EDUCATION 245 



them, but they can learn to make shift with almost any conditions 

 in which they happen to find themselves. It is with this task of 

 fitting themselves to the world that they occupy their youth, and 

 it is for this task that they enjoy a prolonged period of youth and 

 a degree of freedom from the immediate cares of finding their own 

 livelihood and protecting themselves against the dangers of the 

 world. 



The high spirits of young animals are proverbial. The Latin 

 song, familiar to university students of the Calvinistic North, 

 " Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus " — " Let us rejoice whilst 

 we are still young ' ' — is at once needlessly defiant and needlessly apolo- 

 getic. The random high spirits of youth are as necessary and inevitable 

 as the serious and restrained pertinacity of maturity. Not only young 

 human beings, but young apes and monkeys, carnivores and herbi- 

 vores, rodents and edentates, liberate an excess of vitality in the 

 wildest antics. But it is to be noticed that this is not true of all 

 young animals. Caterpillars y"oung cockroaches or grasshoppers, 

 lobster; or crabs or snails are not to be distinguished from their 

 seniors by any excessive gaiety. The exuberance of youth begins 

 with the higher animals and increases as we ascend the scale of 

 vertebrate life, precisely as parental care, intelligence and relative 

 duration of youth increase. The high spirits of youth are part of 

 the new order of things in which the period of youth is devoted 

 to the replacement of instinctive action by experimental action. 



It used to be said that as young animals of these higher types 

 were fed and protected, they had a surplus of income over output, 

 and that their high spirits, expressed in games and antics, were 

 the inevitable result of this surplus vitality. Certainly, if they 

 were left to themselves, they might have no spare energy, but to 

 say that their exuberance is the mere discharge of a waste product 

 is to read very plain facts wrongly. They are fed and protected 

 in order that they may have surplus energy, and they require the 

 surplus energy for the experimental business of their youth. They 

 use their surplus energy in ceaseless experiment with all their powers. 

 Limbs, claws, nose, teeth, tail, all their senses and organs are 

 exercised in every possible way, are applied in every possible direc- 

 tion, on e ery thing that comes within their reach. They learn to 

 use their natural powers, they gain experience of their limitations, 

 and acquire knowledge of the world. 



The destructive habits of young animals are by no means specially 

 marked in predaceous creatures, but are simply a part of the experi- 



