Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
The most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man is the Mind of a little child. The stealing in of that inexplicable light—yet not more light than sound or touch—called consciousness, the first flicker of memory, the gradual governance of will, the silent ascendancy of reason—these are studies in Evolution the oldest, the sweetest, and the most full of meaning for mankind. Evolution, after all, is a study for the nursery. It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or Lucretius that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle in the forest for a first smile of recognition from her babe, expressed the earliest trust in the doctrine of development. Every mother since then is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child a living witness to Ascent.
Is the Mind a new or an old thing in the world? Is it an Evolution from beneath or an original gift from heaven? Did the Mind, in short, come down the ages like the Body, and does the mother's faith in the intellectual unfolding of her babe include a remoter origin for all human faculty? Let the mother look at her child and answer. “It is the very breath of God,” she says; “this Child-Life is Divine.” And she is right. But let her look again. That forehead, whose is it? It is hers. And the frown which darkened it just now?
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.