rom babyhood, were the basic processes by which the world was
sheltered, clothed, and fed. Those processes were numerous but simple.
Boys and girls observed them, absorbed them, through eyes, through
finger-tips, during all those early years when eyes and finger-tips
are the nourishing points of the intellect. Does it astonish you that
they were soon ready for the duties of adult life?

John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was
married at seventeen. His parents were not only willing, but aiding
and abetting. They considered him a man.

Mercy Otis, the wife of the patriot, James Warren, and Abigail Smith,
the wife of the future president, John Adams, both married before
twenty. A study of their lives will show that at that age they were
not only _thought_ to be grown up but _were_ so.

To-day, in Boston, a woman of twenty is considered so immature that
many of the hospitals will not admit her even to her preliminary
training for the trade of nurse till she has added at least three
years more to her mental development.

Who has thus prolonged infancy? Who has thus postponed maturity?

Science has done part of it.

By the invention of power-driven machines and by the distribution of
the compact industries of the home out and into the scattered,
innumerable business enterprises of the community, Science has given
us, in place of a simple and near world, a complicated and distant
one. It takes us longer to learn it.

Simultaneously, by research and also by the use of the printing-press,
the locomotive, and the telegraph wire (which speed up the production
as well as the dissemination of knowledge), Science has brought forth,
in every field of human interest and of human value, a mass of facts
and of principles so enormous and so important that the labors of our
predecessors on this planet overwhelm us, and we grow to our full
physical development long before we have caught up with the previous
mental experience of the race. This is true first with regard to what
is commonly called General Culture and next with regard to what is
commonly called Specialization. Growth into General Culture takes
longer and longer. And then so does the specialized mastery of a
specialized technique. The high-school teacher must not only go to
college but must do graduate work. The young doctor, after he finishes
college and medical school, is found as an interne in hospitals, as an
assistant to specialists, as a