"Yours faithfully, "HUBERT HIGGINS, M. A. CANTAB. M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
"Late House Surgeon to St. George's Hospital, London, and the Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Demonstrator of Anatomy to the University of Cambridge and Assistant Surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital."
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.
Man removes deterrents to growth. Nature "does the rest."
Thought and cell creation are spontaneous and are never-ceasing if all obstructions are removed from about them. Civilised man places a quarantine against the enemies of growth, of progress, and of harmony, and thereby promotes civilisation.
Man is, therefore, the Chief Assistant to Creation, the Architect of Civilisation and a _Full Partner_ with Nature in Evolution.
This distinction, adequately appreciated, lifts Man above the animal plane and gives him a place among the gods; his material form, composed of muscle, hands, powers of locomotion and speech, being but tools with which to harness and coöperate with the other forces in Nature, under the direction of the godlike attribute of the Mind, in the removal of deterrents to free growth, and the cultivation of that Harmony which is the symbol of God.