HUMAN INFANCY 29 



Butler^ distinguishes between physical and spiritual adjustment. 

 Physical adjustment is made after the child can walk alone, feed itself 

 and use its hands. When physical adjustment is thus made, there 

 remains yet to be accomplished the building of harmonious and recipro- 

 cal relations with those great acquisitions of the race that constitute 

 civihzation; and therefore the lengthening period of infancy simply 

 means that we are spending nearly half of the life of each individual in 

 order to develop in the young some conception of the vast acquirements 

 of the past and some mastery of the conditions of the present. This 

 view is only partially justifiable, because all acquisition involves sensori- 

 motor activity. This acquisition or adaptation among the lower beings, 

 or even among lower races or individuals, to the higher spiritual environ- 

 ment is impossible because of just this lack of pliability. 



Civilization implies that the environment is becoming more compli- 

 cated, that each generation is working at a higher level, and with better 

 tools which our predecessors have handed down. Evolution has been 

 transferred from the organism to the environment, and it is the accumu- 

 lated structure which persists. This requires in each subsequent 

 generation greater plasticity; but it is probable that the preceding 

 generations have had a reserve, and that only under modern conditions, 

 where there is universal education, is it called into activity. 



» Meaning of Edtication, p. 13. 



