mind, and the restless of spirit,—­individuals left out of the old scheme of education and now reverently educated by the new democratic order in spite of all their defects,—­the school becomes more flexible and variable in its methods of transmitting truth.  More of the knowledge of human life is brought within the comprehension of children; more men are brought into a large and sympathetic participation in the activities of our civilization.  In the truest sense the school becomes an instrument of adjustment between childhood and society.

Evolutionary thought interprets childhood

If the democratic movement emphasized the factor of social adjustment in the school’s function, it was the scientific movement of the last half-century which drew attention to infancy as a superior opportunity for biological adjustment Among all the contributions of modern evolutionary science to educational thought, none is, more striking or more far-reaching in its implications than that special group of generalizations which states the biological function of a prolonged infancy in man.  Interpreting this period, of helplessness and dependence as one of plasticity and opportunity, it has shown that the greater power of man in adjusting himself to the complex conditions of life is due to his educability, which in turn is the outcome of his lengthened childhood.  This “doctrine of the meaning of infancy,” for such it has been called, is perhaps best known to the teaching profession through those enlargements and applications of the doctrine which have been made by Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler in his exposition of “the meaning of education.”  As a belief, it is at least as old as the period of the ancient Greek philosopher, Anaximander.  As a doctrine in our modern thought, it owes its influential reappearance to certain evolutionary hypotheses of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, which in turn stimulated Mr. John Fiske to that further inquiry which resulted in those first cogent and extended statements of the doctrine which have been the basis of so many subsequent educational applications.

Mr. Fiske’s presentation of the meaning of infancy

Because of the fundamental importance of Mr. Fiske’s presentation of “the doctrine of the meaning of infancy,” his views are here reprinted in detail.  The material consists of an essay and an address.  The first of these, “The Meaning of Infancy,” is a brief and simplified restatement of those theories of man’s origin and destiny as first suggested in his lectures at Harvard University in 1871, and later developed more fully in the “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy,” part II, chapters xvi, xxi, and xxii.  The second of these, “The Part played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man,” is an address delivered by Mr. Fiske as the guest of honor at a dinner at the Aldine Club, New York, May 13, 1895.  Together these two papers constitute the most detailed and valuable elucidation of the