Its language is but a cry, its few actions reflex. The
new-born kitten may be just as helpless, but in a few weeks it will
run and play and hunt, and after a few months can care for itself.
Not so the child. It must be cared for during months and years
before it can be given independence. Its brain is so marvellously
complex that it is finished as a thinking and willing and
muscle-controlling mechanism only long after birth. This means a
period of infancy during which the young clings helplessly to the
mother, who is its natural protector. And during this period the
mother and young have to be cared for and protected by the male. And
the period of infancy and the protection of the female and young are
just as truly, though in far less degree, characteristic of the
highest apes as of man.
I can give you only this very condensed and incomplete abstract of
Mr. John Fiske's argument; you must read it for yourself in his
"Destiny of Man." And as he has there shown, this can have but one
result, and that is the family life of man. And we may yet very
possibly have to acknowledge that family life of a very low grade
is just as truly characteristic of the higher apes as of lower man.
And thus the family life of man is the physiological result of, and
rooted in, mammalian structure.
And the benefits of family life are too great and numerous to even
enumerate.
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