1 Tarde's other principle, that ' inferiors imitate superiors,' is clearly a corollary from the view that the progressive ideal personality arises through social suggestion in some such way as we have traced above.
^ Revtie Philosophiqiie, XXII., pp. 146 ff.
8 It may be well to quote Janet's summary of his determinations of the characteristic features of general catalepsy, all of which indicate a purely 356 ConscioiLS Imitation.
Further, in certain cases of madness (fotie a deux, etc.) the patient responds to the copy which has been learned from a single person only, and has aided perhaps in the production of the disease.^ In all these cases, the peculiar character of which is the performance, under conditions commonly called those of aboulia,^ of reactions which require the muscular co-ordinations usually employed by voluntary action, we have illustrations of ' plastic ' imitation. On the pathological side, we find, in aphasic patients who cannot write or speak spontaneously, but who still can copy handwriting and speak after another, cases which illustrate the same kind of defect, yet in which the defect is not general, but rather confined to a particular group of reactions, by reason of a circumscribed lesion.
In this form of imitative suggestion, it is now clear, we have a second kind of subcortical reaction. It is 'secon- darily subcortical,' in contrast with the organic or 'pri- marily subcortical ' imitations. When looked at from the point of view of race history, it gives us further reason for finding imitation a true instinct, a race habit. ^ imitative condition of consciousness, Ant. Psych., p. 55: " The different phe- nomena which we have described are these; i.e., the continuation of an atti- tude or a movement, the repetition of movements which have been seen and of sounds which have been heard, the harmonious association of the members and of their movements." Cf. Janet on hysteria, below, Chap. XIII., § 4, IV.
1 Cf. Falret, Etudes cliniques stir les maladies me7ttales et nerveuses, p. 547.
2 This would involve, as I have intimated on an earlier page, a doctrine which holds that in the hypnotic state, there is inhibition of the cortical asso- ciative or synthetic function, but not of the simple cortical sense function. Cf. Gurney's remarks on Heidenhain's explanation of * hypnotic mimicry,' in 2 In my earher publication of some of the positions of this chapter {Mind, January, 1894, p. 52), I argued against Bain's view, in his Senses and Intellect, pp. 413 ff. (3d ed.), of imitation as in all cases acquired. In his fourth edition, while repeating his former arguments, he nevertheless so weakens How to Observe CJiildrciis Imitations. 357 § 3. How to Observe Cldldreii s Iiniteitioiis} There are one or two considerations of such practical importance to all those who wish to observe cases of imi- tation by children, that I venture to throw them together, only saying by way of introduction that they all follow from the general statement that nothing less than the child's personality is at stake in the method and matter of its imitations; for the ' self ' is but the form or process in which the personal influences surrounding the child take on their new individuality.
I. No observations are of much importance which are not accompanied by a detailed statement of the personal influences which have affected the child. This is the more important since the child sees few persons, and sees them constantly. It is not only likely — it is inevitable — that he viake up J lis personality, under limitations of heredity, by imitation, out of the ' copy ' set in the actions, temper, emotions, of the persons who build around him the social enclosure of his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a two-year-old closely to see what members of the family are giving him his personal * copy ' — to find out whether he sees his mother constantly and his father sel- dom; whether he plays much with other children, and them by a supplementary note that I lind his concessions practically bringing him into accord with my own views. The note is as follows i^loc. cit., p. 441): "As in other connections, I have to qualify the foregoing explanation by admitting the possibility and the fact of hereditary transmis- sion in at least preparing the way or giving facilities for the operation now described...The inheritance of tendencies favouring acquisition may decisively contribute to the advancement of our early powers of imitation. The term ' instinct ' would thus have a certain fitness..."
1 See the Century Magazine for December, 1894, and cf. Royce's article on ' The Imitative Functions' in the same magazine for May, 1894.
358 Conscious Imitation.
what their dispositions are, to a degree; whether he is growing to be a person of subjection, equality, or tyranny; whether he is assimilating the elements of some low unor- ganized social content from his foreign nurse. For, in Leibnitz's phrase, the boy or girl is a social monad, a little world, which reflects the whole system of influences com- ing to stir its sensibility. And just in as far as his sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits of imitating; and habits? — they are character!
2. A point akin to the first is this: every observation should describe with great accuracy the child's relation to other children. Has he brothers or sisters; how many of each, and of what age } Does he sleep in the same bed or room with them? Do they play much with one another alone.'* The reason is very evident. An only child has only adult ' copy.' He can not interpret his father's actions, or his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He lacks the more childish example of a brother or sister near himself in age. And this difference is of very great importance to his development. He lacks the stimulus, for example, of games, in which personification is a direct tutor to self-hood, as I shall remark further on. And while he becomes precocious in some lines of instruc- tion, he fails in imagination, in brilliancy of fancy. The dramatic, in his sense of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a very great mistake to isolate children, especially to isolate one or two children. One alone is perhaps the worse, but two alone are subject to the other element of social danger which I may mention next.
3. Observers should report with especial care all cases of unusually close relationship between children in youth, such as childish favoritism, * platonic friendships,' 'chum- How to Observe Childrciis Imitations. 359 ming,' in school or home, etc. We have in these facts — and there is a very great variety of them — an exaggera- tion of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down of the personal suggestive sensibility to a peculiar line of well-formed influences. It has never been studied by writers either on the genesis of social emotion or on the practice of education. To be sure, teachers are alive to the pros and cons of allowing children and students to room together; but it is with a view to the possibility of direct immoral or unwholesome contagion. This danger is certainly real; but we, as psychological observers, and above all as teachers and leaders, of our children, must go even deeper than that. Consider, for example, the possible influence of a school chum and room-mate upon a girl in her teens; for this is only an evident case of what all isolated children are subject to. A sensitive nature, a girl whose very life is a branch of a social tree, is placed in a new environ- ment, to engraft upon the members of her mutilated self — her very personality; it is nothing less than that — utterly new channels of supply. The only safety possible, the only way to conserve the lessons of her past, apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the structure of her present character, lies in securing for her the greatest possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, she meets, eats, walks, talks, lies down at night, and rises in the morning, with one other person, a 'copy' set before her, as immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a single personality, put there to wrap around her growing self the confining cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. Above all things, fathers, mothers, teachers, elders, give the children room! They need all that they can get, and their personalities will grow to fill it. Give them plenty J 60 Consciotis Imitation.
of companions, fill their lives with variety, — variety is the soul of originality, and its only source of supply. The ethical life itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view, that in my opinion — formed, it is true, from the very few data acces- sible on such points, still a positive opinion — children should never be allowed, after infancy, to room regularly together; special friendships of a close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when under the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian; and even when allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, be used to entrain the sympathetic and moral sentiments into a wider field of social exercise.
4. The remainder of this section must be devoted to the further emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games, especially those which may be best described as 'society games.' All those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary fertility of the child mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plot- ting: social and dramatic situations. It has not been as evident, however, to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, that they were observing in these fancy-plays the putting together anew of fragments, or larger pieces, of their own mental history. But here, in these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the personal ' copy ' material which they have got from you and me. If a man study these games patiently How io Observe Childreiis Imitations. 361 in his own children, and analyze them out, he gradually sees emerge from the child's inner consciousness its pict- ure of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions he seeks to generalize and apply anew. The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele patheti- cally notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than of the good. But be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not stop with birth; it is then only beginning. And the pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming personality from the heritage of past com- monness or impurity, is simply left to take its course for the further establishing and confirmation of it. Was there ever a group of school children who did not leave the real school to make a play school, erecting a throne for one of their number to sit on and 'take off' the teacher.^ Was there ever a child who did not play 'church,' and force her father if possible into the pulpit } Were there ever children who did not ' buy ' things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, when they had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market } The point is this: the child's personality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes upon himself the scenes of his life and acts them out; so he grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to perform.
In order to be of direct service to observers of games of this character, I shall now give a short account of an observation of the kind made a few weeks ago — one of 362 Conscious luiitation, the simplest of many actual situations which my two little girls, Helen and EUzabcth, have acted out together. It is a very commonplace case, a game, the elements of which are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find the elementary the more instructive.
On May 2, I was sitting on the porch alone with the children — the two mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a half years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby; that is, Helen became 'mama,' and Elizabeth *baby.' The younger responded by calling her sister 'mama,' and the play began.
" You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mama. Baby rose from the floor, — first falling down in order to rise, — was seized upon by 'mama,' taken to the railing to an imaginary wash-stand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this ' mama ' kept up a stream of baby talk to her infant: " Now your stockings, my darling; now your skirt, sweet- ness — or, no — not yet — your shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which real infants usually show. When this was done, " Now we must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said mama. "Yes, mama," came the reply; and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator, carefully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of papa, seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in upon the imagined situation. But not so. Mama led her How to Observe Childrejis luiitallons. 363 baby directly past me to the end of the piazza, to a col- umn in the corner. ''There's papa," said mama; "now tell him good-morning." — "Good-morning, papa; I am very well," said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's good," said mama, in ^ gntff, loiv voice, which caused in the real papa a thrill of amused self-consciousness most difficult to contain. " Now you must have your breakfast," said mama. The seat of a chair was made a breakfast-table, the baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge carefully administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usu- ally directs their breakfast. "Now" (after the meal, which suddenly became dinner instead of breakfast), "you must take your nap," said mama. " No, mama; I don't want to," said baby. "But you must." — "No; you be baby, and take the nap." — "But all the other children have gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says you must,'' said mama. This convinced baby, and she lay down on the floor. "But I haven't undressed you." So then came all the detail of undressing; and mama carefully covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying, " Spring is com- ing now; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go to sleep." — "But you haven't kissed me, mama," said the little one. "Oh, of course, my darling!" — so a long siege of kissing! Then baby closed her eyes very tight, while mama went on tiptoe away to the end of the porch. "Don't go away, mama," said baby. "No; mama wouldn't leave her darling," came the reply.
So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, hats put on, etc., the mama exercising great care and solicitude for her baby. One further incident to show this: when the baby's hat was put on — the real hat — mama tied the strings rather tight. " Oli! you hurt, 364 Conscious Imitation.
mama," said baby. "No; mama wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mama kiss it. There, is that better, my darhng.-*" — all comically true to a certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had no difficulty in tracing.
Now in such a case, what is to be reported, of course, is the facts. Yet knowledge of more than the facts is neces- sary, as I have said above, in order to get the full psy- chological lesson. We need just the information which concerns the rest of the family, and the social influences of the children's lives. I recognized at once every phrase which the children used in this play, where they got it, what it meant in its original context, and how far its mean- ing had been modified in this process which I have called * social heredity.' But as that story is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of the children's social antecedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imitation and personi- fication do they get from it } And how much the more is this true when we examine those complex games of the nursery which show the brilliant fancy for situation and drama of the wide-awake four-year-old } Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and how rich the lessons even from such a simple scene as this! As for Helen, what could be a more direct lesson — a lived- out exercise in sympathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the healthy elevation of her sense of self to the dignity of kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency, in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of means to ends — and all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is quite lost in wretched self-conscious- ness in us adults, when we personate other characters.? What could further all this highest mental growth better than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily Hozu to Observe Chilelrens Iinitatioiis, 365 life are read into the child's little self? And then, in the case of Elizabeth, certain things appear. She obeys with- out command or sanction, she takes in from her sister the elements of personal suggestion in their simpler childish forms; and certainly such scenes, repeated every day with such variation of detail, must give something of the sense of variety and social equality which real life afterwards confirms and proceeds upon; and lessons of the opposite character are learned by the same process.
And all this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imaginative faculty. The prolonged situations, maintained sometimes whole days, or possibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and train the attention. And I think, also, that the sense of essential reality, and its distinction from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this sort of symbolic representation. But it has its dangers also — very serious ones. And possibly the best service of observation just now is to gather the facts with a view to the proper recognition and avoidance of the dangers.
Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested par- ents. You can be of no use whatever to psychologists — to say nothing of the actual damage you may be to the children — unless you know your babies through and tJirougJi. Especially the fathers! They are willing to study everything else. They know every corner of the house familiarly, and what is done in it except the nnrsery. A man labours for his children ten hours a day, gets his life insured for their support after his death, and yet he lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, the evolution of their personality, go on by absorption — if no worse — from common, vulgar, imported and changing, often immoral, attendants! Plato said the state should train 366 Conscious Imitation.
the children; and added that the wisest man should rule the state. This is to say that the wisest man should tend his children! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and Cosette, a picture of the true paternal relationship. We hear a certain group of studies called the lumiajiities, and it is right. But the best school in the humanities for every man is in his own house.^ 1 I venture to insert this more popular section for homiletic purposes. It may serve for some readers to relieve the monotony of the theoretical chapters.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Origin of Volition.
§ I. Description and Analysis of Volition.
In earlier chapters I have endeavoured to trace the development of some aspects of the child's active life up to the rise of volition. The transition from the involun- tary class of muscular reactions to which the general word * suggestion ' applies, to the performance of actions fore- seen and intended occurs, as I have before intimated, through the persistence and repetition of imitative sug- gestions. The distinction between simple imitation and persistent imitation has been made and illustrated in an earlier place. ^ Now, in saying that volition — the clearly conscious phenomenon of will — arises historically on the basis of persistent imitation, what I mean is this: that the no7n)ial child's fij'st exhibition of volition is found in its repeated efforts to imitate something; and what it imi- tates, its 'copy,' is of two great kinds: (/) something external, such as move7nents seen and noises heard; and {2) some- thing internal, arising in its oivn memory, imagination, or thought. I shall consider, first, the rise of volition by imitation of external copies, — since this comes first in natural history, or phylogenesis, — and then consider the modifications which are necessary when we come to con- 368 The Origin of Volition.
sider memory and imagination as setting copies for imita- tion to the individual child.
An adequate analysis of will, with reference to the fiat of volition, reveals three great factors for which a theory of the origin of this function should provide. These three elements of the voluntary process are desire, deliberation, and effort. Desire is distinguished from impulse by its intellectual quality, i.e., by the fact that it always has reference to a presentation or pictured object. This dis- tinguishes desire from that formidable and refractory thing which is called 'restlessness.' Organic impulses may pass into desires, when their objects become conscious. Further, desire implies lack of satisfaction of the impulse on which it rests — a degree of inhibition, thwarting, un- fulfilment. Put more generally, these two characteristics of desire are: (i) a pictured object suggesting associated experiences which it does not suffice to realize, and (2) an incipient motor reaction which the imaged object stimu- lates but does not discharge.^ Analysis shows, I think, that these two points are equally important, because correl- ative. Without associated experiences, the object would simply give rise to simple ideo-motor suggestion, as in the cases already cited, and in hypnotic suggestion; but these associated experiences lack body, satisfying quality, the * reality coefficient.' In Pauline phrase, 'What a man hath, why doth he yet hope for } ' But the mere picturing of objects with their associates, of whatever kind, does not constitute desire. Desire is a tendency-state, an incipient action, a condition of high potential, which, however, does not discharge itself. P'or example, — to take an illus- 1 See my Hatidbook of Psychology, II., Chap. XTV., § 2 (pp. 324 ff.), for the general analysis of desire.
Description and Analysis of Volition. 369 tration from our main subject, the infant, — the child continues to cry for an apple which his nurse refuses to give him; the nurse's prohibition has not the requisite inhibitive force to obliterate the motor tensions aroused by the pictured fruit and its associated pleasures. But the child's father comes into the room, and says, *No!' Forthwith the child gives it up, satisfies himself with other objects, and no longer shows the motor tendencies and expressions which indicate desire. Yet in this latter case, the object-picture and its suggested pleasures are still present just the same. Real desire is gone, I think, as completely as in the hypnotic trance, when a new command turns the patient's motor responses into new channels. I do not desire the millions of my neighbour, nor a seat in the House of Lords; my sense that such things are unattainable inhibits all active attitude. But, for the opposite reason, I do desire an increase in my salary, and a seat on the bench where competent psychol- ogists hold counsel together.
These prerequisites of desire allowed, it becomes rela- tively easy to fix the rise of the phenomenon in the in- fant's growth. Evidently, memory must be well developed, and the clear defining of a mental picture, that it may be an appropriate nucleus to a particular desire. This defining, it is further evident, must be sought, first, in connection with the senses whose so-called 'presentative ' element is earliest and most pronounced. Sight and sound memories fulfil this requirement first; they are most clear-cut and uncomplicated with other sense pictures. Further, mus- cular memories are among the earliest with which they become associated, some such connections being guaran- teed by heredity. And the necessary associations of 370 The Origin of Volition.
pleasure, which powerfully impel to desire, are pungent and strong in the case of muscular sensations.
I think it is in connection with sight and hearing memories of pleasant experiences, accordingly, as they are associated with pleasurable or not very painful move- ments, that desire is to be first looked for normally. Of auditory memories, the voice of mother or nurse, and sounds associated with the preparation of food, etc., be- come evident stimulations to lively anticipatory reactions which express desire. On the side of vision, again, similar indications are abundant, and extend back yet earlier in the infant's mental history.