"
As I was taking leave of the gentle sage, he autographed a small volume
and presented it to me. {FN38-1} "Here is my book on THE TRAINING
OF THE HUMAN PLANT," {FN38-2} he said. "New types of training are
needed-fearless experiments. At times the most daring trials have
succeeded in bringing out the best in fruits and flowers. Educational
innovations for children should likewise become more numerous, more
courageous."
I read his little book that night with intense interest. His eye
envisioning a glorious future for the race, he wrote: "The most
stubborn living thing in this world, the most difficult to swerve,
is a plant once fixed in certain habits. . . . Remember that this
plant has preserved its individuality all through the ages; perhaps
it is one which can be traced backward through eons of time in the
very rocks themselves, never having varied to any great extent in
all these vast periods. Do you suppose, after all these ages of
repetition, the plant does not become possessed of a will, if you
so choose to call it, of unparalleled tenacity? Indeed, there are
plants, like certain of the palms, so persistent that no human
power has yet been able to change them. The human will is a weak
thing beside the will of a plant. But see how this whole plant's
lifelong stubbornness is broken simply by blending a new life with
it, making, by crossing, a complete and powerful change in its life.
Then when the break comes, fix it by these generations of patient
supervision and selection, and the new plant sets out upon its new
way never again to return to the old, its tenacious will broken
and changed at last.
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