t the world around him is perfect. So there is
in the pair a consciousness of imperfection, a vision of perfection,
and a desperate yearning to be more perfect and to make the world
more perfect. Deep and strong as the creative impulse itself is the
impulse to improvement. It is due to this impulse that the mother
reaches over her child with such loving care, strives to shield it from
all harm, social as well as physical, and to give it a better chance
than she herself enjoyed. It is due to this same impulse that the man
works to leave his profession, his business, his science, his art, his
country, better than he found it. It is due to this impulse also that
men as a whole are driven to improve the whole Earth, to improve
plants, flowers, trees, animals, men, and make the world a better
place for their successors than it has ever been for them.

The pair--even the most splendid pair that has ever wedded
--have deep within them this perhaps unrecognised impulse to
improvement. They know that the rose can only bring forth roses,
and that they can only bring forth men: they know that they cannot
bring forth angels. But they know also that the rose, when wisely
mated and its offspring provided with favourable surroundings of
soil and air and sunshine, can give rise to blooms incomparably
more perfect than itself. And they know that they themselves, if they
have wisely mated, if they carefully tend their offspring and provide
them with healthy, sunny, physical and social surroundings, can give
rise, in generations to come, to unions of men and women
incomparably more perfect than their own--as much more perfect as
their union is than the unions of primitive men--richer in colour,
more graceful in form, sweeter in fragrance, and of an altogether
finer texture.

* * *

This, then, is the ideal in its completeness which we set up before us.
But we have no sooner set it up than we find that the presence of this
ideal within us makes us restless, unsatisfied, discontented, till we
have set to work to bring things up to it; and that when we do start
improving them we are forthwith involved in endless strife.
Improvement means effort. It does not come by itself. It is only
effected by strong, persistent, determined effort. It was no easy
matter for the particles in the rose-seed to battle their way through
the hard seed-case, strike down into the soil, send up shoots into the
air, stand steadfastly to their ideal of the rose,