Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/187

SOCIAL AUTOMATISM AND THE IMITATION THEORY. 173 Association. The importance attached to repetition of simi- lar units, as an analysis of society, and as an analysis of habit, betrays this origin. If the unity of the social mind is primarily a repetition or multiplication of resemblances, and if the modus operandi of mind as such is primarily the rein- statement of a perception or idea similar to a copy which has been previously presented to the mind from without, we see the ground of the difficulty which has been felt in locating the origin of difference, 1 which is introduced under the names of accommodation or invention as against the typical pro- cesses of habit and imitation. As I read the story, Prof. Baldwin, having started like others with this impossible point of view, is working with immense ingenuity to remould it. In doing so, he strains the idea of imitation, in two degrees, beyond its normal meaning. Its normal meaning I take to be the reproduction by a sensitive or conscious subject of some trait presented to it from without, because of its being presented. The typical meaning which Prof. Baldwin assigns to it is however already an extension of this, including any reaction by which in consequence of a certain stimulus an organism secures to itself more of the same stimulus, as e.g., when an organism approaches a source of light or warmth. It is plain that here we are beyond the limits of the repetition of a trait or movement presented as a copy ; and we are taken one more remove beyond this normal meaning of imitation, when it is suggested that we are essentially imitating in every act of will. " What are we really bringing about in willing anything? Are we not hoping that through us a kind of experience, object, thing, in the world, may be brought about after the pattern of our idea or purpose?" 2 Here the origin of our operative idea is wholly lost sight of, and the imitation lies in the passing of the idea into fact. In all this, then, we have got far beyond the reproduction of a given copy in our operative ideas ; and in being extended to cover volition the passing of idea into fact imitation has lost its differentia, and ceases to offer any account of the relation of action or ideas to previous actions or ideas of ourselves or of others. For the origin of difference, there- 1 This suggestion is confirmed by the passage quoted from Prof. Royce ; Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 233, note. The tendency to find a special and separate explanation for phenomena of difference really seems to indicate something fundamentally imperfect in the writer's conception of unity and identity. I repeat a hackneyed illustration. The type of co-operative unity is not to be found in such a relation as that between two similar screws, but only in that between a screw and its nut. 2 Mental Development, etc., p. 382.