INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



no doubt: it is the law that condemns it to immobility from 

 its birth to its death. Therefore it knows better than we, who 

 disseminate our efforts, against what to rebel first of all. And 

 the energy of its fixed idea, mounting from the darkness of 

 the roots to become organized and fullblown in the flower, is 

 an incomparable spectacle. It exerts itself wholly with one 

 sole aim : to escape above from the fatality below, to evade, to 

 transgress the heavy and sombre law, to set itself free, to shat- 

 ter the narrow sphere, to invent or invoke wings, to escape as 

 far as it can, to conquer the space in which destiny encloses 

 it, to approach another kingdom, to penetrate into a moving 

 and active world. ... Is the fact that it attains its ob- 

 ject not as surprising as though we were to succeed in living 

 outside the time which a different destiny assigns to us or in 

 making our way into a universe freed from the weightiest laws 

 of matter? We shall see that the flower sets man a gigantic 

 example of insubordination, courage, perseverance and in- 

 genuity. If we had applied to the removal of various neces- 

 sities that crush us, such as pain, old age and death, one half 

 of the energy displayed by any little flower in our gardens, we 

 may well believe that our lot would be very different from 

 what it is. 



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