226 



NA rURE 



[July 5, 1900 



6 o'clock at night. And he went on like that till now. 

 There is no fact in all his school books that he has 

 not heard a thousand times. He has had Goethe's 

 maxims so drilled into him that he is "thorough" in 

 every detail. I can imagine one Englishman in a 

 hundred, after such a training, patiently turning over 

 the muck heap of his knowledge ; his eye would not 

 ^leam with any enthusiasm, but rather would glaze with 

 ■envy and jealousy at the undeserved success of quite 

 ignorant persons. And yet he would have knowledge, 

 and know in his way how to use it ; and it is because 

 •Germany has so many thousands of men trained in this 

 way that she is certainly beating us to-day. They may 

 be rather heavily loaded with learning, and I know that 

 decently taught Englishmen who spent less than half 

 the time at studies twenty times more interesting would 

 beat them hollow in manufacture or research, would 

 ■be the reverse of dull, and would be good citizens ; yet 

 the Englishmen I want on:lye»ist as yet by ones and 

 twos, and such Germans are numerous. But just think 

 of it ! Here we are, a hard-headed, obstinate, cool race 

 of men, who have had no end of chances in our safe 

 little island, whilst our enemies were fighting among 

 themselves, with coal and iron and the influx of good 

 foreigners to set us first in the new field, and we have 

 more than half of all the wealth of the world, and all 

 that is needed for our keeping our good things is that 

 we should believe them to be possibly evanescent ; that 

 there really is a chance that some better equipped nation 

 may take them away from us, and therefore that we 

 ought to prepare ourselves to fight for them. We have 

 many chances in our favour and we hardly use them ; 

 the competing foreigner is very energetic, and cultivates 

 his smallest chances. John Perry. 



HUMAN BABIES: WHAT THEY TEACH. 



AN investigator anxious to obtain information as to 

 the relationship of a particular species puts the 

 question " What characters do the young stages 

 exhibit ? " and in order to answer that question he makes 

 a study of the developmental phases exhibited by those 

 stages. He may argue that if he finds certain characters 

 in the young stages indicative of, and adapted to, habits of 

 life which the adults do not possess, then there must 

 have been a time in the ancestry of the species when 

 ■such habits of life were of particular value, otherwise 

 they would never have been developed. Or he may 

 simply give, as the reason for his method of research, 

 the concise statement "ontogeny repeats phylogeny," or 

 he may hold to the theory of acceleration of development 

 — which is more than a theory, because it is an actual 

 fact of palaeontology — that the characters of adult 

 ancestors tend to become the characters of youthful 

 descendants, thus producing specific diversity, without the 

 necessity for a theory of natural, or any other form of 

 selection, merely by inequality in the rates of develop- 

 mental acceleration in different stocks. Wherefore 

 vice versa the characters of youth must at one time have 

 been adult characters ; and their differences from those 

 of the adult indicate the degree of different environment 

 under which the adult ancestors lived. 



The manner of expressing the reason for a method of 

 research may vary ; the method itself remains the same. 

 To know the past history of an organism, study the 

 young. That is a method of universal application. It 

 is the guiding principle of all researches into the past 

 history of organic beings. It becomes then equally 

 applicable to man himself ; and in that way the human 

 baby becomes an object of scientific attention. To study 

 the human baby in this manner, the aid of photography 

 is important ; it gives a permanent record of what would 

 otherwise be forgotten. 



NO I 60 I. VOL. 62] 



The early attempts of a baby in the matter of progres- 

 sion are particularly instructive. The bipedal gait is not 

 attainable, indicating that the bipedal ability of the human 

 being is of quite recent acquirement. What the child 

 does show is either a truly quadrupedal method of pro- 

 gression, as in Fig. i, which is also said to be common 

 among children of uncivilised paients, or a kind of falsi- 

 fied quadrupedal progression on the hands and knees, 

 which obtains generally among children of civilised 

 parents, owing no doubt to impediments of clothes, and 

 to over-coddling. Both methods of progression point to 

 the same conclusion, though, of course, the former is the 

 better illustration — that the ancestors of man were 

 animals accustomed to a quadrupedal gait. 



The influence of this quadrupedal gait of the ancestors 

 is very strong. The child really has to unlearn it, and 

 to readapt its hind limbs before it can attain the bipedal 

 method of progression. The necessity for such readapta- 

 tion, and the difficulty of acquiring the balance which 

 progression on hind limbs demands, make the child's 

 early efforts at walking so difficult. Observe a child 

 just able to balance itself momentarily on its hind limbs. 

 The insecurity of the position is shown by the attitude of 

 the arms — outspread to help the balance, and by the 

 feet being planted widely apart. The imperfection of the 

 hind limbs for a bipedal gait is particularly noticeable. 



Fig. I.— Child ten months oU, on garden path. 



The legs are not straight, but they are considerably bent 

 at the knee. That bending is incorrect for a bipedal 

 gait ; but it is a necessity of a quadrupedal progression, 

 and it is just the feature seen when a four-footed animal, 

 such as a cat, is induced to stand on its hind legs. In 

 learning to walk on its hind legs the baby has to make 

 many alterations in the anatomy of its hind limbs to fit 

 them for their new function ; and the human ancestors, 

 in order to pass from quadrupeds to bipeds, must have 

 had to do the same. 



There is another feature noticeable in regard to such a 

 child in its first attempts at walking— the semi-clasped 

 position of the hands. That is natural, it may be said. 

 Certainly it is, but nevertheless a natural feature requires 

 an explanation, and may be of particular significance. 

 Such is the case here ; the semi-clasped position of the 

 hands is naturally and instinctively assumed because the 

 human ancestors had for so many generations been 

 bough-grasping animals, quadrupeds who lived among 

 trees, who particularly used their hands for grasping 

 boughs. Had they used the hands in a manner which 

 always produced extension, then the extended position of 

 the fingers would have become habitual. 



Further evidence of the particular character which 

 generations of bough-grasping ancestors have given to 

 the hands of children may be obtained in this way. Get 



