202 REPETITION SECT. XXII. 3. 2- 



and fenfations, and thus conftitutes all the operations of our 

 minds. 



2 Imitations refolve themfelves into four kinds, voluntary, 

 fenfitive, irritative, and affociate. The voluntary imitations are, 

 when we imitate deliberately the actions of others, either by 

 mimicry, as in a&ing a play, or in delineating a flower ; or in 

 the common actions of our lives, as in our drefs, cookery, lan- 

 guage, manners, and even in our habits of thinking. 



Not only the greateft part of mankind learn all the common 

 arts of life by imitating others, but brute animals feem capable 

 of acquiring knowledge with greater facility by imitating each 

 other, than by any methods by which we can teach them ; as 

 dogs and cats when they are fick, learn of each other to eat 

 grafs ; and I fuppofe that by making an artificial dog perform 

 certain tricks, as in dancing on his hinder legs, a living dog 

 might be eafily induced to imitate them ; and that the readier! 

 way of inftrucling dumb animals is by praclifing them with 

 others of the fame fpecies, which have already learned the arts 

 we wifh to teach them. The important ufe of imitation in ac- 

 quiring natural language is mentioned in Sedion XVI. 7. and 

 8. on Inftind. 



3. The fenfitive imitations are the immediate confequences 

 of pleafure or pain, and thefe are often produced even contrary 

 to the efforts of the will Thus many young men on feeing 

 cruel furgical operations become fick, and fome even feel pain 

 in the parts of their own bodies, which they fee tortured or 

 wounded in others ; that is, they in fome meafure imitate by the 

 exertions of their own fibres the violent actions which they 

 witnefled in thofe of others. In this cafe a double imitation 

 takes place, firft the obferver imitates with the extremities of 

 the optic nerve the mangled limbs, which are prefent before his 

 eyes ; then by a fecond imitation he excites fo violent aclion of 

 the fibres of his own limbs as to produce pain in thofe parts of 

 his own body, which he law wounded in another. In thefe pains 

 produced by imitation the effecl has fome fimilarity to the caufe, 

 which diftinguifhes them from thofe produced by affbciation ; 

 as the pains of the teeth, called tooth-edge, which are produced 

 by aflbciation with difagreeable founds, as explained in Sec"l. 

 XVI. 10. 



The effect of this powerful agent, imitation, in the moral 

 world, is mentioned in Seel. XVI 7. as it is the foundation of 

 all our intellectual fympathies with the pains and pleafures of 

 others, and is in confequence the fource of all our virtues. For 

 in what confirls our fympathy with the miferies, or with the 

 joys, of our fellow creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of 



ideas 



