IMITATION AMONG ATOMS AND ORGANISMS. 495 



body, but also in mind not only in permanent and fundamental 

 characters, but also in temporary and superficial characters. If 

 men were exactly alike in every respect, we should find the great- 

 est ease of association between men and men generally, as dis- 

 tinguished from association of beings human and beings not 

 human. Yet upon the fundamental characters in which all men 

 are alike there are superposed by advancing social and industrial 

 complexity those superficial characters in which, for such char- 

 acters, the members of particular groups come to be, on the one 

 hand, more alike one another than, for the same characters, they 

 can be alike men in general; and on the other, more unlike each 

 other than, for the same characters, they can be alike men in 

 general. Hence, even among human beings fundamentally alike 

 we shall find abundant scope for movements both of association 

 and dissociation. 



First note the superior ease, even pleasure, which character- 

 izes the relations of likes temporarily or permanently associated, 

 and observe how, in the very facility of such relations, we are 

 entitled to see a satisfaction of the demand that likes shall be 

 brought together. The illustrations naturally take a wide range. 

 Men of the same vocation, for example, find intercourse with 

 each other, for the scope and ends of such vocations, much 

 easier than with those engaged in other vocations. It is from 

 likeness within industrial groups that the camaraderie of the 

 trades and professions draws its spirit. The pleasure, again, 

 with which artists, musicians, scientific and literary men come 

 together manifestly has its origin in likeness of common pursuits, 

 tastes, and aspirations. That facility of association is at its high- 

 est between men of like politics, men of like faith, men of like 

 aims in any field of activity, has long been proverbial. Societies 

 and clubs of every kind constitute so many classes of likes within 

 which the elements of resistance are at a minimum, and this not 

 because each individual is always or even often wholly like his 

 fellow-member, but because there is a resemblance between them 

 on some one or more sides which, being permanent, at least for 

 the time, and valid for the ends of the association, facilitates the 

 intercourse of all who during that time and for those ends come 

 into contact with each other. Even when men gather for only 

 temporary and general purposes such as for those of social en- 

 joyment we often hear of religion or politics being tabooed, and 

 this is done obviously as a means of avoiding the resistances of 

 unlikeness of bringing forward only those sides of human na- 

 ture on which the associated individuals are for the time being 

 alike. Intercourse is also much easier within than without the 

 limits of class; the poor find among the poor the greatest fa- 

 cility of relation with their fellow-beings; so the possessors of 



