NOTE: A paper, read before members of the Unity League and other
guests of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Harbert, at Tre-Brah, Williams Bay,
Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, in August, 1898.
It is pertinent to the subject of this book, but was written when the
investigations described herein were just beginning.
Progress of Civilisation is accelerated by constantly extending systems
of individual, moral, social and sanitary quarantine.
It is not what man adds, for he can _add_ nothing, but what he
prevents, that aids growth.
Man creates nothing, but he assists Creation by removing deterrents
to growth. Growth is spontaneous, constant and ever stronger if
obstructions are removed. Creation does _all the growing_, but
_cultivates_ nothing; the seed falling upon good soil or upon stony
waste without other direction than that given by the caprice of the
winds.
On the other hand, Man is the _only cultivator_ in Nature, and at the
same time he can add nothing to growth--to Creation.
Visible, or conscious, growth consists of cell building or thought
producing. Man never has created a cell, neither has he been able to
determine the origin of a thought; yet, he is a necessary factor in
evolution and a prime factor in cultivation, which is civilisation.