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;