Brahmo-Somaj, which professes to base itself on natural religion and to take what is true from all revelation, approaches nearly to Christianity, but does not seem to make much progress in India. An Indian Prince said the other day, pointing to a chandelier, "God is like that light, the various religions are the colors through which the light may shine." To which the Christian can only answer, 66 True, but light may struggle through a dimly-colored or smoked glass, or come to us through the clear transparent crystal of revelation."

The whole question is of course complicated with that of caste. The Roman Catholics and some others provide that converts having caste should keep it, but this arrangement, though much must be said in its favor, clashes somewhat with the idea of universal_brotherhood. Caste is the ruling note in India. Even animals have their caste. The story which tells how the level plains of Katthiawar were reclaimed from the sea illustrates this. The egrets laid their eggs on the former ocean-line and the wave swept them away. The egrets swore that the sea should be filled up until she surrendered the eggs. They summoned the other birds to help them, and all obeyed their call except the eagle. He was the favorite steed of Vishnu, so thought himself exonerated from mundane duties. But Vishnu looked askance at him and said that he should be put out of caste unless he went to help his fellows. Back he flew to Katthiawar, and when the sea saw that the royal bird had joined the ranks of her opponents she succumbed and gave back the eggs.

Hindu respect for animal life entails consequences which make one wonder how the earth can provide not only for the swarms of human inhabitants, including unproductive religious mendicants, but also for such numbers of mischievous beasts. Some castes will kill no animals at all, and all Hindus hold so many as sacred that peacocks, monkeys, and pigeons may be seen every where, destroying crops and eating people out of house and home. The people of a town, driven to desperation, may be induced to catch the monkeys, fill a train with them, and despatch it to discharge its cargo at some desolate spot; but woe betide a simicide! The monkeys in any given street will resent and lament the capture of a comrade, but NEW SERIES.-VOL. L., No. 1.

4

do not care at all if a stranger is carried off. He is not of their caste.

Caste is partly a religious and partly a social arrangement. A Hindu told me that if he were to eat with a fellow-religionist of another caste he would have committed a social offence; if with a Christian or Mahommedan it would be a breach of religious law. This is not the universal view, but illustrates the mixture of both ideas in the native mind. Caste restrictions have their use as a restraint on moral conduct, and too often when a native throws them aside to become a nominal Christian the result is expressed by the announcement," Me same caste as masterme drink and smoke." The complications which caste rules entail are, however, endless. If you stepped into the cooking-place of the most wretched Brahmin beggar, you would contaminate all his provisions. Every eatable would have to be thrown away, and all the vessels

cleansed. For this reason the manufacture of common porcelain is unlikely to flourish in India. Metal pots, and plates made of leaves, are in general use, for china from which an outsider has eaten cannot be sufficiently purified for its owner's purposes, though the number of copper vessels has decreased owing to the enhanced price of copper, consequent on the action of the syndicate. You see Brahmins employed as the cooks in prisons, for any one may eat what they have touched, but a murderer would not defile himself with food prepared by a man of lower caste than himself. inside the entrance of the cooking shed marks the boundary over which the prison officials may look, but beyond which they may not pass.

A low wall just

Marriages must only take place between members of the same caste, but not of the same family. Thus, while every boy and girl must be married, the choice is often greatly restricted. A rich gentleman, belonging to a very small caste, was obliged to educate one of his carpenter's sons to marry his daughter, as no other eligible youth could be found. Very odd ways of overcoming matrimonial difficulties are sometimes resorted to in India. There are some castes near Ahmedabad in which widow marriages are allowed, and a girl can be given in second marriages without the ruinous expense considered necessary on the occasion of a first alliance. The

parents therefore sometimes marry a girl to a bunch of flowers, which is afterward thrown down a well. The husband is then said to be dead, and the girl as a widow can be married at moderate cost!

From an English point of view caste has both advantages and drawbacks. So long as it exists it must do much to prevent any universal combination against British rule. As has been well said, social unity must precede national unity, and social unity is impossible under the present ordinances. Schools and railroads are shaking these barriers in places, but are very far from having destroyed them.

I

On the other hand the rules of caste and the seclusion of women of the higher castes and upper class tend to prevent a thorough understanding between English and Indians. An Englishman's first idea is to ask his friends to dinner, his next to make the acquaintance of his wife and daughters. With a Hindu you can do none of these things. It is often better not even to refer to them. A Mahommedan will dine with you, but his ladies, with few exceptions, are even more jeaiously secluded than those of the Hindu. Nor do the women for the most part seem to desire more liberty. Many of them know very well how to manage their husbands, and if they want to go anywhere or to see anything, the men have to find some means of gratifying them. The reverence paid to mothers is extreme. know a man in high position and of middle age who is obliged to worship gods in whom he does not believe for fear of displeasing his mother; and another who cannot make the pilgrimage which he desires to Benares because custom would oblige him to take his mother on his first visit to the holy city and she is unfit to travel. But most Indian women are too uneducated to take pleasure in mixing in a society whose ways and thoughts are totally different from their own. Efforts are being made to teach them, and there is little doubt that when they know a good deal more about the world they will wish to see it, and that when this becomes their object they will speedily attain it. Certainly it will be better to fit them for a position before calling upon them to oc

cupy

it. A somewhat similar remark applies to infant marriages and child widows. The women must desire change before it is made. A philanthropic maiden lady who had passed her first youth was conversing not long ago with a married Indian lady and her widowed sister-in-law on these topics. After she had left them the married lady said, "I married at seven and my husband was nine years old. We have lived happily together. How is it that this lady has not married till her hair is growing gray is growing gray? Has nobody asked for her? There ought to be a law in England that no one shall remain unmarried after a certain age." The loyal comment of the sister-in-law on the attack made upon her was simply, "Why does not the Empress marry again?" Of course a great deal can be said on both sides of this as of most questions, and a cursory observer is not called upon to give a verdict. Still any traveller who has conversed with intelligent natives must feel that while they are unfitted by natural disposition and by internal differences from carrying out any part of the imperial policy which would require unbiassed judgment, incorruptible integrity, readiness of resource and promptitude of action, they are perfectly competent to form opinions on their own social problems. So long as Europeans cannot obtain free access to their homes they can hardly decide on the manner in which Indian family life should be regulated. Meantime there are many ways in which Englishmen, and English ladies residing in India, can help and encourage avowedly needed reforms.

Such aid when kindly offered is for the most part graciously welcomed. It is almost touching to notice the affectionate tone in which an Indian will mention an Englishman when he can speak of him as "My friend."

While no true Englishman would consent to resign the reins of empire 'into hands which are incapable of holding them, the safest charioteers of the car of destiny are the men who treat all classes in that empire not only with justice but with courtesy, sympathy, and consideration.-Nineteenth Century.

"IMITATION," says Aristotle, "is innate in men from childhood; for in this men differ from other animals, that of all they are the most imitative, and through imitation get their first teachings;" and upon this fact he proceeds to explain the origin of poetry. Aristotle is so shrewd an observer that it is rarely safe to slight what he says; and for myself I venture to doubt whether the part which imitation has played in the development of our race is often adequately recognized.

In many of the lower animals the principle of imitation does not show itself very prominently most of our domestic animals, profoundly as they are influenced by man, show little tendency to imitate either him or one another. As regards man, they are rather his fellow-workers than his imitators. Among the birds, imitation shows itself, but almost exclusively in regard to song: many of our singing birds seem to copy one another : young linnets adopt the notes of various singing birds under which they may be brought up; thrushes are said to follow the leading of other birds, and I cannot doubt that some or many of the utterances of the clever starling are imitative. Jackdaws, magpies, parrots, are all celebrated for the cleverness with which they learn and imitate sounds both musical and articulate; and the mocking-bird of the United States and the Menura superba of Australia remind us that this imitative quality is not confined to the Old World. But in these birds it would seem as if this quality were confined to sounds-for none of those which I have mentioned show, I believe, any general tendency toward imitation; the skill of the magpie in pronouncing words and even short sentences is well known. But Mr. Blackwall says that after almost daily investigation of its habits, he has never known it display any unusual capacity for imitation in a state of nature, though when domesticated it appears to have this faculty more highly developed than almost any other British bird.

But when we reach the monkeys the matter is different.

Of all the lower animals, they are the most distinguished for their mimicry-a mimicry which extends to most of the actions of the body, and even the expres sions of the face, but which strangely does not appear to extend to sounds; for it has been observed, and I believe justly, that monkeys, even when long in captivity, never attempt to imitate the sounds of the human voice, but on the contrary retain their own peculiar sounds for pleasure and pain, for anger and joy.*

It is

It has indeed been suggested that, with regard to the lower animals, the faculty of imitation plays a larger part, and instinct a lesser part, than is often thought -that, for instance, the likeness between the nests of successive generations of the same species of bird is due to the children imitating the parents in their work. impossible to deny that this may be so to some extent, and equally impossible to ascertain with precision how much of the sum of the habits of a generation or an individual is due to inherited instincts or habits, and how much to the force of imitation. There is, I believe, no doubt that birds teach their young to sing, and also give instruction in the art of flying, and so far they appeal to the imitative faculty of their young. But the early age at which the progeny leave the nest and lose the care and society of their parents would seem to show that the opportunities of learning by imitation are but small. In one large group of animals this opportunity is entirely absent. In great families of insects the mother lays her eggs, and both parents die before the eggs are hatched-die often in the autumn or winter, while the offspring do not leave the egg till the spring. In all these creatures the possibility of imitating the parent is reduced to zero. A father or a mother's face has never been known to a single member of the race since the creation, and the children can have learned nothing from parental example. To what an ex

* See Vogt, "Mémoire sur les Microcéphales; Mémoires de l'Institut National Génévois," 1866, pp. 168, 169.

"As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation."

Again, it is strongly developed in the microcephalic form of idiotcy, as has been very fully expounded by M. Vogt, and it is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree in certain morbid states of the brain; such patients are sometimes met with, who, instead of replying to a question, simply repeat the words of the questioner, and so give what is known to medical men as the echo sign. Again, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, the patient will often unconsciously imitate every word uttered within hearing, whether in his own or a foreign language, and imitate every gesture and action performed near him.* So, too, among savages the same strong tendency has been observed.

64

They are excellent mimics," says Mr. Dar

66

win, speaking of the people of Terra del Fuego; † as often as we coughed or yawned, or made any odd motion, they immediately imitated us. Some of our party began to squint and look awry; but one of the young Fuegians (whose whole face was painted black, excepting a white band across his eyes) succeeded in making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told, almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres: the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he can be recognized. How can this faculty be explained? Is it a consequence of the more practised habits of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized?"

* Darwin, quoted by Romanes, p. 478.
"Beagle," p. 206.

Imitation as we see it in man seems to extend over a wider range of action and production than in any other animal. It is not confined as in the monkeys to the production of like attitudes or bodily acts; it is not confined as in the birds to the imitation of sounds: it includes all alike, and is characterized furthermore by conscious pleasure in the doing.

If Aristotle be right in the proposition that of all the parts of man, the, voice is the most imitative,* and the observation already made as to monkeys never imitating with the voice be also true, there is in this particular a marked difference-something like an antithesis between ourselves and our poor cousins.

Furthermore, in man imitation is not a single or homogeneous quality; it presents itself in different forms and degrees. It I think, be considered under three may, heads (1) the absolutely involuntary imitation-i.e., imitation neither voluntary nor connected with a voluntary act; (2) involuntary imitation connected with a voluntary act; and (3) imitation entirely voluntary.

All these forms of imitation agree, I Without attention, I suspect that no imibelieve, in their initial step, attention. tation can arise, and I have a strong conviction that it is often, though not always, in proportion to the attention given. A man who bought monkeys to act from the Zoological Garden at £5 a piece, was willing to give twice as much if he might keep them three or four days in order to select one, because he found that whether a monkey would turn out a good actor or not entirely depended on his power of attention. If when he was talking or explaining anything to the monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless. On the other hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could always be trained. †

Of the lowest form of imitation the elements seem to be-first, attention; and, secondly, a reflex action producing the like result without consciousness or volition or intention; and, thirdly, as a negative element or condition, the absence of any disturbing thought or idea-of any controlling volition or intellectual direction.

Of such imitation we have instances in the familiar infection of gaping or yawning, or even of laughter. Merely to see another gape often produces gaping in the beholder-not often if occupied with serious thought, but more often if in a comparatively unthinking mood.

Other striking instances are found in the idiot or the patient suffering from softening of the brain. The microcephalous idiot whom M. Vogt examined is described by him as seizing and imitating each movement with the rapidity of lightning-strong evidence of close if unconscious attention.

A nunnery is, I suppose, an institution in which the pressure of thought is not very severe- -where a small event can attract great attention, and where there are but few other thoughts necessarily present to countervail the effect of attention on the imitative principle. Such is the conclusion I should draw from two stories of nuns to be found in "Zimmermann on Solitude," the one event occurring in France, the other in Germany. In the first a nun began to mew like a cat; other nuns began to mew likewise. The infection spread till all the nuns in the very large convent began to mew every day at a certain hour, and continued mewing for several hours together, till their folly was checked by the threat of castigation from a company of soldiers placed for the purpose at the entrance of the nun

nery.

The German nun was even worse. She began to bite her companions, who all took to the same habit, which is said to have spread through the greater part of Germany, and even to have extended to the nunneries of Holland and Rome.

Something like this, though in a very much smaller degree, is said often to happen to girls' schools in England: one girl faints in church, and several follow suit; the whole attention of the girls is drawn to their interesting comrade, and the service of the church or the periods of the sermon afford no adequate counter-irritant for the interest, and off they go.

In 1787 a girl at a cotton factory at Hodden Bridge in Lancashire went into convulsions at a mouse put into her bosom by another girl, and the convulsions spread among the girls till the factory had to be

*Second part, 6th chap.

shut up.* The dancing mania which in the thirteenth century affected, it is said, one hundred children at Erfurt, and which again in the following century appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle, and brought together assemblies of men and women dancing in the most violent fashion, and spread into the Netherlands; and, again, the Tigritier -a form of dancing mania known in Abyssinia --all these seem to be distinctly attributable to the form of imita tion which I am now describing.

Even insanity seems communicable by imitation. Folie à deux is the name which the French medical psychologists give to cases in which the delusions of an insane person are imitated by a previously sane companion. The subject has recently attracted considerable attention both in England and in France, and interesting facts in relation to it will be found in the paper referred to in the note.

Lastly, whatever truth there may be in the stories of were-wolves, or men assuming the habits of wolves or of dogs, and running about on all fours like the creatures they affect,-whatever element, if any, of truth there may be in such stories, which are so inveterate as to have seemed an old superstition to Pliny in his day,§ must, I conceive, be attributed to a like unconscious imitation producing, by a reflex action in a weakened or diseased mind, the likeness of the object of its thoughts and attention.

It is impossible to pass away from the consideration of this kind of imitation without pausing for one moment to reflect on the most marvellous character of the operation which is involved in it. An action is observed, and then, without consciousness of that observation, without any desire to imitate it, the appropriate nerves set in action the appropriate muscles, and the like action is produced by the beholder. Call this action what we will, the fact remains equally marvellous, and fails to excite our wonder only because it is one of a group of equally strange facts in our constitution which are too familiar to arouse thought in the minds of most men. These illustrations have reference to

* Hecker's 66 Epidemics of the Middle Ages," translated by Babbington, + Ibid.

Dr. D. Hack Tuke on Folie à Deux, in Brain for January, 1888. § Lib. viii. cap. 22.