THEORY OF IMITATION IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 727
is in accord with some psychological teaching of the present time. That it does not satisfy all inquiring minds, however, is evident from the fact that Professor Giddings, in an able review of Professor Baldwin's work, 1 suggests that the real basis of our discrimination in selecting models for imitation is the conscious- ness of similarity or of "kind." We chiefly imitate, he argues, our similars, especially those who are like-minded with ourselves ; indeed, we do not receive suggestions at all from creatures wholly unlike ourselves. Men imitate other men, but show little or no tendency to imitate sheep. The consciousness of kind, especially of mental and moral resemblance, evidently comes in to limit and control the process of imitation ; it leads to an instinctive discrimination among possible models for imitation and to an instinctive selection of those models whom we believe to be most nearly like ourselves. Therefore Professor Giddings thinks that the principle of " consciousness of kind" should be recognized as another factor in the social process, a factor which limits and modifies the action of the principle of imitation.
The contention seems to us a good one ; but why stop with admitting a single other factor in our interpretation of the social process ? There are manifestly cases of imitation which the principle "consciousness of kind" does not help to explain, and this Professor Giddings acknowledges. Why, then, limit the social process to the working of these two factors ? Are we not dealing all along in this matter of the discrimination and selec- tion of possible models for imitation with a series of instinctive impulses, like "consciousness of kind" or organic sympathy, 2 which condition and form the final basis of the process of dis- crimination and selection in individual consciousness ?
But this brings us to another objection to Professor Baldwin's theory, which it will be well to consider before discussing this last question.
Our second criticism of the imitation theory, as developed by M. Tarde and Professor Baldwin, is that it is impossible to
1 Science, January 6, 1899; also chap, iii in Democracy and Empire, 1900. "Which Professor Giddings identifies with "consciousness of kind" in the third edition of his Principles of Sociology.
