logical 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
doctrine that we possess. In offering them to the teaching
profession and the reading public in this form, it is with the
sincere hope that this biological interpretation of childhood and
education will lend a new spiritual dignity to the whole
institution of education. It must certainly be gratifying to those
who are profound believers in the efficacy of education, to note
that its significance is wider than its service to particular
persons and states; that education is, in truth, the conscious and
latest mode of that wider world-evolution whic