Human Infancy and the Recapitulation Theory 87 



for themselves. The plumpness of babies as a precaution against 

 famine, infantile attractiveness as an evidence of primitive paren- 

 tal selection, the strong interest in animals, the carrying of things 

 to the mouth, and many other childish characteristics are given 

 their appropriate recapitulatory explanation. The value of this 

 type of evidence will doubtless vary with the sense of credulity, 

 but, accepting them at their face value, it is to be noted that 

 some of these traits may still be of value to the species in existing 

 savage societies, others refer to infantile adaptations in the past 

 and not to remote recapitulations, and once more illustrate the 

 familiar principle of ancestral ontogenetic resemblance. Infants 

 today resemble the infancies of their ancestors just as adults 

 today resemble ancestral adults. 



As for emotional equipment, children and youth have no 

 characteristic attitudes of the kind which are inaccessible to the 

 sympathetic appreciation of adults. Like native excitants their 

 early character may be simpler, but they are not different in 

 quality. The one attitude, which by reason of its oddity lor 

 adults has been designated a "mania," is that of collecting. 36 

 One has difficulty in seeing a preparatory value in this propensity. 

 Perhaps it had an adaptive value in earlier infancies. Seemingly 

 fear is intensified with young children, and it may be the egoistic 

 sentiments are more powerful relatively throughout the earlier 

 part of immaturity. It has been noticed that Robinson saw 

 in these things illustrations of infantile adaptation. The two 

 great sources of altruism are more especially associated with 

 advanced stages of development, friendship with the clannish- 

 ness and romantic love of the pubertal and adolescent years, 

 parental regard with the coming of offspring. Childhood, 

 although not devoid of these sentiments, does not need them in 

 the same way. Its major business is to practice its own individual 

 powers. 37 



Drummond, 38 following Romanes, asserted categorically that 

 the order of the appearance of the emotions in growth is the 

 order of their distribution on the scale of animals. As to this 



38 Thorndike finds abundant evidence of this instinct among adults, op. cit., p. 267. 



37 For a pungent criticism of the recapitulation theory as applied to mental genesis, 

 together with a clear statement of the "utility" theory, of which he is an advocate, 

 see Thorndike, op. cit., chapter XVI. For an earlier statement of this latter theory, see 

 King, Psychology of Child Development, 1904. 



Ascent of Man, p. 133. 



