IMPORTANCE OF PRECOCITY IN EVOLUTION 317 



and value to warrant a secojid exposition, especially if made, as I shall as 

 far as possible make it, in different and more familiar language. 



The theory is a corollary of Darwinism, and is so simple that it may 

 almost be stated in a single word — precocity. It hinges on the assertion 

 that the precocious in all kinds of life, and especially in the highest kinds, 

 have had throughout the ages, and have now more than ever, a great 

 advantage over their brethren less favoured in that respect. Mainly they 

 have been the fit of each generation, and consequently the progenitors of the 

 next, and of all creatures that have inherited and now inhabit the earth. 



Let us see what can be made of this apparently insufficient material. 

 Everybody knows what precocity is. When a child shows knowledge, 

 intelligence, activity, and self-assertion beyond its years, it is said to be 

 precocious. And though owing to this last quality the word is generally 

 used in an unfavourable sense, it is evident that precocity in itself is so far 

 from being a fault, that the early exhibition of every right activity is a virtue 

 and a great advantage. If efi&ciency is right and profitable, then the sooner 

 we are efficient the better for ourselves, our parents, and others, or there is 

 no value in time. I therefore use the word in a favourable sense, signifying 

 the arrival by ofispring at a certain degree of efficiency in the struggle for 

 life in slightly less time than that in which the same degree was attained by 

 their parents. And it may be well to add at once the obvious fact that 

 this precocious efi&ciency necessarily involves the equally early attainment 

 of the structures — the " character " or sum-total of characters — to which it 

 is due, structure and function going as always hand in hand. 



As to the cause of such earlier attainment there can be no doubt. It 

 must be a slightly greater rapidity of growth in the child than in the parent. 

 It is the gist of the theory that such increased rapidity of growth has been a 

 normal possession of the fit of every generation, at least of the higher animals, 

 for ages past, and that in an increasing degree, corresponding with the height 

 of evolution attained, the resulting precocity has been of importance in the 

 organic world. That this general prevalence of precocity needs proof I 

 admit, but for economy of space I shall here pass it over with the remark 

 that the citable facts, if not exactly plentiful, are quite sufl&cient, and that, 

 outside tiie book of nature, they are largely to be found in that great granary 

 of information about the organic world, the works of Darwin. The occasional 

 occurrence of precocity has for many centuries been matter of common 

 knowledge, which has descended to us, with the word, from ancient Rome. 

 But Darwin appears to have been the first to observe and assert its generality, 

 which so much impressed him that in his work on Animals and Plants under 

 Domestication he came near erecting it into a universal law of inheritance. 

 To that work the reader is referred. 



To return to the theory, if I am asked in what mainly has consisted the 

 fitness of the fit in all times and of aU kinds, I reply that the first and almost 

 indispensable condition of their superiority has been rapid growth. The 

 causes of this are easily seen. One main advantage of precocity, perhaps the 

 greatest of all, but one which I can here only mention without elaborating, 

 is the earlier escape so made from the perils of the environment. It is a 

 well-known fact, and was familiar to Shakespeare, that the period of growth 

 is in all creatures, animal and vegetable aUke, a period of high, and often 

 even of immense mortality. " In the morn and liquid dew of youth," says 

 Laertes in Hamlet, " contagious blastments are most imminent." And 

 Darwin much enlarges on the enormous destruction of the immature of all 

 kinds. It hardly needs adding that the abbreviation of this period of danger 

 must be correspondingly advantageous, and have great survival value. 



But the cause which I now wish to emphasise is this : that the precocious 

 of any generation, by growing a little faster than their parents, arrive at 

 the parental level of ef&ciency in meeting the incident forces of the environ- 



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