But we may imagine a different state of affairs. Let us assume that
when the seed sprouted it foreknew the elm that was to be. Every time
it sucked in its slight moisture it was gently adapting this
nourishment to the fulfillment of its ultimate end, asking itself
whether the small material had better be bestowed on the left bough or
the right, whether certain leaves should curve more obliquely toward
the sun, and whether it had better wave its branches and catch the
passing breeze or leave them quiet. If we could rightly imagine such a
state of things, our tree would be much unlike its brothers of the
forest; for, superintending its own development, it would be not a
thing at all but a person. We persons are in this very way entrusted
with our growth. A plan there is, a normal mode of growth, a
significance to which we may attain. But that significance is not
imposed on us from without, as an inevitable event, already settled
through our past. On the contrary, we detect it afar as a possibility,
are thus put in charge of it, and so become in large degree our own
upbuilders. Development is movement toward a mark. In self-development
the mark to be reached is in the conscious keeping of him who is to
reach it. Toward it he may more or less fully direct his course.

And what an astonishing state of things then appears! Self-development
involves a kind of contradiction in terms. How can I build if at
present there is no I? Why should I build if at present there is an I?
Whichever alternative we take, we fall into what looks like absurdity.
Yet on that absurdity personal life is based. There is no avoiding it.
Wordsworth has daringly stated the paradox: "So build we up the being
that we are." On coming into the world we are only sketched out. Of
each of us there is a ground plan of which we progressively become
aware. Hidden from us in our early years, it resides in the minds of
our parents, just as the plan of the tree's structure is in the