INTRODUCTION 



It suffices for our present purpose to say that 

 Fiske connects the discussion of the impor- 

 tance of the development of the brain (a mat- 

 ter to which Wallace, as we have seen, had 

 already called his attention) with the well- 

 known consideration that the human brain 

 goes through the most important stages of its 

 development after birth. He points out that 

 these two facts not only are connected, but 

 needs must be. There is no opportunity to 

 give a brain so complex as that of man its fair 

 chance for development, without a prolonged 

 period of infancy. If natural selection came 

 to prefer brain development to all the other 

 powers of the anthropoid ancestor of man, then 

 this preference necessarily entailed the physio- 

 logical consequence of a gradually but steadily 

 prolonged period of infancy. It also entailed, 

 by a corresponding selection of those members 

 of the pre-human stock whose parents took 

 good care of them during this infancy, a gradual 

 growth of parental interests. The consequence 

 was, according to Fiske's hypothesis, the dispo- 

 sition of parents to remain longer with the care 

 of their offspring upon their minds. In conse- 



fined a "cooperating factor in social evolution " (^Principles of 

 Sociology y vol. i. Part III. chap. ii. § 267, at the end). 

 Giddings criticises Fiske' s view negatively in his Principles of 

 Sociology y pp. 229 sqq. 



Ixxxii 



