leasure; and our own wills, thus inspired,
may be the torch to kindle other wills with the same inspiration. It
is in only one of these two ways that a human soul can be truly
inspired; and, without a true inspiration, no amount of instruction,
whether in duty, or life, or anything else, will change a single
moral propensity."[A]

[Footnote A: Seelye: Christian Missions, p. 154.]

Even though a Lincoln may rise above his hereditary position or his
surroundings, they are the school in which he is trained; the
gymnasium in which his mental and moral fibre is strengthened.
Family and social life form thus the element of man's environment by
which he is mostly moulded, and to which he most naturally and
completely conforms. Let us therefore briefly trace the origin of
this new element of man's environment, and then notice the effect
upon him of conformity to its laws, and see whither these would lead
him.

We have already seen that intra-uterine development of the young was
being carried ever farther by mammals, and we found one explanation
of this in the fact that each mammalian egg represented a large
amount of nutriment, and that the mammal had very little material to
spare for reproduction. Very possibly, too, the newly hatched
mammals were exposed to even more numerous and greater dangers than
the young of birds. Even among lower mammals the young is feeble at
birth. But the human infant is absolutely helpless. And the centre
of its helplessness is its brain. Its eyes and ears are
comparatively perfect, but its perceptions are very dim. Its muscles
are all present, but it must very slowly and gradually learn to use
them. Its language is but a cry, its few actions reflex. The
new-born kitten may be just as helpless, but in a few weeks it will
run and play and hunt, and after a few months can care for itself.
Not so the child. It must be cared for during months and years
before it can be given independence. Its brain is so marvellously
complex that it is finished as a thinking and willing and
muscle-controlling mechanism only long after birth. This means a
period of infancy during which the young clings helplessly to the
mother, who is its natural protector. And during this period the
mother and young have to be cared for and protected by the male. And
the period of infancy and the protection of the female and young are
just as truly, though in far less degree, characteristic of the
highest apes as of man.

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