The child

About this book

Man at Birth.-How far man is from perfection when he begins life has been described by the old Latin philosopher, Lucretius, who wrote so many strangely modern things about the childhood of the race and the childhood of the individual: 'A child at its birth, like a mariner cast ashore by the angry waves, lies prostrate on the earth, naked, speechless, destitute of all the aids to existence, from the moment when it reaches the shores of light, torn from its mother's bosom by the efforts of nature; and it fills the place it has entered with dismal wailings.'