Humble as is the sphere and small as is the scale of Egeria's labours, her work is, I firmly believe, of world-wide importance and lasting value, for she has provided an experimental basis for the idea that salvation is to be achieved by growth, and growth alone.
I will now try to interpret that idea.
The education of the child in school begins when he is four or five years old, and lasts till he is thirteen or fourteen.

But he enters the path of salvation the day he is born.

He comes into the world a weak, helpless baby; but, like every other seedling, he has in him all the potencies of perfection,--the perfection of his kind.
To realise those potencies, so far as they can be realised within the limits of one earth-life, is to achieve salvation.

Are those potencies worth realising?
To this question I can but answer: "Such as they are, they are our all." We might ask the same question with regard to an acorn or a grain of wheat; and in each case the answer would be the same.

There are, indeed, plants and animals which are noxious _from our point of view_.