FORMULAE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 1 95 



With these go, in a more positive sense, certain great motives of action 

 which, natural as they are and quasi-instinctive, become the tools of " sociali- 

 zation according to nature " very early in the individual's personal history. 

 Play and imitation, twin brothers in the scheme of the child's hereditary 

 impulses, come to assume, each alone and both together, a very extraordinary 

 role. 



By play the young animal and the child aHke come into the most fruitful 

 social relations with one another. The meaning of the varied situations of 

 Hfe is learned in play, under conditions free from the storm and stress of 

 actual serious life; and thus the functions playfully exercised are developed. 

 The great activities of later utility in the struggles of Hfe, and in the varied 

 social conditions of existence, are thus made ready. In play we find one of 

 the great meeting places of the forces of individuaHsm and collectivism. 



Imitation is another great sociaHzing function. The child naturally falls 

 to imitating^ and when once this has begun he is a veritable copying machine, 

 turning out acts, opinions, decisions, which are based with more or less correct- 

 ness upon models found in his social environment. 



By imitation he gets the ^' feel " of things that others do, and so learns to 

 value the safe and sane; by imitation, he tries on the varied ways of doing 

 things, and so learns his own capacities and limitations; by imitation he 

 actually acquires the stored up riches of the social movements of history; by 

 imitation he learns to use the tools of culture, speech, writing, manual skill, 

 so that through the independent use of these tools he may become a more 

 competent and fruitful individual; finally, it is by imitation in the way of 

 varied and effortful trial that he succeeds in being original and inventive. Of 

 this last result, more later on; here let us note simply that imitation in its 

 social role is not mere imitation, mere copying, slavish adherence to the 

 prevalent and easy ways of doing things; that would be a superficial way of 

 looking at this most extraordinary set of fimctions. Imitation to the intelli- 

 gent and earnest imitator is never slavish, never mere repetition; it is, on the 

 contrary, a means to further ends, a method of absorbing what is present in 

 others and of making it over in forms peculiar to one's own temper and 

 valuable to one's own genius. 



Armed with these impulses, the weapons of competition as well as of 

 co-operation, the young hero of the nursery begins his personal development, 

 as a center of considerate and purposeful action. The nucleus of personaHty, 

 to the outsider, is the bodily self; it is a sort of social unit ; but to the individ- 

 ual himself, the distinction between persons as minds and persons as mere 

 bodily presences soon springs up and takes on greater and greater signifi- 

 cance. For this is not an inborn distinction. The sense of self is not a 

 ready-made and perfect gift ; it is a slow growth, the stages of which show in 

 a most interesting way the interaction of the individualistic and social 

 factors. 



It begins, probably, when the child notes the capricious and seemingly 

 lawless actions of persons, in contrast with the more regular and mechanical 

 actions of things, such as the swinging of the pendulum, the opening and 

 closing of the door, the roUing of the ball upon the floor. Persons do the 

 most unexpected, the most inconsistent things. And it is these things that 



