Page Four 



EVOLUTION 



January, 1929 



Brains — How Come? 



By Allan Strong Broms 

 V. 



MAN'S big advantage over his fellow animals is his adapt- 

 ability. He got that from the babies. Paradoxically, 

 they helped him by being helpless. They did the finest job 

 of brain building ever — for man's is not only bigger, but really 

 different. Yet it grew out of the animal brain and certainly 

 was not a special creation. 



The animals — meaning the other animals — act by instinct. 

 They are born that way. For instincts are just race habits, in- 

 herited and all set to go. Being on hand at birth, they need not 

 be learned and they fit the animal young to start off living full- 

 fledged. Our babies can't do that; but they can learn. Grown 

 up, they beat the world. 



Our babies are helpless for lack of the self-preservative in- 

 stincts. That sounds like a handicap, but it's an asset, — if there 

 are parents around to substitute at preserving from hunger, cold 

 and danger. With parents on the job, instincts are superfluous 

 and only tie us to ways of our ancestors, ways once good in their 

 time and place, since natural selection picked them for race 

 habits, but now out-of-date. For the world has moved and 

 new problems face us. Our ancestral ways have turned to 

 handicaps and must be done over for present fitness. 



But how change? One of two ways. By natural selection 

 through the survival of such children, grand-children, great- 

 grand-children, great-great-grand-children, and so on, that happer 

 — just happen — to vary towards fitness to the new times and 

 places. Either that way, or through the adaptable mind, that 

 can learn how now, that can train to do in new ways and think 

 out solutions for new problems. The animals, instinct guided, 

 win in the gamble for survival if their evolution beats the en- 

 vironmental changes. Man beats them all through quick changes, 

 by training and invention. For that he must thank the babies. 



For the baby (protected by parents), can start off with a clean 

 mental slate. He is not cluttered up with wrong answers, with 

 out-of-date instincts that served the simple jungle needs of his 

 ancestors, but can never meet the complex needs of our human 

 lives. The clumsy and inarticulate baby can do almost nothing 

 to start with, but potentially he is a Jack-of-all-trades. He starts 

 as a squirming bundle of waste motions, — kicks, gurgles, wails, 

 and waving arms. There are lots of motions to pick from and 

 some prove useful (pleasurable) and survive through repetition. 

 The others lapse through disuse or are suppressed as in the way. 

 Repetition gives skill to the survivors, for practice makes per- 

 fect. These acquired habits are ruts like instincts, but we make 



them ourselves to fit present needs and we can change them 

 if need be, for they are less deeply rooted. Once acquired, they 

 serve as the mind's private secretary, attending to routine details 

 and leaving the big boss mind to tackle new problems. 



For also, the human mind invents solutions for problems. Not 

 so the beast's. He is all primed to act, not to think. Something 

 in his world touches him — through ears, eyes, nose, touch — a 

 stimulus. He responds with automatic action — trigger-quick — 

 instinctively. In his jungle world, he who hesitates is lost. 

 Man's world is fairly free from such dangers, but full of complex 

 problems, and many apparent solutions, some right, some wrong. 

 So he must choose and combine acts and means in new ways to 

 get new results. In his world, he who does not hesitate — and 

 think inventively — is lost. 



For such thinking and doing, man needs a lot of facts and 

 training, true facts about his world, what he may expect of it 

 and what he can do with it, and trained skill in his many, 

 diverse doings. So much learning needs a lot of tim« for educa- 

 tion, time free from the cares of serious labor and living. 

 Childhood, under parental care, gives that carefree time. With 

 us it may average sixteen to twenty years when we can play 

 at living — which is good practice — -and experiment with this 

 and that • — • and soak up lots of useful facts, before we settle 

 down to business. Through this period of "schooling" we get 

 human adaptability, our big lead on the other animals. You 

 can almost measure the adaptive intelligence of any animal by 

 the length of its infancy. The mammal mother, nursing her 

 baby, watching over it, playing with it, took a big step forward 

 towards better brains. And because our babies start off with 

 just enough instincts to get by with under parental care and take 

 so long in growing up, we ourselves finish up well informed, 

 skillful and resourceful, able to make so much of the world into 

 which we come. We take more time getting ready, so we do 

 a better job. 



The babies really made us, of course with the help of better 

 seeing eyes, handy free hands, and improved brain connections 

 and other good aids to body and brain. Also they made u& 

 over, gave us parental and family feelings, the real bonds of 

 matrimony being baby ribbons. That made a fine foundation 

 for the other social sentiments which followed and made us all 

 a lot easier to live with. Brain and so-called soul, we owe 

 them largely to the babies. 



The next article will be on "The Inside of the Brain Works". 



.-/ hiiniile of ivasle motions and unbound capacities. 



-Courtesy Billv Katterfeld 



