h has been in
progress since the beginning of time.

I

THE MEANING OF INFANCY

What is the Meaning of Infancy? What is the meaning of the fact
that man is born into the world more helpless than any other
creature, and needs for a much longer season than any other living
thing the tender care and wise counsel of his elders? It is one of
the most familiar of facts that man alone among animals, exhibits a
capacity for progress. That man is widely different from other
animals in the length of his adolescence and the utter helplessness
of his babyhood, is an equally familiar fact. Now between these
two commonplace facts is there any connection? Is it a mere
accident that the creature which is distinguished as progressive
should also be distinguished as coming slowly to maturity, or is
there a reason lying deep down in the nature of things why this
should be so? I think it can be shown, with very few words, that
between these two facts there is a connection that is deeply
in-wrought with the processes by which life has been evolved upon
the earth. It can be shown that man's progressiveness and the
length of his infancy are but two sides of one and the same fact;
and in showing this, still more will appear. It will appear that
it was the lengthening of infancy which ages ago gradually
converted our forefathers from brute creatures into human
creatures. It is babyhood that has made man what he is. The
simple unaided operation of natural selection could never have
resulted in the origination of the human race. Natural selection
might have gone on forever improving the breed of the highest
animal in many ways, but it could never _unaided_ have started the
process of civilization or have given to man those peculiar
attributes in virtue of which it has been well said that the
difference between him and the highest of apes immeasurably
transcends in value the difference between an ape and a blade of
grass. In order to bring about that wonderful event, the Creation
of Man, natural selection had to call in the aid of other agencies,
and the chief of these agencies was the gradual lengthening of
babyhood.

Such is the point which I wish to illustrate in few words, and to
indicate some of its bearings on the history of human progress.
Let us first observe what it was then lengthened the infancy of the
highest animal, for then we shall be the better able to understand
the character of the prodigious effects whi