THE MEANING OF INFANCY 



ing. But with our half-human forefathers it is 

 not difficult to see how infancy extending over 

 several years must have tended gradually to 

 strengthen the relations of the children to the 

 mother, and eventually to both parents, and 

 thus give rise to the permanent organization of 

 the family. When this step was accomplished 

 we may say that the Creation of Man had been 

 achieved. For through the organization of the 

 family has arisen that of the clan or tribe, which 

 has formed, as it were, the cellular tissue out 

 of which the most complex human society has 

 come to be constructed. And out of that sub- 

 ordination of individual desires to the common 

 interest, which first received a definite direction 

 when the family was formed, there grew the 

 rude beginnings of human morality. 



It was thus through the lengthening of his 

 infancy that the highest of animals came to be 

 Man, a creature with definite social relation- 

 ships and with an element of plasticity in his 

 organization such as has come at last to make 

 his difference from all other animals a difference 

 in kind. Here at last there had come upon the 

 scene a creature endowed with the capacity for 

 progress, and a new chapter was thus opened in 

 the history of creation. But it was not to be ex- 

 pected that man should all at once learn how 

 to take advantage of this capacity. Nature, 

 which is said to make no jumps, surely did not 

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