A Century of Science, and Other Essays. Fiske John

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СКАЧАТЬ see that now we have two steps: first, natural selection goes on increasing the intelligence; and secondly, when the intelligence goes far enough, it makes a longer infancy, a creature is born less developed, and therefore there comes this plastic period during which he is more teachable. The capacity for progress begins to come in, and you begin to get at one of the great points in which man is distinguished from the lower animals, for one of those points is undoubtedly his progressiveness; and I think that any one will say, with very little hesitation, that if it were not for our period of infancy we should not be progressive. If we came into the world with our capacities all cut and dried, one generation would be very much like another.

      Then, looking round to see what are the other points which are most important in which man differs from the lower animals, there comes that matter of the family. The family has adumbrations and foreshadowings among the lower animal, but in general it may be said that while mammals lower than man are gregarious, in man have become established those peculiar relationships which constitute what we know as the family; and it is easy to see how the existence of helpless infants would bring about just that state of things. The necessity of caring for the infants would prolong the period of maternal affection, and would tend to keep the father and mother and children together, but it would tend especially to keep the mother and children together. This business of the marital relations was not really a thing that became adjusted in the primitive ages of man, but it has become adjusted in the course of civilization. Real monogamy, real faithfulness of the male parent, belongs to a comparatively advanced stage; but in the early stages the knitting together of permanent relations between mother and infant, and the approximation toward steady relations on the part of the male parent, came to bring the family, and gradually to knit those organizations which we know as clans.

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      1

      Morse, What American Zoölogists have done for Evolution, pp. 37, 39-41, Salem, 1876; Proc. Amer. Assoc. for Adv. of Sci., vol. xxii.

      2

      The Ascent of Man, pp. 282-291; cf. Tyler, The Whence and the Whither of Man, pp. 179, 217, etc.

1

Morse, What American Zoölogists have done for Evolution, pp. 37, 39-41, Salem, 1876; Proc. Amer. Assoc. for Adv. of Sci., vol. xxii.

2

The Ascent of Man, pp. 282-291; cf. Tyler, The Whence and the Whither of Man, pp. 179, 217, etc.

3

An address delivered in the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, May 13, 1896, at the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of its founding, under the lead of the illustrious Dr. Priestley.

4

Balfour, Comparative Embryology, i. 2.

5

Part of an address before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, May 31, 1891.

6

See, for example, Principles of Psychology, second edition, 1870-72, vol. ii. pp. 145-162.

7

See also Excursions of an Evolutionist, 1883, pp. 274-282.

8

First Principles, second edition, 1867, p. 217.

9

Id. p. 558.

10

See, e. g., Principles of Psychology, second edition, vol. i. pp. 158-161, 616-627.

11

Vol. i. p. 158. Cf. my Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 444.

12

"If thou wouldst press into the infinite, go but to all parts of the finite."

13

An address before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, March 23, 1890.

14

Vol. iii. p. 113.

15

See above, p. 49.

16

Short-hand report of my speech at a dinner given for me by Mr. John Spencer Clark, at the Aldine Club, New York, May 13, 1895.