ii6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 421 



a motor stimulus as pleasure and pain. Here they are in 

 direct conflict. Can we say that H. balanced the pleasure 

 of scratching and the pain of punishment, and decided the 

 case on this egoistic basis ? And, if suggestion be an origi- 

 nal stimulus, why may it not be an altruistic suggestion, — 

 my pain and your pleasure as well as your pain and my 

 pleasure ? 



There are two (or more) suggestions, sg and sg' (Fig. 

 4), each either sensory or ideal. They arouse a motor 

 process which is the union of two processes (mp and mp'). 

 In the instance above, the scratch suggestion mp controls, 

 gives the re-action mt and its consciousness mc. 



4. Imitative Suggestion. — For a long period after the 

 child has learned to use all his senses, and after his memory 

 is well developed, he lacks entirely the instinct of imitation. 

 I have been quite unable in H.'s case to confirm the results 

 of Preyer, who attributes imitation to his child at the age of 

 three to four months. I experimented again and again, and 

 in a great variety of ways, but failed to get any thing like a 

 decisive case of imitation till the eighth month; that is, till 

 after the will was clearly beginning to show itself. During 

 this period, however, H.'s consciousness was a rich field of 

 suggestive re-actions of the other classes. There were, earli- 

 er, a few instances of apparent imitations of movements of 

 opening and closing the hands, but they turned out to be 



FIG. 4. — DELIBERATIVE SUGCiESTION. 



accidental. I think it likely that observers are often de- 

 ceived as respects imitation, taking happy coincidences for 

 true instances ; yet it is possible that H. was peculiar in re- 

 gard to this. 



When the imitative impulse does come, it comes in ear- 

 nest. For many months after its rise it may be called, 

 perhaps, the controlling impulse, apart from the ordinary 

 life processes. As a phenomenon, it is too familiar to need 

 description. Its importance in the growth of the child's 

 mind is largely in connection with the development of lan- 

 guage and of muscular movement. 



As a factor in motor development, — the aspect now before 

 us, — the phenomena are plain enough, and may be divided 

 into two general classes, called simple imitation and persist- 

 ent imitation.^ By simple imitation I mean to characterize 

 re-actions in which the movement does not really imitate, but 

 is the best the child can do. He does not try to improve by 

 making a second attempt. This is evidently a case of simple 

 sensori-motor suggestion on the physiological side, and is 

 peculiar psychologically only because of the more or less 

 remote approsimation the re-action has to the stimulating 



^ Preyer's distinction between "spontaneous " and "deliberate" imitation, 

 Senses and Will, p. 293. He is wrong, I think, in making both classes volun- 

 tary. The contrary is proved for spontaneous imitation by the fact that 

 many elements of facial expression are never acquired by blind children. 

 We could hardly say that facial expression was a voluntary acquisition, how- 

 ever gradually it may have been acquired. 



movement. If this were all that imitations are worth, we 

 might omit their further treatment. 



But in persistent imitation we have a very different phe- 

 nomenon, — a phenomenon which marks the transition, as I 

 conceive, from suggestion to will, — from the re-active to 

 the voluntary consciousness. Such imitation is necessary, 

 I think, as a stimulus to the tentative voluntary use of 

 the muscles. Professor Bain's theory that all voluntary 

 movements are led up to by accidental spontaneous re-actions 

 which result in pleasure or pain, will not hold water for an 

 instant in the presence of the phenomena of imitation. Sup- 

 ■pose H. endeavoring in the crudest fashion to put a rubber 

 on the end of a pencil, after seeing me do it, — one of her 

 earliest imitations. What a chaos of ineffective movements ! 

 But after repeated efforts she gets nearer and nearer it, till 

 at last, with daily object-lessons from me, she accomplishes 

 it. Here, simply by imitation, one of the most valuable 

 combinations for future manual manipulation is acquired. 

 Suppose there had been no impulse to do what she saw me 

 do, no motor force in the simple idea of the rubber on the 

 pencil: what happy combination of Mr. Bain's spontaneous 

 movements would have produced this result, and how long 

 would it have taken the child if she had waited for ex- 

 periences actually pleasurable and painful to build up this 

 motor combination ? 



In cases of imitation there is no chance for association as 

 such. The movements imitated are new as combinations. 

 It is probable, it is true, that various ideas of former move- 

 ments are brought up, and that the child has the conscious- 

 ness of general motor capacity, resting, in the first place, 

 upon spontaneous impulsive re actions; but on this insuflB.- 

 cient assooiational basis he strikes out into the deepest water 

 of untried experience. For this reason, as was said above, 

 I believe that persistent imitation comes only after there is 

 will; meaning by " will," at this stage of it, that this con- 

 sciousness of motor capacity is not held down to actual 

 memories of past re-actions, but becomes generalized mentally 

 and motorly beyond its legitimate physiological data. Phys- 

 iologically, we would expect that the brain energy released 

 by a new stimulus (pencil-rubber combination) would pass 

 off by the motor channels "already fixed by spontaneou, 

 reflex, and associated re-actions; i.e., that the child would 

 be content with a motor re-action of any kind. But not so. 

 It is not content until it produces a new re-action of a par- 

 ticular kind, and we must suppose that in consequence of 

 each effort of the child the physical basis is in some way 

 modified, in so far violating strict nervous association, until 

 the one re-action imitated is performed. 



The peculiarity of persistent imitative suggestion, accord- 

 ingly, is that it involves will, and yet is not a voluntary 

 motor re-action. The muscular movements in putting on the 

 rubber is not the child's pictured end: the idea of the rubber 

 on the pencil is her end. Nor is she conscious of the motor 

 re-action as a means to that end. It is probable that the 

 muscular movements figure in her consciousness, if at all, 

 only in the vaguest and most undefined associative way.^ 

 They represent simply the nervous channel into which the 

 eye-stimulus empties itself. 



Further, the re-action at which imitative suggestion aims 

 js one which will reproduce the stimulating impression, and 



1 See Preyer, Senses and Will, p. 254. 



