364 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



lies before the human offspring no storage of habit 

 has been handed down from the past. Each 

 descendant must carve a way through the world for 

 itself, and learn to comport itself through all the 

 varying incidents of life as best it can. Now the 

 equipment for this is very complex. Into the 

 infant's frame must be fitted not only the apparatus 

 for automatic repetition of what its parents have 

 done, but the apparatus for intelligent initiation ; 

 not only the machinery for carrying on the involun- 

 tary and reflex actions — involuntary and reflex 

 because they have been done so often by its 

 ancestors as to have become automatic — but for 

 the voluntary and self-conscious life which will do 

 new things, choose fresh alternatives, seek higher 

 and more varied ends. The instrument which will 

 attend to breathing even when we forget it ; the 

 apparatus which will make the heart beat even 

 though we try to stop it ; the self-acting spring 

 which makes the eyelid close the moment it is 

 threatened — these and a hundred others are old 

 and well-tried inventions which, from ceaseless prac- 

 tice generation after generation, work perfectly in 

 each new individual from the start. Nature there- 

 fore need waste no time at this late day on their 

 improvement. But the higher brain is compara- 

 tively a new thing in the world. It has to 



