As to what pertains to the case of infants: You [Fidus] said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth. In our council it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born
Many years ago I was part of a public health movement that raised concerns about the mercury in vaccines and about the heavy dose that infants get - used to. They don't anymore.
Kindness is about energy we give and take from all creatures. The bottom line is the integrative interaction and the total interconnectedness between human beings, all creatures, and God. Kindness is a spirituality of solid truth, not shifting emotion; of justice, not occasional philanthropy; of genuine love, not sentimentality or masochism; of evolved adults, not fixated infants.
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
It is well-known that those who have charge of young infants, that it is difficult to feel sure when certain movements about their mouths are really expressive; that is when they really smile. Hence I carefully watched my own infants. One of them at the age of forty-five days, and being in a happy frame of mind, smiled. . . I observed the same thing on the following day: but on the third day the child was not quite well and there was no trace of a smile, and this renders it probable that the previous smiles were real.
As infants, our first victory comes in grasping some bit of the world, usually our mother's fingers. Later we discover that the world, and the things of the world, are grasping us, and have been all along.
There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse; infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk.
Infants are interesting only to their parents.
I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up. . . These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.
Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times.
I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants.
Where do we end, and what is the self? You cut off your arm, you're still yourself. You cut off two of your arms, you're still yourself. You cut off your arms and your legs, you're still yourself, right? Also, the idea of the self seems to be embedded right around here, right around the eyes. Infants know to look at the eyes.
Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.
Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).
As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.
One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.
If infants are ready to do something, they will do it. In fact, when they are ready, they have to do it.
Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants.
I always supported the women I worked with having time off to go to parent-teacher conferences and doctors' appointments or bringing their infants into the office.
Infants manners are moulded more by the example of Parents, then by stars at their nativities.
