THE PLAY OP ANIMALS. 207 



beer or coffee at a popular ^ resort/ or an ordinary ball- 

 room, are examples of this. Not only are we amused at 

 seeing so many strangers, but there is a distinct stimu- 

 lation at feeling our share in their collective life. The 

 perception of them is the stimulus, and our reaction 

 upon it is our tendency to join them and do what they 

 are doing, and our unwillingness to be the first to leave 

 off and go home alone." * 



From the last words it is evident that such mass 

 plays are based on imitation, and that social influences 

 of the greatest importance belong to them. G. Tarde 

 regards it as tlie fundamental principle of all society. 

 There are, he says, in his daring way of drawing analo- 

 gies, three great laws of repetition: undulation in phys- 

 ics, the nutritive-generative principle in physiology, and 

 imitation in psychology. Imitation makes society: 

 " la societe c'est Vimitation." f 



Since, then, imitation has so much to do with the 

 social life of men and animals, we are not surprised to 

 find it prominent in their sports. Herds and flocks 

 unite in various games, vocal practice, and even in try- 

 ing the arts of courtship and combat, when the playful 



* W. James, The Principles of Psyeholop^y, ii. p. 428. 



f Gr. Tarde, Qu'est-oe qu'une societe? Revue philosophiqne, 

 xviii (1884). See the article on Imitation by J. Mark Baldwin 

 (Mind, 1894), who regards the change produced by expansion and 

 contraction in protoplasm as the first manifestation of organic 

 reactions of the imitative or "circular" type which therefore ])e- 

 conies a central phenomenon of life. Professor Baldwin has now 

 developed his psychological theory of imitation in his work. Mental 

 Development in the Child and the Race, to which I have already 

 frequently referred. And in his later work (1897), Social and 

 Ethical Interpretations in ^Mental Development, he shows that the 

 sense of self upon which social organization rests is developed only 

 by imitation. 



