192 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 
I have elsewhere * given some account of them. It may be 
specially noted that we have in this case that circular mode 
of activity on which, as we have seen, Professor Mark Bald- 
win lays so much stress. Professor Thorndike seems to regard 
the phenomena presented by imitative birds as somewhat of a 
mystery, and as the result of a specialization removed from 
the general course of mental development. And he says that, 
until we know whether there is in birds which repeat sounds 
any tendency to imitate in other lines, we cannot connect 
these phenomena with anything found in the mammals, or 
use them to advantage in a discussion of animal imitation as 
the forerunner of human. Upon the view, however, that such 
imitation is primarily instinctive and only secondarily intelli- 
gent, there seems no reason why we should expect to find 
imitation in birds running along any other lines than those 
which the hereditary instinct has marked out. And so far 
from being unable to use the phenomena to advantage in a 
discussion of animal imitation as a forerunner of human, we 
may perhaps see in them the best examples, other than those 
afforded by apes, of that intelligent imitation which is the 
precursor of the rational and reflective imitation of the boy or 
girl. 
In the case of the human child we may see the three stages 
in the development of vocal imitation. First, the instinctive 
stage, where the sound which falls upon the ear is a stimulus 
to the motor-mechanism of sound production. Secondly, the 
intelligent stage of the profiting by experience. Intelligence, 
as we have seen, aims at the reinstatement of pleasurable 
situations, and the suppression of those which are the reverse. 
The sound-stimulus, the motor effects in behaviour, and the 
resulting sound-production coalesce into a conscious situation, 
which appears to be pleasurable or the reverse, according as 
the sound produced resembles or not the initiating sound- 
stimulus. If we assume that the resemblance of the sounds he 
utters to the sounds he hears is itself a source of pleasurable 
satisfaction (and this certainly seems to be the case), intelligence, 
* © Habit and Instinew,” pp. 174-180. 
