IMITATION 183 
will follow suit; and this would commonly be termed an 
imitative action; but there is here no reproduction of the 
initiating stimulus. Very much of the behaviour which is 
usually ascribed to imitation produces effects in consciousness 
quite different from that of the original stimulation. It is 
only by selecting one’s examples that one finds in them evidence 
in favour of Professor Baldwin’s “circular process.” 
Since, therefore, this circular mode of activity is neither a 
characteristic of all conscious imitation, nor a distinguishing 
mark of all adaptive organic action, the grounds on which 
Professor Baldwin bases his extended usage of the term appear 
to be fallacious. And in this usage we cannot follow him. 
Turning now to Professor Thorndike’s very different con- 
tention—that animals even so high as the cat and dog do not 
imitate in the sense of forming an association leading to an 
act from having seen another animal perform the act in a 
certain way—we may first describe some of his ingenious 
experiments designed to submit the matter to the test of ob- 
servation under controlled conditions. * 
Experiments were made with chicks in several ways. They 
were, for example, placed in pens, from which, in each case, 
“there was only one possible way of escape, to see if they 
would learn it more quickly when another chick did the thing 
several times before their eyes. The method was to give some 
chicks their first trial with an imitation possibility, and their 
second without, while others were given their first trial with- 
out and their second with. If the ratio of the average time of 
the first trial to the average time of the second is smaller in 
the first class than it is in the second class, we may find 
evidence of this sort of influence by imitation. Though 
imitation may not be able to make an animal do what he 
would otherwise not do, it may make him do quicker a thing 
he would have done sooner or later anyway. As a fact, the 
ratio is much longer. This is due to the fact that a chick, 
when in a pen with another chick, is not afflicted by the dis- 
comfort of loneliness, and so does not try to get out. So the 
* “ Animal Intelligence,” pp. 47-64. 
