strengthen our conception of this creative energy by recognizing its
presence in lower states of matter than our own; such recognition being
enforced upon us by delight we instinctively receive from all the forms
of matter which manifest it; and yet more, by the glorifying of those
forms, in the parts of them that are most animated, with the colors that
are pleasantest to our senses. The most familiar instance of this is the
best, and also the most wonderful: the blossoming of plants.

60. The spirit in the plant--that is to say, its power of gathering dead
matter out of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen
shape--is of course strongest at the moment of its flowering, for it then
not only gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy.

And where this life is in at full power, its form becomes invested with
aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own human passions; namely, at
first, with the loveliest outlines of shape; and, secondly, with the most
brilliant phases of the primary colors, blue, yellow, and red or white,
the unison of all; and, to make it all more strange, this time of
peculiar and perfect glory is associated with relations of the plants or
blossoms to each other, correspondent to the joy of love in human
creatures, and having the same object in the continuance of the race.
Only, with respect to plants, as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if
the object of this strong life were only the bequeathing of itself. The
flower is the end or proper object of the seed, not the seed of the
flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of
flowers that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creature which the
spirit makes; only, in connection with its perfectness is placed the
giving birth to its successor.

61. The main fact then, about a flower is that it is part of the plant's