INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL SURPLUS 557 



of the animal, but becomes modified by the trial and error method. 1 The 

 functioning involved in the second type is radically different from that 

 of the first. It implies the awakening of the impulse to repeat the 

 model-act because of a more or less vivid recognition of its consequences. 

 As Thorndike states it : 



One sees the following sequence: "A turning a faucet, A getting a drink." 

 If one can free this association from its narrow confinement to A so as to get 

 from it the association "impulse to turn faucet, me getting a drink," one will 

 surely, if thirsty, turn the faucet, though he had never done so before. 2 



When the second type of imitation, voluntary imitation, appears 

 there is necessarily a tremendous increase in surplus for all social 

 animals possessing it. Thereafter any discovery made by one animal of 

 a group may be transferred by a psychological process to all other ani- 

 mals in the group irrespective of whether they have been accustomed to 

 perform that particular sequence of acts instinctively or not. 



A most significant discovery has been made within the past fifteen 

 years in the attempt to ascertain how far down the phylogenetic scale 

 this power of voluntary imitation may be found. This discovery is that 

 man alone possesses it to any considerable degree. Thorndike experi- 

 menting with chickens, cats and dogs found no evidence whatever of 

 this type. Even his results with monkeys were, on the whole, negative. 

 Small's rats showed no ability to profit by each other's experience in 

 this way. According to Yerkes this type of imitation plays no con- 

 siderable role in the learning processes of the dancing mouse. Hob- 

 house, to be sure, holds that cats, dogs, elephants and monkeys were 

 aided in their learning if he " showed " them how to do a thing. 

 Whether this was voluntary imitation, however, or whether the animals 

 were merely aided in focusing their attention on the important object 

 and thus received assistance by lessening the number of trials and 

 errors, is a difficult question to answer. The past experience of the 

 animals, moreover, was not always fully known in these experiments. 

 Kinnaman's monkeys gave more positive results but, as Washburn says, 

 we can not be sure that Kinnaman's monke3 r s really had an idea of the 

 proper action suggested to them by seeing their companions perform it ; 

 the case might have been one of instinctive imitation, taking here a form 

 more elaborate than was seen in cats and dogs because more compli- 



*"An animal may perform an act the first time because, through inherited 

 nervous connections, the sight of another animal's performing it acts as a stim- 

 ulus. But it will continue to perform the act, in the absence of any copy to 

 imitate, only if the act is itself an instinctive one, like drinking in birds, or 

 becomes permanent by reason of its consequences, just as would be the case if its 

 first performance had been accidental rather than imitative. As a matter of fact 

 instinctive imitation seems usually to be concerned with actions themselves 

 instinctive." Washburn, "Animal Mind," p. 238. 



2 "Animal Intelligence," p. 50. 



