The Meaning of Infancy by John Fiske
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John Fiske >> The Meaning of Infancy
Riverside Educational Monographs
EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
THE MEANING OF INFANCY
BY
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.
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 which this infancy has
wrought. A few familiar facts concerning the method in which men
learn how to do things will help us here.
When we begin to learn to play the piano, we have to devote much
time and thought to the adjustment and movement of our fingers and
to the interpretation of the vast and complicated multitude of
symbols which make up the printed page of music that stands before
us. For a long time, therefore, our attempts are feeble and
stammering and they require the full concentrated power of the
mind. Yet a trained pianist will play a new piece of music at
sight, and perhaps have so much attention to spare that he can talk
with you at the same time. What an enormous number of mental
acquisitions have in this case become almost instinctive or
automatic! It is just so in learning a foreign language, and it
was just the same when in childhood we learned to walk, to talk,
and to write. It is just the same, too, in learning to think about
abstruse subjects. What at first strains the attention to the
utmost, and often wearies us, comes at last to be done without
effort and almost unconsciously. Great minds thus travel over vast
fields of thought with an ease of which they are themselves
unaware. Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch once said that in translating the
"Mecanique Celeste," he had come upon formulas which Laplace
introduced with the word "obviously," where it took nevertheless
many days of hard study to supply the intermediate steps through
which that transcendent mind had passed with one huge leap of
inference. At some time in his youth no doubt Laplace had to think
of these things, just as Rubinstein had once to think how his
fingers should be placed on the keys of the piano; but what was
once the object of conscious attention comes at last to be
well-nigh automatic, while the night of the conscious mind goes on
ever to higher and vaster themes.
Let us now take a long leap from the highest level of human
intelligence to the mental life of a turtle or a codfish. In what
does the mental life of such creatures consist? It consists of a
few simple acts mostly concerned with the securing of food and the
avoiding of danger, and these few simple acts are repeated with
unvarying monotony during the whole lifetime of these creatures.
Consequently these acts are performed with great ease and are
attended with very little consciousness, and moreover the capacity
to perform them is transmitted from parent to offspring as
completely as the capacity of the stomach to digest food is
transmitted. In all animals the new-born stomach needs but the
contact with food in order to begin digesting, and the new-born
lungs need but the contact with air in order to begin to breathe.
The capacity for performing these perpetually repeated visceral
actions is transmitted in perfection. All the requisite nervous
connections are fully established during the brief embryonic
existence of each creature. In the case of lower animals it is
almost as much so with the few simple actions which make up the
creature's mental life. The bird known as the fly-catcher no
sooner breaks the egg than it will snap at and catch a fly. This
action is not so very simple, but because it is something the bird
is always doing, being indeed one out of the very few things that
this bird ever does, the nervous connections needful for doing it
are all established before birth, and nothing but the presence of
the fly is required to set the operation going.
With such creatures as the codfish, the turtle, or the fly-catcher,
there is accordingly nothing that can properly be called infancy.
With them the sphere of education is extremely limited. They get
their education before they are born. In other words, heredity
does everything for them, education nothing. The career of the
individual is predetermined by the careers of his ancestors, and he
can do almost nothing to vary it. The life of such creatures is
conservatism cut and dried, and there is nothing progressive about
them.
In what I just said I left an "almost." There is a great deal of
saving virtue in that little adverb. Doubtless even animals low in
the scale possess some faint traces of educability; but they are so
very slight that it takes geologic ages to produce an appreciable
result. In all the innumerable wanderings, fights, upturnings and
cataclysms of the earth's stupendous career, each creature has been
summoned under penalty of death to use what little wit he may have
had, and the slightest trace of mental flexibility is of such
priceless value in the struggle for existence that natural
selection must always have seized upon it, and sedulously hoarded
and transmitted it for coming generations to strengthen and
increase. With the lapse of geologic time the upper grades of
animal intelligence have doubtless been raised higher and higher
through natural selection. The warm-blooded mammals and birds of
to-day no doubt surpass the cold-blooded dinosaurs of the Jurassic
age in mental qualities as they surpass them in physical structure.
From the codfish and turtle of ancient family to the modern lion,
dog, and monkey, it is a very long step upward. The mental life of
a warm-blooded animal is a very different affair from that of
reptiles and fishes. A squirrel or a bear does a good many things
in the course of his life. He meets various vicissitudes in
various ways; he has adventures. The actions he performs are so
complex and so numerous that they are severally performed with less
frequency than the few actions performed by the codfish. The
requisite nervous connections are accordingly not fully established
before birth. There is not time enough. The nervous connections
needed for the visceral movements and for the few simple
instinctive actions get organized, and then the creature is born
before he has learned how to do all the things his parents could
do. A good many of his nervous connections are not yet formed,
they are only formable. Accordingly he is not quite able to take
care of himself; he must for a time be watched and nursed. All
mammals and most birds have thus a period of babyhood that is not
very long, but is on the whole longest with the most intelligent
creatures. It is especially long with the higher monkeys, and
among the man-like apes it becomes so long as to be strikingly
suggestive. An infant orang-outang, captured by Mr. Wallace, was
still a helpless baby at the age of three months, unable to feed
itself, to walk without aid, or to grasp objects with precision.
But this period of helplessness has to be viewed under another
aspect. It is a period of plasticity. The creature's career is no
longer exclusively determined by heredity. There is a period after
birth when its character can be slightly modified by what happens
to it after birth, that is, by its experience as an individual. It
becomes educable. It is no longer necessary for each generation to
be exactly like that which has preceded. A door is opened through
which the capacity for progress can enter. Horses and dogs, bears
and elephants, parrots and monkeys, are all teachable to some
extent, and we have even heard of a learned pig. Of learned asses
there has been no lack in the world.
But this educability of the higher mammals and birds is after all
quite limited. By the beginnings of infancy the door for
progressiveness was set ajar, but it was not all at once thrown
wide open. Conservatism stilt continued in fashion. One
generation of cattle is much like another. It would be easy for
foxes to learn to climb frees, and many a fox might have saved his
life by doing so; yet quickwitted as he is, this obvious device
never seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly teachable
mammals, however, there is one group more teachable than the rest.
Monkeys, with their greater power of handling things, have also
more inquisitiveness and more capacity for sustained attention than
any other mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied
resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this reason
dreaded by other animals, and roam the undisputed lords of their
native forests. They have probably approached the critical point
where variations in intelligence, always important, have come to be
supremely important, so as to be seized by natural selection in
preference to variations in physical constitution. At some remote
epoch of the past--we cannot say just when or how--our half-human
forefathers reached and passed this critical point, and forthwith
their varied struggles began age after age to result in the
preservation of bigger and better brains, while the rest of their
bodies changed but little. This particular work of natural
selection must have gone on for an enormous length of time, and as
its result we see that while man remains anatomically much like an
ape, be has acquired a vastly greater brain with all that this
implies. Zoologically the distance is small between man and the
chimpanzee; psychologically it has become so great as to be
immeasurable.
But this steady increase of intelligence, as our forefathers began
to become human, carried with it a steady prolongation of infancy.
As mental life became more complex and various, as the things to be
learned kept ever multiplying, less and less could be done before
birth, more and more must be left to be done in the earlier years
of life. So instead of being born with a few simple capacities
thoroughly organized, man came at last to be born with the germs of
many complex capacities which were reserved to be unfolded and
enhanced or checked and stifled by the incidents of personal
experience in each individual. In this simple yet wonderful way
there has been provided for man a long period during which his mind
is plastic and malleable, and the length of this period has
increased with civilization until it now covers nearly one third of
our lives. It is not that our inherited tendencies and aptitudes
are not still the main thing. It is only that we have at last
acquired great power to modify them by training, so that progress
may go on with ever-increasing sureness and rapidity.
In thus pointing out the causes of infancy, we have at the same
time witnessed some of its effects. One effect, of stupendous
importance, remains to be pointed out. As helpless babyhood came
more and more to depend on parental care, the correlated feelings
were developed on the part of parents, and the fleeting sexual
relations established among mammals in general were gradually
exchanged for permanent relations. A cow feels strong maternal
affection for her nursing calf, but after the calf is fully grown,
though doubtless she distinguishes it from other members of the
herd, it is not clear that she entertains for it any parental
feeling. But with our half-human forefathers it is not difficult
to see how infancy extending over several years must have tended
gradually to strengthen the relations of the children to the
mother, and eventually to both parents, and thus give rise to the
permanent organization of the family. When this step was
accomplished we may say that the Creation of Man had been achieved.
For through the organization of the family has arisen that of the
clan or tribe, which has formed, as it were, the cellular tissue
out of which the most complex human society has come to be
constructed. And out of that subordination of individual desires
to the common interest, which first received a definite direction
when the family was formed, there grew the rude beginnings of human
morality.
It was thus through the lengthening of his infancy that the highest
of animals came to be Man,--a creature with definite social
relationships and with an element of plasticity in his organization
such as has come at last to make his difference from all other
animals a difference in kind. Here at last there had come upon the
scene a creature endowed with the capacity for progress, and a new
chapter was thus opened in the history of creation. But it was not
to be expected that man should all at once learn how to take
advantage of this capacity. Nature, which is said to make no
jumps, surely did not jump here. The whole history of
civilization, indeed, is largely the history of man's awkward and
stumbling efforts to avail himself of this flexibility of mental
constitution with which God has endowed him. For many a weary age
the progress men achieved was feeble and halting. Though it had
ceased to be physically necessary for each generation to tread
exactly in the steps of its predecessor, yet the circumstances of
primitive society long made it very difficult for any deviation to
be effected. For the tribes of primitive men were perpetually at
war with each other, and their methods of tribal discipline were
military methods. To allow much freedom of thought would be
perilous, and the whole tribe was supposed to be responsible for
the words and deeds of each of its members. The tribes most
rigorous in this stern discipline were those which killed out
tribes more loosely organized, and thus survived to hand down to
coming generations their ideas and their methods. From this state
of things an intense social conservatism was begotten,--a strong
disposition on the part of society to destroy the flexible-minded
individual who dares to think and behave differently from his
fellows. During the past three thousand years much has been done
to weaken this conservatism by putting an end to the state of
things which produced it. As great and strong societies have
arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished while the sphere of
industry has enlarged, the need for absolute conformity has ceased
to be felt, while the advantages of freedom and variety come to be
ever more clearly apparent. At a late stage of civilization, the
flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advantage over
the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle between French
and English civilization for primacy in the world. In our own
country, the political birth of which dates from the triumph of
England in that mighty struggle, the element of plasticity in man's
nature is more thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than
in any other community known to history; and herein lies the chief
potency of our promise for the future. We have come to the point
where we are beginning to see that we may safely depart from
unreasoning routine, and, with perfect freedom of thinking in
science and in religion, with new methods of education that shall
train our children to think for themselves while they interrogate
Nature with a courage and an insight that shall grow ever bolder
and keener, we may ere long be able fully to avail ourselves of the
fact that we come into the world as little children with
undeveloped powers wherein lie latent all the boundless
possibilities of a higher and grander Humanity than has yet been
seen upon the earth.
II
THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN
The remarks which my friend Mr. Clark has made with reference to
the reconciling of science and religion seem to carry me back to
the days when I first became acquainted with the fact that there
were such things afloat in the world as speculations about the
origin of man from lower forms of life; and I can recall step by
step various stages in which that old question has come to have a
different look from what it had thirty years ago. One of the
commonest objections we used to hear, from the mouths of persons
who could not very well give voice to any other objection, was that
anybody, whether he knows much or little about evolution, must have
the feeling that there is something degrading about being allied
with lower forms of life. That was, I suppose, owing to the
survival of the old feeling that a dignified product of creation
ought to have been produced in some exceptional way. That which
was done in the ordinary way, that which was done through ordinary
processes of causation, seemed to be cheapened and to lose its
value. It was a remnant of the old state of feeling which took
pleasure in miracles, which seemed to think that the object of
thought was more dignified if you could connect it with something
supernatural; that state of culture in which there was an
altogether inadequate appreciation of the amount of grandeur that
there might be in the slow creative work that goes on noiselessly
by little minute increments, even as the dropping of the water that
wears away the stone. The general progress of familiarity with the
conception of evolution has done a great deal to change that state
of mind. Even persons who have not much acquaintance with science
have at length caught something of its lesson,--that the infinitely
cumulative action of small causes like those which we know is
capable of producing results of the grandest and most thrilling
importance, and that the disposition to recur to the cataclysmic
and miraculous is only a tendency of the childish mind which we are
outgrowing with wider experience.