Educators make much of growth, nor can we over-emphasize the importance of the principle. But if the thing that is increasing is bad, then growth is a curse immeasurable. Given a spark and growth means a conflagration that ruins a city. Given a gipsy-moth in the parks of New England and growth means the devastation of the forests of a State. Given a disease, and growth means death. Given any form of sin, and growth means the wreckage of character and destiny. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
(1320)
Growth in Educational Work—See [Needs, Meeting Children’s].
GROWTH IN NATURE
Once, a half-century ago or more, a farmer and his men came down from the pastures, and for purposes of their own cut a ditch straight through the middle of the bog to the open water. The hundreds of scrawny night-herons, sitting on pale blue eggs in scraggly nests in the cedar swamp, must have heard the cedars laugh as this went on. It was the swamp’s opportunity. Where the farmer and his men with incredible labor cut and tore away the marsh-grass roots the cedars planted their seeds, and called upon the alders and the swamp-maples and the thoroughwort, the Joe Pye weed, and a host of other good citizens of the swamp to help them.
So vigorous was the sortie and so well did they hold their ground, that you may trace the farmer’s wide ditch to-day only as a causeway down which the swamp has come to build a great wooden area in the midst of the bog, accomplishing in half a century what it might not have done in five times had it not been for human aid.—Winthrop Packard, “Wild Pastures.”
(1321)
Growth, Spiritual—See [Spiritual Perturbation].
Growth Through Struggle—See [Struggle and Growth].
GROWTH, UNCONSCIOUS