INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL SURPLUS 559 



which. the psychologist and ethnologist hold to be a distinctly human 

 trait. Both could have developed only as the power of conceptual 

 thinking advanced. But speech seems to imply the existence of volun- 

 tary imitation, whereas the contrary is not necessarily true. The asso- 

 ciation of a particular sound or even gesture with a particular thing or 

 act is not the only element in speech. There must be the same associa- 

 tion in the minds of two or more individuals. The simplest way to 

 account for such similarity of association is by the process of voluntary 

 imitation. Doubtless inarticulate cries became signals arousing alert- 

 ness to stimulation of various sorts long before voluntary imitation had 

 become well-developed. Instinctive imitation had doubtless also created 

 similar cries under similar circumstances, and nothing more perhaps was 

 needed, in some instances, than the recognition on the part of one of 

 two individuals that both used the same cry under the same circum- 

 stances, to produce the communication of an idea. The moment, how- 

 ever, an individual desired to make use of this recognition for the pur- 

 pose of communicating an idea, he must have used the signal-sound as a 

 model, knowing it to be the sound which the other individual associated 

 with the idea he wished to convey. This purposive repetition of the 

 model-sound involved voluntary imitation whether the model was the 

 idea of another individual's cry or that of his own. It is evident, how- 

 ever, that soon after voluntary imitation appeared speech must have 

 begun to arise. But many advances other than speech must have 

 occurred as soon as voluntary imitation appeared. Long before lan- 

 guage could have developed to any great extent man must have begun 

 purposively to imitate things other than cries and gestures. The unskil- 

 ful hunter must have learned new methods from the skilful. The man 

 who discovered that a club was more effective than a fist soon had many 

 followers making use of his invention. In short, voluntary imitation 

 presently entered into every phase of life wherein it became possible 

 to hand down by a psychological process the pragmatically valuable 

 results of the past experience of the race. As soon as voluntary imita- 

 tion appeared, therefore, the basis was laid for the continuity of history. 

 Speech accelerated development tremendously, but it may be surmised 

 with a considerable degree of probability that voluntary imitation of 

 useful activities was well advanced before man did much talking that 

 " accomplished things." 



Doubtless the development of whatever degree of conceptual think- 

 ing is required for voluntary imitation was a long and gradual process. 

 A prior stage in which thought was purely in recepts, to use Romanes' 

 term, must have existed for ages. There may prove to have been other 

 prior advances of an importance equal to that of voluntary imitation, 

 the exact nature of which the observer of animal behavior may yet 

 discover, but whatever may be in store in this field, it is certain that 



