THE MEANING OF INFANCY 



ings on the history of human progress. Let us 

 first observe what it was that lengthened the 

 infancy of the highest animal, for then we shall 

 be the better able to understand the character 

 of the prodigious effects which this infancy has 

 wrought. A few familiar facts concerning the 

 method in which men learn how to do things 

 will help us here. 



When we begin to learn to play the piano, 

 we have to devote much time and thought to 

 the adjustment and movement of our fingers 

 and to the interpretation of the vast and com- 

 plicated multitude of symbols which make up 

 the printed page of music that stands before us. 

 For a long time, therefore, our attempts are 

 feeble and stammering and they require the full 

 concentrated power of the mind. Yet a trained 

 pianist will play a new piece of music at sight, 

 and perhaps have so much attention to spare 

 that he can talk with you at the same time. 

 What an enormous number of mental acquisi- 

 tions have in this case become almost instinctive 

 or automatic ! It is just so in learning a foreign 

 language, and it was just the same when in 

 childhood we learned to walk, to talk, and to 

 write. It is just the same, too, in learning to 

 think about abstruse subjects. What at first 

 strains the attention to the utmost, and often 

 wearies us, comes at last to be done without 

 effort and almost unconsciously. Great minds 

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