§ 3. Learning by Imitation. — Let us now turn to the other side of the question. Let us consider the case in which the power of performing an action is acquired in and by the process of imitation itself. Here there is a general rule which is obvious when once it is pointed out. It is part of the still more general rule that "to him that hath shall be given." Our power of imitating the activity of another is strictly proportioned to our preexisting power of performing the same general kind of action independently.* For instance, one who is devoid of musical faculty has practically no power of imitating the violin playing of Joachim. Imitation may develop and improve a power which already exists, but it cannot create it. Consider the child beginning for the first time to write in a copybook. He learns by imitation; but it is only because he has already some rudimentary ability to make such simple figures as pothooks that the imitative process can get a start. At the outset, his pothooks are very unlike the model set before him. Gradually he improves; increased power of independent production gives step by step increased power of imitation, until he approaches too closely the limits of his capacity in this direction to make any further progress of an appreciable kind.

* Mr. Thorndike's animals, referred to in the previous chapter, failed to imitate actions so strange and unfamiliar to them as the pressure of buttons, etc. The result with an intelligent monkey would probably have been different.

But this is an incomplete account of the matter. The power of learning by imitation is part of the general power of learning by experience; it involves mental plasticity. An animal which starts life with congenital tendencies and aptitudes of a fixed and stereotyped kind, so that they admit of but little modification in the course of individual development, has correspondingly little power of learning by imitation. Among animals, monkeys have the greatest plasticity and the greatest aptitude for imitation. They are incessantly active in all kinds of ways, and they are in a very high degree capable of learning by experience. Thus, when admitted to the company of human beings, they will spontaneously learn the use of knives, forks, cups, plates, etc. In general, the more intelligent monkeys have a wider and more varied sphere of activity than other animals. They are incessantly trying to do things, experimenting in all sorts of ways, and learning rapidly by the success or failure of their attempts. The wide range of their activity involves a wide range of interest. They attend to all kinds of things without any directly practical aim; and the imitative impulse is, as we have seen, a special development of this form of attention. The readiest way of bringing before their consciousness vividly and distinctly an action which interests them, is to reenact it themselves.

Of course at higher levels of mental development the imitative impulse is far less conspicuous because impulsive activity in general is checked and overruled by activity organised in a unified system.* Civilised men imitate not so much because of immediate interest in the action imitated as with a view to the attainment of desirable results.

* See last chapter, § 9. Impulsive Character of Perceptual Process