or evil, but because it represents a part of myself, inasmuch as I have become what I am in part through my sympathy with you and imitation of you. So your injunctions to me bring out a difference of motor attitude between what is socially responsive in me, in a sense public, and that which is relatively me alone, my private self.
When I come to a new moral situation, therefore, my state is this, in each case — and we shall see as we go on that it is yet more: I am in a condition of relative equilib- rium, or balance of two factors, my personal or habitual Emotion and Sentiment. 343 self, and my social suggestive self. Your wife announces to you that you are to go to a reception given by Mr. A. * Hang Mr. A.! ' is your first reply — that of your habitual private self. But your wife says, " Some one of the family should be there, and besides I want to go." This is an appeal to your family, public, social self in its broad sense, supplemented by an appeal to your sympathetic, narrower, conjugal self. The new decision which you make tends to destroy this equilibrium by reinforcing your ' copy ' and its influence in your character, on one side or the other, and so to lead you out for further habit or for new social adaptations.
And now on this basis comes a new mental movement which seems to me to involve a further development of the imitative motif — a development which substitutes warmth and life for the horrible coldness and death of that view which identifies voluntary morality with submission to a 'word of command.' The child, it is true, very soon comes across that most tremendous thing in its moral environment which we call authority; and acquires that most magnificent thing in our moral equipment which we call obedience. He acquires obedience in one of two ways, or both: by suggestion, or by punishment. The way of suggestion is the higher way; because it proceeds by gradual lessons in accommodation, until the habit of regu- larity in conduct is acquired, in opposition to the capricious- ness of his own reactions. It is also the better way because it sets before the child in an object lesson an example of that stability and lawfulness which it is the end of all obedience to foster. Yet punishment is good and often necessary. Punishment is nature's way; she inflicts the punishment first, and afterwards nurses the 344 Conscious Imitation.
insight by which the punishment comes to be understood. A child's capricious movement may bring a pain which represents all the organic growth of the race; and so when we punish a child's capricious conduct, we are letting fall upon him the pain which represents all the social and ethical growth of the race. But by whatever method, — • suggestion or punishment, — the object is the same: to preserve the child, until he learns from his own habit the insight which is necessary to his own salvation through intelligent submission.
But whether obedience comes by suggestion or by pun- ishment, it has this genetic value: it leads to another refinement in the sense of self, at first 'projective,' then subjective. The child finds himself stimulated constantly to deny his impulses, his desires, even his irregular sympa- thies, by conforming to the will of another. This other represents a regular, systematic, unflinching, but reason- able personality — still a person, but a very different per- son from the child's own. In the analysis of ' personality suggestion,' we found this stage of the child's apprehension of persons — his sense of the regularity of personal char- acter in the midst of" the capriciousness that before this stood out in contrast to the regularity of mechanical move- ment in things. There are extremes of indulgence, the child learns, which even the grandmother does not permit; there are extremes of severity from which even the cruel father draws back. Here, in this dawning sense of the larger limits which set barriers to personal freedom, is the * copy ' forming, which is his personal authority or law. It is 'projective,' because he cannot understand it, cannot anticipate it, cannot find it in himself. And it is only by imitation that he is to reproduce it, and so arrive at a Emotion aiid Sentiment. 345 knowledge of what he is to understand it to be. So it is a ' copy for imitation.' It is its aim — so may the child say to himself, — and should be mine — if I am awake to it, — to have me obey it, act like it, think like it, be like it in all respects. It is not I, but I am to become it. Here is my ideal self, my final pattern, my * ought ' set before me. My parents and teachers are good because, with all their differences from one another, they yet seem to be alike in their acquiescence to this law. Only in as far as I get into the habit of being and doing like them in reference to it, get my character moulded into conformity with it, only so far am I good. And so, like all other imitative func- tions, it teaches its lesson only by stimulating to action. I must succeed in doing — he finds out, as he grows older and begins to reflect upon right and wrong, — if I would understand. But as I thus progress in doing, I forever find new patterns set for me; and so my ethical insight must always find its profoundest expression in that yearn- ing which anticipates, but does not overtake, the ideal.^ My sense of moral ideal, therefore, is my sense of a possible perfect, regular will, taken over /;/ me, in which the personal and the social self — my habits and my social calls, — are brought completely into harmony; the sense of obligation in me, in each case, is a sense of lack of har- mony — a sense of the actual discrepancies in my various thoughts of self, as my actions and tendencies give rise to them. To pursue my commonplace illustration, your wife adds to the reasons for your attending the reception of 1 A further important aid to the child in this development is his observation of the vi'ay that other people behave to one another in his presence. — On the nature of 'ideals' and the rise of conceptual emotion, in which, in my view, the sense of ideals, as being ideal, really consists, see my Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., Chap. IX.
346 Conscious Imitation.
Mr. A., this one: 'And besides, you ought to go out more.* This is the profoundest reason of all; not because it has in it the word 'ought,' merely, but because it makes appeal to the ideal self, before the law of which all the earlier claims have their lesser or greater value.
And then, once more, the thought of this ideal self, made ejective, as it must be by the dialectic of this germi- nating social sense, put out of and beyond me — this is embodied in the moral sanctions of society, and finally in God.^ The value of the ejective sense of moral self is seen in the great sensitiveness we have to the supposed opinions of others about our conduct. It is an ingredient of extraor- dinary influence. From the account given of the rise of the sense of obligation, we should expect the two very subtle aspects of this sensitiveness which are actually present. First, in general, our dread and fear before another's fancied opinion is in direct proportion to our own sense of self-condemnation. Consciousness is clear on this point. It must be so if it is true that our sense of self-condemnation is of social origin, i.e., arises from our imitative response to the well-sanctioned opinions and com- mands of others. But second, the intelligent observation 1 I can only mention here Hegel's remarkable treatment of the genetic development of the ethical and religious sense (^Philosophy of Mind., Sect. II.), altogether the best ever written, in my opinion. My facts, as I hope to show in another place, give support to Hegel's intuitions. — On the distinctively social function of imitation, Tarde and Sighele both dwell in the works named, the latter endeavouring to lay the foundations of a science of ' collec- tive psychology.' A similar task is set in my later volume. As to religious emotion, it is astonishing enough that the law of imitation should reach so far as to touch those mysterious ' ideas of reason ' which have so long baffled meta- physics. But — why should it not? Is not the cry 'Anthropomorphism! ' as old as Xenophanes? And is it not a plea for or against imitation?
Emotion and Sentiment. 347 of the opinions of others, and the suffering of the penal- ties of social law, react back constantly to purify and elevate the standard which one sets himself, just as they originally stimulated its rise. There is, therefore, a con- stant progress from the action and reaction of society upon the individual and the individual upon society. And religious sanctions get much of their force, it seems to me, in just this same way.
Josiah Royce^ has distinguished between the two earlier phases of self which I have pointed out, but does not develop the third. Yet he indicates clearly and with emphasis the twofold element of conflict under which the moral sense develops. The ordinary accounts on the natural history side, from Darwin ^ to the present, simply describe a conflict in consciousness between sympathy and selfishness. This fails to do justice to the 'law' element, which moralists justly emphasize, in the genesis of moral- ity. It gives no standard of values, no scale for the esti- mation of the worths of the impulses which represent temporary and changing selves. I should go farther than Royce does in emphasizing this element, believing as I do that there is no full sense of oughtncss until the child gets the basis of a Jiabit, which not only calls upon him to deny his private selfishness in favour of sympathy, but also his private sympathies in favour of reasonable regularity learned through submission. The opposition, that is, be- tween my regular personal ideal and all else, — whether it be the regularity of my selfish habit or the irregularity of my generous responses, — this is the essential condition of the rise of obligation. And it is in as far as this ought-feeling ^ International Joiirn. of Ethics, July, 1893, p. 430. 2 Descent of Man, Part I., Chap. III.
348 Conscious Imitation.
goes out beyond the copy elements drawn from actual in- stances of action, and anticipates better or more ideal action, that the antithesis between the ' ought ' and the *is' gets psychological justification.
The question, finally, whether obedience is a case of imitation,^ is a matter of words. It is imitation, in the large sense of the term. As far as the copy set in the 'word of command' is reproduced, the reaction is imi- tative. A child cannot obey a command to do what he does not know how to do. The circumstances of his doing it, however, the forcible presentation of the copy by another person, this seems only to add additional elements to the copy itself, not to be in any sense an interference, or a prevention of the due operation of imitation. The child has in view, when he obeys, not only the thing he is to do, but the circumstances — the consequences, the punish- ment, the reward — and these also he seeks to reproduce or to avoid. On the other hand, it may well be asked whether all of our voluntary imitations and actions gen- erally, are not, in a sense, cases of obedience; for it is only when an idea gets certain suggestive force, or sanctions, or social setting, that it is influential in bringing us out for its reproduction. Of course this is only further play on definitions; but it serves to indicate the real elements in the situation. When Tonnies says that obedience comes first and imitation afterwards, he refers to voluntary imitation of a particular action which the child has already learned to do. But the whole theory of his learning must go before, and it could hardly be said that the child learned to do a thing at first simply by being commanded to do it.
1 See discussion by Tarde, loc. cit., and Paulhan, Revue Philosophiqiie, August, 1890, p. 179; also Tonnies, Phjlosophische Alonaishefte, 1893, p. 308.
CHAPTER XII.
Conscious Imitation (concluded).
It is possible, on the basis of the preceding develop- ments, to lay out a scheme of notions and terms to govern the discussion of the whole matter of imitation. This has been the 'loose joint' in many discussions; the utter lack of any well-defined limits set to the phenomena in ques- tion. Tarde practically claims all cases of organic or social resemblance as instances of imitation, overlooking the truth, as one of his critics takes pains to point out, that two things which resemble each other may be common effects of the same cause! Others are disposed to con- sider the voluntary imitation of an action as the only legitimate case of imitation. This, we have seen, has given rise to great confusion among psychologists. We have reason to think that volition requires a finely complex system of copy elements, whose very presence can be ac- counted for only on the basis of earlier organic, or cer- tainly ideo-motor, imitations. Further, it is the lower, less volitional types of mind that simple imitation char- acterizes, the undeveloped child, the parrot, the idiot, the hypnotic, the hysterical. If again we say, with yet others, that imitation always involves a presentation or image of the situation or object imitated, — a position very near the popular use of the term, — then we have great difficulty in accounting for the absorption and reproduction of subcon- scious, vaguely present stimulations; as, for example, the acquisition of facial expression, the contagion of emotion, the growth of style in dress and institutions — what may be called the influence of the 'psychic atmosphere.'
I think we have found reason from the analysis above, to hold that our provisional definition of imitation is just; an imitative reaction is one which tends normally to main- tain or repeat its own stimulating process. This is what we find the nervous and muscular mechanism suited to, and this is what we find the organism doing in a progressive way in all the types of function which we have passed in review. If this is too broad a definition, then what I have traced must be given some other name, and imitation applied to any more restricted function that can be clearly and finally marked out. But let us give no rein to the fanciful and strained analogies which have exercised the minds of some of the French writers on imitation.
Adhering then to the definition which makes of imita- tion an organic type, we may point out its various ' kinds,' according to the degree in which a reaction of the general type has, by complication, abbreviation, substitution, inhi- bition, or what not, departed in the development of con- sciousness from its typical simplicity. We find, in fact, three great instances of function, all of which conform to the imitative type. Two of these have already been put in evidence in detail; the third I am going on to charac- terize briefly in the following section under the phrase * plastic imitation.'
First: the organic reaction which tends to maintain, repeat, reproduce, its own stimulation, be it simple con- Classification. 351 tractility, muscular contraction, or selected reactions which have become habitual. This may be called biological or organic imitation. Under this head fall all cases lower down than the conscious picturing of copies; lower down in the sense of not involving, and never having involved, for their execution, a conscious sensory or intellectual sug- gesting stimulus, with the possibility of its revival as a memory. On the nervous side, such imitations may be called subcortical; and in view of another class mentioned below, they may be further qualified as primarily sub- cortical.
These * biological' imitations are evidently first in order of development, and represent the gains or accommoda- tions of the organism made independently of the conscious reception of stimulations and adaptation to them. They serve for the accumulation of material for conscious and voluntary actions. In the young of the animals, their scope is very limited, because of the complete instinctive equip- ment which young animals bring into the world; but in human infants they play an important part, as the means of the gradual reduction to order and utility of the dif- fused motor discharges of the new-born. I have noted its presence under the phrase ' physiological ' suggestion ^ in another place. It is under this head that the so-called 'selective' function of the nervous system finds its first illustration.
Second: we pass to psychological, conscious, or cortical imitations. The criterion of imitation — the presence of a copy to be aimed at — is here fulfilled in the form of conscious sensations and images. The copy becomes con- sciously available in two ways: first, as sensation, which 352 Conscioiis Imitatioii.
the imitative reaction seeks to continue or reproduce (as the imitation of words heard, movements seen, etc.); and second, as memory. In this latter case there arises com- plexity in the 'copy system,' with desire, in which there is consciousness of the imitative tendency as respects an agreeable memory copy; and with the persistence of such a copy, and its partial repression by other elements of memory, comes volition. We find, accordingly, two kinds of psychological or cortical imitation, which I have called respectively 'simple' and 'persistent' imitation. Simple imitation is the sensori-motor or ideo-motor suggestion which tends to keep itself going by reinstating its own stimulation; and persistent imitation is the ' try-try- again ' experience of early volition, taken up in more de- tail below. 1 Third: a great class of facts which we may well desig- nate by the term 'plastic' or 'secondarily subcortical' imitations, to which more particular attention may now be given.
§ 2. Plastic Imitation.
This phrase is used to cover all the cases of reaction or attitude, toward the doings, customs, opinions of others, which once represented more or less conscious adaptations either in race or in personal history, but which have be- come what is ordinarily called 'secondary automatic' and subconscious. With them are all the less well-defined kinds of response which we make to the actions, sugges- tions, etc., of others, simply from the habit we are in, by heredity and experience, of conforming to social 'copy.' Plastic imitation represents the general fact of that normal 1 Cf. Chap. XIII.
suggestibility which is, as regards personal rapport y the very soul of our social relationships with one another.
These cases come up for detailed discussion in my later volume. They serve to put in evidence the foun- dation, facts of a possible psychology of masses, crowds, organized bodies generally. They may be readily ex- plained by one or both of two principles — both really one, that of Habit. The principle of Mapsed links,' already explained, applies to cases of conventional conformity, or custom, which is but an expression for abbreviated pro- cesses of social imitation. This accounts for the influence of the old, the venerated, the antique, upon mankind. The other principle is the application of habit itself to imi- tation, whereby absorption by imitation has become the great means, the first resort of consciousness, in the pres- ence of new kinds of experience. We have become used to getting new accommodations, fine outlets for action and avenues of happiness, by taking up new thoughts, beliefs, fashions, etc. This accounts for the tyranny of novelty in all social affairs. So in these two principles, both exhi- bitions of the one law of imitation, we reach the two great forces of social life, conservatism and liberalism. So we find under this heading such fundamental facts as the social phenomena of contagion, fashion, mob-law, which Tarde and Sighele so well emphasize, the imitation of facial and emotional expression, moral influence, organic sympathy, personal rapport, etc., all matters set aside for later treatment. The term * plastic ' serves to point out the rather helpless condition of the person who imitates, and so interprets in his own action the more intangible influences of his estate in life.
The general character of plastic imitation may be made 354 Conscious Imitation.
clearer if I draw attention to some of its more obscure instances, and assign them places in the general scheme of development.
The social instances noticed at length by Tarde, and summarized under so-called 'laws/ are easily reduced to the more general principles now stated. Tarde enunciated a law based on the fact that people imitate one another in thoughts and opinions before they do so in dress and customs, his inference being that ' imitation proceeds from the internal to the external.' As far as this is true it is only partially imitation. Thoughts and opinions are imi- tated because they are most important and most difficult to maintain for oneself. And it is only a result of similar thought that action should be similar, without in all cases resorting to imitation to account for this last similarity. But the so-called facts are not true. The relatively trivial and external things are most liable to be seized upon. A child imitates persons, and what he copies most largely are the personal points of evidence, so to speak; the boldest, most external manifestations, the things that he with his capacity is most likely to see, not the inner essential men- tal things. It is only as he grows to make a conscious dis- tinction between thought and action that he gets to giving the former a higher valuation. And so it is in the differ- ent strata of society. The relative force of convention, slavish imitation, worship of custom, seems to have some relation to the degree of development of a people.
Again, Tarde's laws relative to imitation mode and imita- tion coiitttme — the former having in its eye the new, fash- ionable, popular, the fad; the latter, the old, venerable, customary — are so clearly partial statements of the prin- ciples of accommodation and habit, as they get application Plastic Imitation, 355 on the broader genetic scale that I have briefly pointed out, that it is not necessary to dwell further upon them.^ The phenomena of hypnotism illustrate most strikingly the reality of this kind of imitation at a certain stage of mental life. Delboeuf makes it probable ^ that the charac- teristic peculiarities of the ' stages ' of the Paris school are due to this influence; and the wider question may well be opened, whether suggestion generally, as understood in hypnotic work, might not be better expressed by some formula which recos-nizes the fundamental sameness of all reactions — normal, pathological, hypnotic, degenerative — which exhibit the form of stimulus-repeating or ' circu- lar' process characteristic of simple imitation. In normal, personal, and social suggestion the copy elements are, in part, unrecognized; and their reactions are subject to inhibition and blocking-off by the various voluntary and complicated tendencies which have the floor. In sleep, on the other hand, the copy elements are largely sponta- neous images, thrown up by the play of association, or stimulated by outside trivialities, and all so weak that while action follows in the dream persons, it does not generally follow in the dreamer's own muscles. But in hypnotic somnambulism, all copy elements are from the outside, thrown in; the inner fountains are blocked; action tends to follow upon idea, whatever it is. Even the idea of no action is acted out by the lethargic, and the idea of fixed self-sustaining action by the cataleptic.^