The Meaning of Infancy

Part 1

Riverside Educational Monographs

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

THE MEANING OF INFANCY

JOHN FISKE

1883

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. THE MEANING OF INFANCY From "Excursions of an Evolutionist"

II. THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN From "A Century of Science"

OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION

The new significance of education

The last century has witnessed an unprecedented development in the significance of education. One direct consequence has been an increased reverence for childhood. In this movement which has increased the dignity of children and schools, two large forces have been at work,--one social and the other scientific. The growth of the democratic spirit among men and institutions has made the education of children a public necessity, and lifted the school to a position of high social importance. The application of the theory of evolution to man and his life has revealed human infancy as one of the largest factors making for the superiority of man in the struggle for existence, and given to childhood a vast biological importance. The necessities of democracy and the truths of science, acting more or less independently of each other, have given to education a breadth of meaning which it did not possess before. They have shown that infancy is the largest opportunity and education the most powerful instrument for the conscious adjustment of man to the physical and social world in which he lives.

Democracy changes the function of schools

It was the attempt of democracy to educate all of its children which was the initial and important event that provoked large changes in our notions of the social function of education. As long as the school was for the few, and such it was in the less liberal periods of history, the school tended to be an authoritative institution with more or less rigid methods of procedure. With fixed ideas of truth and the means of acquiring truth, it was to a considerable degree unbending in its attitude toward youth. Even if freedom from economic toil and social regulation permitted, only the type of mind that could fit the school's established institutional ways could endure its discipline and achieve its rewards. Other types of mentality it would not receive or retain as students. Under such an organization the school was selective of a special kind of talent. It was not an instrument, so adjustable in its methods of appeal and instruction, that every manner of child could gain considerable of the wisdom of the world. But when a more democratic order was established, the function of the school underwent a considerable change. Democracy granted to all men freedom in manhood; to safeguard its privileges, it had to educate all men in childhood. The school for selected scholars had to be transformed into a school for every variety of citizen. With every child sent to school by order of the state, the teacher had to forego his traditional aloofness, and to adjust his methods of teaching so that every member of the enlarged school community could come into a knowledge of the civilization in which he lived. With the inclusion of the blind, the deaf, the slow of mind, and the restless of spirit,--individuals left out of the old scheme of education and now reverently educated by the new democratic order in spite of all their defects,--the school becomes more flexible and variable in its methods of transmitting truth. More of the knowledge of human life is brought within the comprehension of children; more men are brought into a large and sympathetic participation in the activities of our civilization. In the truest sense the school becomes an instrument of adjustment between childhood and society.

Evolutionary thought interprets childhood

If the democratic movement emphasized the factor of social adjustment in the school's function, it was the scientific movement of the last half-century which drew attention to infancy as a superior opportunity for biological adjustment Among all the contributions of modern evolutionary science to educational thought, none is, more striking or more far-reaching in its implications than that special group of generalizations which states the biological function of a prolonged infancy in man. Interpreting this period, of helplessness and dependence as one of plasticity and opportunity, it has shown that the greater power of man in adjusting himself to the complex conditions of life is due to his educability, which in turn is the outcome of his lengthened childhood. This "doctrine of the meaning of infancy," for such it has been called, is perhaps best known to the teaching profession through those enlargements and applications of the doctrine which have been made by Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler in his exposition of "the meaning of education." As a belief, it is at least as old as the period of the ancient Greek philosopher, Anaximander. As a doctrine in our modern thought, it owes its influential reappearance to certain evolutionary hypotheses of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, which in turn stimulated Mr. John Fiske to that further inquiry which resulted in those first cogent and extended statements of the doctrine which have been the basis of so many subsequent educational applications.

Mr. Fiske's presentation of the meaning of infancy

Because of the fundamental importance of Mr. Fiske's presentation of "the doctrine of the meaning of infancy," his views are here reprinted in detail. The material consists of an essay and an address. The first of these, "The Meaning of Infancy," is a brief and simplified restatement of those theories of man's origin and destiny as first suggested in his lectures at Harvard University in 1871, and later developed more fully in the "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," part II, chapters xvi, xxi, and xxii. The second of these, "The Part played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man," is an address delivered by Mr. Fiske as the guest of honor at a dinner at the Aldine Club, New York, May 13, 1895. Together these two papers constitute the most detailed and valuable elucidation of the doctrine that we possess. In offering them to the teaching profession and the reading public in this form, it is with the sincere hope that this biological interpretation of childhood and education will lend a new spiritual dignity to the whole institution of education. It must certainly be gratifying to those who are profound believers in the efficacy of education, to note that its significance is wider than its service to particular persons and states; that education is, in truth, the conscious and latest mode of that wider world-evolution which has been in progress since the beginning of time.

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 which this infancy has wrought. A few familiar facts concerning the method in which men learn how to do things will help us here.

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