THE MEANING OF INFANCY 



from that of reptiles and fishes. A squirrel or a 

 bear does a good many things in the course of 

 his life. He meets various vicissitudes in various 

 ways ; he has adventures. The actions he per- 

 forms are so complex and so numerous that they 

 are severally performed with less frequency than 

 the few actions performed by the codfish. The 

 requisite nervous connections are accordingly not 

 fully established before birth. There is not time 

 enough. The nervous connections needed for 

 the visceral movements and for the few simple 

 instinctive actions get organized, and then the 

 creature is born before he has learned how to 

 do all the things his parents could do. A good 

 many of his nervous connections are not yet 

 formed, they are only formable. Accordingly 

 he is not quite able to take care of himself; he 

 must for a time be watched and nursed. All 

 mammals and most birds have thus a period of 

 babyhood that is not very long, but is on the 

 whole longest with the most intelligent creatures. 

 It is especially long with the higher monkeys, 

 and among the man-like apes it becomes so long 

 as to be strikingly suggestive. An infant orang- 

 outang, captured by Mr. Wallace, was still a 

 helpless baby at the age of three months, unable 

 to feed itself, to walk without aid, or to grasp 

 objects with precision. 



But this period of helplessness has to be 

 viewed under another aspect. It is a period of 



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