könnte). Thus man is born[1] for society; this the sympathy of his parents tells him, this tell him the years of his long infancy."
Very notable here is the emphasis with which Herder grounds human society in the sympathy of the home, and this in turn in the lengthened childhood of the species. In the concluding sentence his anticipation of the modern doctrince becomes almost a series of epigrams. Der Mensch ist also zur Gesellschaft geboren; das sagt ihm das Mitgefühl seiner Eltern, das sagen ihm die Jahre seiner langen Kindheit. Than this the theory could hardly be more tersely or more plainly put. Nevertheless the consequences of the doctrine are not fully drawn. For, as he goes on to argue in the sub-section immediately following, sympathy is not sufficient to complete the humanizing process. There is need further for "the rule of justice and truth," which is written in the breasts of all men; while religion is made another universal possession of the race, as it springs from the use of the understanding and the impulses of the heart. Even the argument for immortality varies from the evolutionary type.
The third reference to the doctrine of infancy is briefer, being contained in the summary with which the last book of the Ideen opens:
"Our nature, as we have seen,[2] is organized to this evident end;[3] for it our finer senses and impulses, our reason and freedom, our delicate yet lasting health, our speech, art, and religion are given us. In all conditions and societies it has been entirely impossible for man to have anything other than humanity in mind, to cultivate anything else, however he might conceive it. For its sake nature has so ordered the arrangements of sex and the periods of our life that our childhood might last longer, and learn a species of humanity only by the aid of education."
In view of the clearness with which Herder perceived the doctrine, it is remarkable that he failed to make a more substantive and more extended application of it in his system. A partial explanation of the neglect may be found in his relation to evolutionary theory at large. Here, as in the special case, he was a forerunner or anticipator, rather than a framer of principles. In fact, if evolution is understood in the modern sense of transformism, it is more than doubtful whether he was an evolutionist at all.[4] In the change from the static to the genetic conception of things his work, especially the philosophy of
