Laws and Hypotheses for Behavior 257 



which is most like it, 1 we can account for a thousand ' imita- 

 tions,' and still not have made a large demand upon childish 

 powers of learning. 



No one should pretend to have disproved direct imitation 

 in the case of learning to talk until he has subjected all these 

 and other matters to crucial experiments. But the burden 

 of proof does seem to belong upon those who deny the ade- 

 quacy of the laws of exercise and effect. In so far as the 

 choice is between accepting or rejecting a general law that, 

 other things being equal, the perception of a response in 

 another produces that response, we surely must reject it. 

 Some of the cases of imitation may be unexplained by the 

 laws of exercise and effect. But for others no law of imita- 

 tion is required. And of what should happen by such a law 

 not over a trivial fraction at most does happen. 



The idea of a response is in and of itself unable to produce 

 that response. 



The early students of behavior, considering human be- 

 havior and emphasizing behavior that was thought about 

 and purposive, agreed that the sure way to connect a re- 

 sponse with a situation was to choose, or will, or consent to, 

 that response. Later students still agreed that to think 

 about the response in some way, to have an image of it or of 

 the sensations caused in you by previous performances of it, 

 was a strong provocative to it. To get a response, get some 

 sort of conscious representative of it, has been an acceptable 

 maxim. Medicine, education and even advertising have 

 based their practice upon the theory that ideas tended to 

 issue in the particular sort of acts that they were ideas of. 



The laws of exercise and effect, on the contrary, if they 



1 This would, of course, result from a well-known corollary of the laws of 

 habit. 



s 



