nd 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.
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. From that
original plant-germ have sprung all the ferns and grasses, the shrubs
and trees and flowers, of the present day. So in that plant-germ must
have resided the plant-spirit with an ideal of all this variety of
plant-life 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 reproduction of a plant precisely similar to the
original plant, but one with the possibilities of development 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 working 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 distances. All that was wanted was the stimulus of
favourable conditions, and from its surroundings it could select,
reject, assimil