“You are right,” I answered, “I should not have used that word.”
Henry said: “The apple-tree might be perfect, but the apples might still be unripe.”
“Yes,” I went on, “but the apple-tree would not be perfect unless the apples ripened.”
“The world is like a rose-bud,” said Alfred. “It is perfect as a bud, and yet it must open and evolve in its perfection.”
“Yes,” I said, “or like a sleeper who awakens.
“Now, then,” I asked, “you do all believe in progress; that the world changes and that it changes in a certain direction?”
“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I believe that the world, that God, must always be the same, even though it change.”
“That is true, and it is a strange paradoxical truth, which I hope to make you understand later on, that all things change and progress, yet are ever the same, even as the rose-bud that unfolds.”
We had tacitly admitted that God and the aim of life stood for love and unity. Once when Henry spoke of the “fear” of God, the others corrected him.
“Now,” I said, “if there is progress, what is it?”