PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 127 



rails will fence the whole subsequent career. 

 Blessed is the child whose parent now recognizes 

 and conscientiously uses his opportunity, which is 

 very ample, but once passed, can never be recalled. 

 Imitation precedes the acquisition of language 

 and is a powerful aid in its acquirement. Indeed, 

 language is acquired through the imitation of 

 sounds. While imitation is an activity which the 

 lower animals exercise, and is sometimes ac- 

 counted a power of low grade for that reason, yet 

 in the forms above mimicry only self-acting be- 

 ings or souls imitate. Not only is language its 

 product, but habit is also: for habit is nothing 

 more than self-imitation. Underneath it lies a 

 power which gives it all the greater effect in char- 

 acter-formation, the power of admiration or love. 

 "The individual sees ideals before him and im- 

 personates them; loves them, and imitates them. 

 Gradually he acquires as a second nature his 

 ideals, and must keep growing on into new and 

 higher ideals." Thus imitation is based on love, 

 and it is emphatically true of the actively appro- 

 priating nature of a child that what he loves he 

 becomes as true as that other law : what he does 

 he becomes. Imitation plays an important role 

 from another point of view : it is a sort of eman- 

 cipation from a self without content to a self 

 which he admires. Here, as everywhere, nature 

 abhors a vacuum. Imitation is powerful again, 

 because it begins so early, about the fifteenth 

 week, and holds its compelling place on until rea- 



