A great many people seem to think that the object of all plants with pretty flowers must be to give pleasure. But these people quite forget that hundreds and thousands of flowers live and die far away in the lonely forest, where no human eye ever sees them; that they so lived and died hundreds and thousands of years before there were any men and women, and boys and girls, upon the earth. And so, if they stopped long enough quietly to think about it, they would see for themselves that plants must have some other object in life than to give people pleasure.
Fig. 10
But now let us go back to the tree from which we took this apple, and see if we can find out its special object.
“Why, apples!” some of you exclaim. “Surely the object of an apple tree is to bear apples.”
That is it exactly. An apple tree lives to bear apples.
And now why is an apple such an important thing? Why is it worth so much time and trouble? What is its use?
“It is good to eat,” chime all the children in chorus.
Yes, so it is; but then, you must remember that once upon a time, apple trees, like all other plants and trees, grew in lonely places where there were no boys and girls to eat their fruit. So we must find some other answer.
Think for a moment, and then tell me what you find inside every apple.