top of the windpipe and the mouth. Now Now from the former of these the deaf-mute is cut off, and the most ordinary impulse to speech is withdrawn the latter is still open to the sufferer, and by directing his attention to the movements of these parts, and allowing him to follow them by his finger, he is enabled, not only to associate with the movement the meaning of the words produced, but by imitation to reproduce, though imperfectly, the word spoken.

In these facts we have an illustration of what I may call the richness of our human nature in its power of imitation, and of the extent of its desire to imitate; for we have one and the same thing, speech, the result of two different kinds of imitation, one having its imitation in sound, the other in the perception of motion in another man's organs.

But it is not with regard to speech only that imitation is the means of transmitting acquirements from one generation to another. It would be too much to say that all teaching depends on imitation, but it would not be a very gross exaggeration of the truth. Are you drilling children or teaching gymnastic exercises? You show them how to act, and you bid them do as you have done. Are you teaching drawing or painting or any manual craft? You do the same. Are you teaching them how to read Greek, or to pronounce French? You do the same. The communication of pure statements of fact and of mere intellectual truth obviously involves nothing mimetic. But the teaching of everything which requires the pupil to do as well as to know, does involve and rest upon imitation.

If this be a true view of the facts, it seems to follow that the whole progress of the race of man depends on the extent of this faculty; it enables each new generation to do with ease all that the preceding generations may have learned to do with difficulty.

We know well that imitation is strongest in youth; that in youth, too, it is easiest to learn; on the other hand, we know that in old age, habit is strongest. Now, what is habit? It may, I believe, be defined as the imitation of ourselves.

Seeing how much we imitate others, how we imitate most those with whom we are most and those whom we most esteem and love-it would be strange if we did

not imitate ourselves, for there is no one else so habitually present with us as ourselves,-no one to whom we pay more attention,-rarely any one whom we more regard with affection. We have all the conditions necessary for abundant imitation, both conscious and unconscious. And to this correspond the facts with regard to habit weak in youth, it grows with our growth, and gets more and more absolute with age; acts done originally only after thought, and with volition, get to be done all but unconsciously and there reigns over us a power for good or for evil-as the nature of our habits may be-which renders change difficult, and the force of the example of others weak. Imitation of others and habit are mutually exclusive, only because we cannot imitate two different things at once. The mimicry of others, which is one of the most amusing traits of childhood, disappears, we well know, within a few years, and fixed habit is, as I have already said, one of the most distinctive traits of middle, and still more of advanced life. "Imiter c'est un besoin de nature; nous imitons, jeunes autrui, vieux nous mêmes.''*

I have spoken of the transmission of language and arts by imitation. Are habits transmitted by heredity? Does the child inherit, as a matter of nature, the acquired habits of the parent? The question is of high moment in estimating how far imitation adds to the original store of the child. But it is a question upon which just at the present time there is much controversy.

On the one hand, we have Mr. Darwin offering a collection of instances of inheritance which include among them cases of the inheritance of injuries and mutilations, especially, or perhaps exclusively, when followed by disease, such as that of the cow which having lost a horn from an accident, with consequent suppuration, produced three calves which were hornless on the same side of the head; and, againand these are more directly to our pointcases of the inheritance of acquired habits under circumstances which seem to exclude as a possible source of error the imitation of the parent. English boys when taught to write in France are said to cling to their English manner of writing; an infant daughter in a cradle is said to have imitated the peculiar attitude in which the

* Roux, "Pensées," p. 85.

father was accustomed to sleep; and another little girl to have imitated her father in a strange way of expressing pleasure on his fingers, which the father had practised when a boy, but concealed as he grew older. *

Experiments have been made upon guinea-pigs by M. Brown-Séquard, and upon dogs by Messrs. Mairet and Combemale, which tend to show that artificially produced disease may be transmitted by descent through one or even two generations. On the other hand, M. Weismann, in his discourse upon inheritance, invites us to an opposite conclusion. He contends that the cases cited are of little or no scientific value; he adduces certain physiological reasonings or speculations which he thinks inconsistent with the alleged descent, he argues that the proposition is not essential for the explanation of the facts of the case; he further insists that new characters are not necessarily acquired characters, but that many of those commonly so considered really depend on the mysterious collaboration of the different tendencies of heredity." §

66

In this conflict of authorities it would be highly presumptuous if I were to assert any definite conclusion, but I shall venture to hold that there is some evidence in favor of the opinion that such habits may be transmitted by descent, and that this opinion has not at present been conclusively disproved or refuted.

If the descendible quality of habits be admitted, imitation will appear to have greatly enlarged its power of transmitting the acquirements of one generation to the next, and so enabling that generation to start from a higher vantage ground than its predecessor. For that which was done first by an ancestor as a voluntary act, then repeated by him in imitation of himself until it grew to be a habit, may be done by his descendant as a mere matter of habit, vested in him by the laws of descent, and with infinitely less wear and tear, both physical and mental, than was expended on the act by the one who first did it. Each generation may not only re

ceive, but acquire habits, and the sum of its received and acquired habits it may hand on to the next generation, to be in its turn augmented by the accretions of habits in that generation, and handed on with its new increment to the next following generation, and so on in succession.

In these two ways, the later generation starts with a larger stock of endowments than its predecessor by the force of the principle of imitation.

If it be, on one hand, a gain to do any. thing without the effort of thought, it is, on the other hand, very dangerous to live without thought. It is evident that the principle of imitation, very valuable so long as it helps us without thought to do as well as our forefathers have done, is very noxious when it prevents us from doing any better than they have done and this is its effect where it is not counterbalanced by a perpetual inquisitiveness and activity of mind. Nowhere does the power of imitation show itself so mightily as in those states of society, like the Chinese, in which imitation is deified, is made the highest duty of life, and where everything which is not like what has been done before is regarded as evil. The absence of all imitation would produce a stagnation in human society, because each man and each generation of men would derive no benefit from what their forefathers had learned the presence of no other principle of life must and does equally produce stagnation, because the whole thought of the community is hidebound in a case through which it cannot break-the whole life is that aptly described by Bede* as one of stupid habit

vita stulta consuetudinis. It is only the coexistence of imitation with free thought and effort that produces a really healthy and progressive state of society. The danger of mere imitation has been strikingly depicted by Quintilian :† "What would have happened if no one had gone an inch beyond the precedent that he was following? In the poets we should have had nothing better than Livius Andronicus, in history nothing better than the annals of the pontiffs: we should still be navigating on rafts: there would be no pictures except silhouettes drawn from shadows cast by the sun.

*"His. Ecc.," lib. iv. cap. 27. Lib. x. p. 184a.

It is difficult for an Englishman of the nineteenth century to realize a state of society which is really stationary with our greedy appetite for new ideas, for new things, for reforms, for improvements, it is hard for us to believe that a great, if not the greater part, of the human race knows none of these things, and feels no such appetite, that it has gone on for thousands of years in the same way as it goes on to-day, and that it regards any attempt to introduce new thought or new modes of life, not merely as an impertinence, but as an impiety.

But even where the force of habit is not so powerful as to exclude all originality and all progress, we may trace its power in arresting improvement. I suppose that the peat hovels of the West of Ireland are very little changed since the times when St. Patrick preached to the ancestors of their present occupants. Imitation has checked any effort to improve the style of house-building.

We gain some measure of the force of imitation on the mind when we turn to its counterpart and complement-originality. We feel that real originality implies a marked superiority of mind, that in its higher manifestations it is a note even of genius. Now what is originality but the doing of a thing in a way in which we are not led to do it by the example of those around us? It implies that we have gone behind and below these examples, and have for ourselves thought out the plan of what is to be done from the principles applicable to it; and so act independently of the force of example.

And then, when once originality occurs, there follows one of the strangest of human follies and one of the most impossible of things, the imitation of orginality so strong and deep is this principle of mimicry, that we try to imitate that of which the essence is that it is not imitation and that it is not imitable.

It is evident that the force of imitation will not be equal upon all minds: on those with large powers of acquisition, but small powers of origination, it will be large; on those in whom origination is more vigorous it will be less. Furthermore, it is obvious that different persons will be differently the objects of imitation -even of unconscious, unintentional imitation. The active, vigorous man and the bustling, showy woman will be more likely

to be followed by their neighbors than the shy, retiring student or the quiet, dowdy pietist. But what above everything else seems to determine the force of imitation is the love or admiration of the imitator for the imitated. In these truths lies the familiar fact of the force of example, the infectious power alike of what is good and what is evil; and the further fact, that the influence of example is proportionate to the affection and regard which is attracted to the person who exhibits that example.

It is not only the living men and women who are the subjects of our admiration and of our imitation. The creatures of the poet and the romance-writer and the novelist all act on the human mind, and through it on the life and conduct of men, by the tendency which exists to imitate them. The anxiety of Don Quixote, under all the strange circumstances of his strange career, to act in exact imitation of the heroes of his heart, under the most similar circumstances in their careers, is one of the strokes of nature in the immortal work of Cervantes. The like influence is terribly at work at the present moment, and those who are familiar with the administration of the Criminal Law, know best in how many cases the youthful culprit has been led to the commission of crime by the reading of some novel or story, in which Dick Turpin, or some such other mean wretch, has been depicted in a way which has fired his imagination, and produced a strong desire to emulate his deeds of violence or of robbery. Surely the moral responsibility of the novelist is not a light one.

It is difficult to overestimate the solemn importance of these thoughts, if they be true, in reference to morals and our individual obligations. We have each one of us a tendency, both conscious and unconscious, to imitate the words and deeds, and even the thoughts, of those with whom we associate. But we imitate, not only others, but ourselves also; and hence, by our voluntary acts, we are placing the fetters of habit on our future lives, and binding our future conduct by our present acts, and thus narrowing the area of the activity of our wills. If our daily actions be true and strong and noble, and our thoughts are high and pure, we are rendering it day by day more difficult for us to do anything false, or weak, or base,

or to nourish low or impure thoughts; but if our deeds and thoughts be low and bad, we are placing the possession of virtue and nobility further and further out of our reach, till at last it becomes a moral impossibility.

And if this be the momentous effect of imitation on ourselves, it follows that we are exerting a like influence on all around us. Every visible act, every expressed thought, forms a possible object of imitation to all within sight or hearing of us, and so on in an ever-widening circle. Every single act produces a moral wave like the wave created by the fall of a stone into water. We have before us what Gibbon has well called "the infin'te series, the multiplying power of habit and fashion."

Nothing perhaps more impresses the mind with the solidarity of the human race than the thought of the enduring influence, through all succeeding generations, of the great men of old, of the love that is wakened anew in each wave of human life for the mighty creations of the mighty masters of song and of romance, and of the force of imitation which goes with and is intensified by this love. Imitation, it was truly said by that great patriot statesman Sir John Eliot, is "the moral mistress of our lives."†

I know of no more appalling example of the power of one life to influence another in far distant periods than that which is afforded by the strange and horrible history of the Maréchal de Retz. A man of noble birth, great wealth, great distinction as a soldier, and high in favor with his Sovereign, he took to the most horrible course of child-murder of which we have any narrative and when at last driven to confession he made this statement as to the origin of his crimes. "The desire to commit these atrocities came upon me eight years ago. I left Court to go to Chansoncé that I might claim the property of my grandfather deceased. In the library of the castle I found a Latin book-Suetonius, I believe-full of accounts of the cruelties of the Roman emperors. I read the charming history of Tiberius, Caracalla, and other Cæsars, and the pleasure they took in watching the agonies of tortured children. Thereupon

"Decline," cap. lviii.

+ Forster's "Life of Eliot," vol. i. p. 2.

I resolved to imitate and surpass these same Cæsars, and that very night began to do so.

If imitation be the moral mistress of our lives, she is also the religious mistress of our lives. It would be out of place for me to pursue this thought far. But of one thing there can be no doubt, that one of the mightiest forces in the propagation of religions consists, first, in the love which the founder has awakened in the breasts of his followers, and of those who through them have learned to know, and knowing, to love his character; and, secondly, in the force of the example of that founder, proportioned to the greatness and earnestness of his character, and to the love which he has awakened. Such a statement would be true of great teachers like Confucius and Gautama. Such a statement is emphatically true of the great teachers of Christendom-of St. Augustine or St. Francis; and above all, I speak it with reverence, I believe that what I have said is pre-eminently true of Him whom we honor as our great pattern and example. No life, no personality, has ever attracted such an outcome of love and affection as that of Jesus of Nazareth ; no life has ever been lived so worthy of imitation. That imitation which this love has produced has, in thousands of men's hearts, made a change, has literally turned and altered the course of their lives, has converted them-it has literally made them turn away from sin, and so the righteousness of Christ has made them just and holy men. Heaven forbid that I should say that this is all that Christ has done for man, but like Thomas à Kempis, or whoever wrote the "Imitation of Christ," I believe that to imitate Christ is to be holy, and that the desire to imitate Him has been, and still is, a most operative force in human society.

Now, here I cannot but ask my reader to look back with me on the road we have taken; we have considered the mimicry of the monkey, the pantomime of the child, the force of imitation, conscious and unconscious, over the adult man. Is it the self-same faculty which enables men to imitate the pattern of Christ, and so to grow holy in His likeness? I believe that it is, not because I deem holiness to be

* Baring-Gould's " Book of Were Wolves," pp. 229, 230.