develop lions and tigers. But within the lines 

 of plant life it could stretch out to illimitable dis- 

 tances. All that was wanted was the stimulus of 

 favourable conditions, and from its surroundings it 

 could select, reject, assimilate, all that would 

 further its end. 



In the Gobi Desert I also saw the wild horse 

 Equus Prjevalskyi supposed to be the original 

 horse. And as the rose springs from the seed, so 

 the horse develops from the ovum. And by virtue 

 of the horse-spirit, the horse-ideal, by which all the 

 innumerable particles of that ovum is actuated, it 



