Human Traits and their Social Significance | Page 8

all the food within reach may be checked by the looks of scorn which follow that manifestation of man's original greed, or the punishment and privation which are correlated with it. Through experience with punishment and reward, humans may be taught to do precisely the opposite of what would have been their original impulse in any given situation, just as the monkey reported by one experimenter may be taught to go to the top of his cage whenever a banana has been placed at the bottom.
THE PROLONGED PERIOD OF INFANCY. Probably the most significant and unique fact of human behavior is the period of "prolonged infancy" which is characteristic of human beings alone. Fiske and Butler in particular have stressed the importance of this human trait. In the lower animals the period of infancy--that is, the period during which the young are dependent upon their parents for food, care, and training--is very short, extending even in the highest form of ape to not more than three months. This would appear, at first blush, to be a great advantage possessed by the lower animals. They come into the world equipped with a variety of tendencies to act which, within a week, or, as in the case of chickens, almost immediately after birth, are perfectly adapted to secure for them food, shelter, and protection. They are mechanisms from the beginning perfectly adjusted to their environment.
The human infant, while it is born with a greater number of instinctive activities than other animals, is able to make little use of them just as they stand. For years after birth it is helplessly dependent on others to supply its most elementary needs. It must be fed, carried, and sheltered; it cannot by itself even reach for an object, and it cannot for nearly two years after birth specifically communicate its wants to other people. But this comparatively long helplessness of the human infant is perhaps the chief source of human progress.
The human baby, because it can do so little at the start, because it has so many tendencies to act and has them all so plastic, undeveloped, and modifiable, has to a unique degree the capacity to learn. This means that it can profit by the experience of others and adjust itself to a great variety and complexity of situations. The chicken or the bird can do a limited number of things perfectly, but it is as if it had a number of special keys opening special locks. The power of modifying these instinctive adjustments, the capacity of learning, is like being put in possession of a pass-key. As Professor Dewey puts it, "An original specialized power of adjustment secures immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it is good for one route only. A being who, in order to use his eyes, ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied combinations of their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible and varied."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey; Democracy and Education, p. 53.]
The more complex the environment is in which the individual must live, the longer is the period of infancy needed in which the necessary habits and capacities may be acquired. In the human being the period of infancy extends in a literal sense through the first five years of the individual's life. But in civilized societies it extends factually much longer. By the end of the first five years the child's physical infancy is over. It can take care of itself so far as actually feeding itself, moving about, and communicating with others is concerned. But so complex are the habits to which it must become accustomed in our civilization that it is dependent for a much longer period. The whole duration of the child's education is a prolongation of the period of infancy. In most civilized countries, until at least the age of twelve, the child is literally dependent on its parents. And with every advance in civilization has come a lengthening in the period of education, or learning.
Intellectually, the period of infancy might be said not really to be over before the age of twenty-five, by which time habits of mind have become fairly well fixed. The brain and the nervous system remain fairly plastic up to that time, and if inquiry and learning have themselves become habitual, plasticity may last even longer. In the cases of the greatest intellects, of a Darwin, or a Newton, one might almost say the period of infancy lasts to old age. To be still learning at sixty is to be still a child in the best sense of the word. It is still to be open rather than rigid, still to be profiting by experience.
The great social advantages of the prolonged period of infancy lie in the fact that there is a unique opportunity both