The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1908-10-25

OF THE CHILD


IL was written o., old, "A little child
Biall lead them" IL was written deep
iy into the very constitution of our
nature that the child should lead.
Science and revelation unite to pro-
claim this truth
Henry Drummogld pointed out the
fact that there were two struggles for
life, the struggle for the individual life,
which is concerned with nutrition, and
the struggle for the life of others,
which is concerned with reproduction.
with the life of the species. He
showed that at the beginnings of life
On this planet. that early world was
for millions and millions of years, }
bleak and loveless world, without
mothers and without children" AMI
that Nature to develop mothers had
10 make the youne, helpless. He .bade
us contrast the rec. swimming EN-
bryo of the MedUia, dashing out into
the heroic life the moment it is born,
with the helpless kitten or the sight
less pup" Then Using to the consid
Grafton Of the hun he declared:
mo greater day e'ieT dawned for evo.
luton than that on which the first hui
man child was born. The child
teaches the mother. The next effort
Of evolution is to lengthen out these
school days and give affection time
to grow" In the same day, through
the leadership of t,e child, came the
development of fatherhood, and the
family. the clan, tho state.
Wallace declares that in this pro-
longation of the period OF human in
fancy, Mature has begun TO follow a
new path, and make psychical
changes instead of physical" And
our own John Fiske made an import
ant contribution 30 evolutionary
science by establish ng the fact that
the prolongation of Il e period of child.
hood is the very measure of the prog
ress of the race. III it were not for
our period of infancr we should not
be progressive" He says, THE knit
ting together of perm anent relations
between mother and infant, and the
approximation toward steady relations
on the part of the mite parent, came
TO bring about the family, the clan
the germ of altrtriSm, OF moral
fly He states this ruth more fully
thus: From old We have heard the
monition, Except We De as babes, We
cannot enter the Kingdom OF Heaven;
the latest science now shows us q
that unless we had BEEN as babes. the
ethical phenomena which give all its
Significance TO the phrase. the King
dom of Heaven would have been non
existent for us. Without the circum-
stance of infancy, we might have be-
come formidable among animals.
through sheer force of sharp-witted
ness. But except for that circum-
stance we should never have compre-
hended the meaning uf such phrases
as 'selfsacrifice.' or devotion The
phenomena of social ife would have
been omitted from the history of the
world, and with them the phenomena
of ethics and religion The history
of civilization bears ont the teachings
of evolution on this point. We need
not look beyond the flct of the child
marriages that prevail in India to Urn
derstand why the teenling millions of
one of the oldest hun an civilizations
are held in check. are controlled and
developed, by the handful of English
soldiers and rulers: or why the native
tropical races, with their forced ripen-
ing of manhood and womanhood. have
never developed civilizations of their