The Roving Critic by Carl Van Doren — Read

THE RELEASE OF YOUTH

John Fiske perceived that human history has been greatly affected by the fact that man has a longer infancy than the other animals. A creature which grows to its full stature and faculties in a few hours or weeks or months or even years has not the same opportunity to travel far in knowledge or to build its intelligence upon observations and conclusions as has the creature which normally matures through at least a score of years. There still remains to be studied the effect upon mankind of the deliberate prolongation of infancy which, particularly in Europe and America, has been going on for something over a century. Perhaps it should be called less a prolongation of infancy than a discovery that infancy actually lasts longer than had been realized. The social effect is much the same. In the eighteenth century the unproductive and acquisitive period of infancy for boys rarely lasted beyond twenty years, even for those who were trained at the colleges and universities. For the same class in the twentieth century -- a class now proportionately larger than then -- a period of twenty-five years is nearer the average. The shift is even more marked as regards girls, who a hundred years ago were likely to be married at seventeen or eighteen but who now are quite likely to remain unmarried till twenty-five, and very many, of course, till later. What has become of those years of human life thus lost to adult society, or at least diverted to new purposes?