ate, 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 develops into a horse, and not into a
donkey or a cow. But the ovum of the original _Equus Prjevalskyi_
must have had in it the ideal of something more than the _Equus
Prjevalskyi,_ for from the original stock has sprung the great variety
of horses we see to-day--race-horses, cart-horses, hunters, polo
ponies, Shetland ponies, etc. And these are still varying. And the
_Equus Prjevalskyi_ was itself the outcome of a long line of
development. Like all other animals, including man, it must have
sprung from an original animal-germ. And the particles of that
original animal-germ must have had in them the animal-spirit
actuated by the ideal of all the animals of the present day, including
man, and ready to develop as soon as favourable conditions
provided the necessary stimulus to which the germ was ready to
respond.

And both the original plant-germ and the original animal-germ
sprang from an original plant-animal germ. And this, again, from the
Earth itself. So that the Earth must always have had hidden in it the
ideal of all plant and animal and human life--and not only the ideal
of what it has reached at present, but of all it _will_ become, and, it
is important to note, of all it _might_ become in future. It is the
working of this ideal in the Earth, from the time five hundred
million years or so ago when it budded off from the Sun as a fiery
mist, that it has, under the influence of the light and heat of the Sun,
and possibly also under the influences from the Stellar Universe as
well, produced what we see to-day. The Earth-Spirit was inspired by
this ideal, and in the ideal was this capacity for improving itself.
And through the working of this ideal, and under the influence of the
rest of the world, the Earth has developed from a flaming sphere into
a molten ball, into a globe of barren land and sea, and so on into the
verdure-covered and animal- and man-inhabited Earth of the present
age. The Earth, like the rose-seed, contained within it a core of
Activity which permeated every particle and constrained it with its
fellow-particles to direct itself towards the ideal--a core o