Such is the point which I wish to illustrate in few words, and to
indicate some of its bearings on the history of human progress.
Let us first observe what it was then lengthened the infancy of the
highest animal, for then we shall be the better able to understand
the character of the prodigious effects which this infancy has
wrought. A few familiar facts concerning the method in which men
learn how to do things will help us here.
When we begin to learn to play the piano, we have to devote much
time and thought to the adjustment and movement of our fingers and
to the interpretation of the vast and complicated multitude of
symbols which make up the printed page of music that stands before
us. For a long time, therefore, our attempts are feeble and
stammering and they require the full concentrated power of the
mind. Yet a trained pianist will play a new piece of music at
sight, and perhaps have so much attention to spare that he can talk
with you at the same time. What an enormous number of mental
acquisitions have in this case become almost instinctive or
automatic! It is just so in learning a foreign language, and it
was just the same when in childhood we learned to walk, to talk,
and to write. It is just the same, too, in learning to think about
abstruse subjects. What at first strains the attention to the
utmost, and often wearies us, comes at last to be done without
effort and almost unconsciously.
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