Laws and Hypotheses for Behavior 251 



tion' or ' ideo-motor ' action may be phrased differently, 

 but in whatever form, it insists that the bond between a 

 situation and some conscious representation of a response 

 or of its consequences can do the work of the bond between 

 the situation and the response itself. In acts of reasoning 

 man has been supposed to connect with a given situation a 

 response that could never have been predicted merely from 

 knowledge of what responses were connected with that 

 situation by his original nature or had been connected with 

 it by the laws of exercise and effect. Inference has been 

 supposed to create bonds in and of itself and to be above 

 the mere laws of habit. 



Various forms of statement, most of them vague, have 

 been and would be used in describing the potency of a per- 

 ceived response, a thought-of response, or a train of infer- 

 ence, to produce a response and bind it to the given total 

 situation. Any forms will do for the present argument, 

 since all forms mean to assert that responses can be and 

 often are bound to situations otherwise than by original 

 bodily nature, satisfaction, discomfort, disuse and use. I 

 shall try to show that they cannot; [that, on the contrary, 

 the laws of exercise and effect account for all learning. 



The facts of imitation in human and animal behavior are 

 explainable by tlie laws of instinct, exercise and effect. 



Some cases of imitation are undoubtedly mere instincts 

 in which the situation responded to is an act by another of 

 the same species. If the baby smiles at a smile, it is be- 

 cause of a special, inborn connection between that sight 

 and that act, - - he smiles at a smile for just the same rea- 

 son that he draws down his mouth and wails at harsh 

 words. At that stage of his life he does not imitate other 

 simple acts. A man runs with a crowd for the same reason 

 that he runs from a tiger. Returning a blow is no more due 

 to a general tendency to imitate than warding it off is. 



