III.] Dr. Bateman on Darwinism. 43 



cally, is that it is a period during which a great num- 

 ber of all-important nervous combinations are formed 

 after birth under the influence of outward circum- 

 stances which slightly vary from generation to 

 generation. Where there is no infancy, all the most 

 important nervous combinations are established before 

 birth, and under the unmodified influence of the power- 

 ful conservative tendency of heredity. Where there is 

 an infancy, many important nervous combinations are 

 not formed until after birth, and the strictly conserva- 

 tive tendency of heredity is liable to be modified by 

 the fact that the experience of the offspring amid en- 

 vironing circumstances is not likely to be precisely the 

 same as that of the parent. The prolongation of 

 infancy, therefore, increases the opportunities for the 

 production of a mental type more plastic than that 

 which is witnessed in the lower animals ; it paves the 

 way for inventiveness and for progress. It is, further- 

 more, the increased variety of experience resulting 

 from this increased mental plasticity that leads to the 

 power of abstraction and generalisation — the pow^r 

 of marking out and isolating in thought the element 

 that is common to different groups of phenomena. 



Now, in the first employment of articulated words 

 by inchoate man, who had hitherto only grunted or 

 howled, the main point to be interpreted psychologi- 



