214 Virtuous Circles 



fixity; and that the prolonged infancy would also 

 favor the development of gentleness in the individual 

 and its evolution in the race. 



It is sometimes said that evolutionists argue in 

 vicious circles. Prolonged infancy favors gentleness; 

 but it was gentleness that made the prolonged infancy 

 practicable. Language makes greater social integra- 

 tion possible, but it was the gregarious life that 

 abetted the evolution of language. Language is as- 

 sociated with improved intelligence, but the higher 

 flights of intelligence are impossible without lan- 

 guage. 



This is, we think, very characteristic of evolution, 

 the existence of what one might venture to call virtu- 

 ous circles. Strong parental care makes prolonged 

 infancy possible, and the prolonged infancy acts as 

 a sieve favoring variations in the direction of in- 

 creased parental care. As long as Natural Selection 

 operated powerfully in the winnowing of mankind 

 there would be a tendency to eliminate parentally 

 careless types and favor the parentally effective. The 

 evolutionary movement of a character is, as it were, 

 on a spiral that ascends and then bends down again, 

 lifting a correlated character on to a higher level. 



§8. Neanderthal Man. 



It may tend to focus our reflections if we consider in 

 more detail the men of Neanderthal, who seem to 

 represent a collateral species now extinct. They lived 

 in Europe towards the end of the last glacial invasion, 

 in the period termed Mid-Pleistocene. It was a time 



