174 Habit and Instinct. 



instinctive and what is innate. Both have their foundations 

 in heredity. But we have restricted the term instinctive to 

 the congenitally responsive behaviour evoked by an external 

 stimulus under given internal conditions. We have treated 

 the instinctive activity from the frankly objective and 

 biological point of view, and have regarded the instinctive 

 response as prior to experience. That which is innate, on 

 the other hand, is the inherited tendency to deal with these 

 data in certain ways. Acquisition is impossible if there 

 be not an innate power of association, and if there be not 

 innate susceptibilities to pleasure and pain. The in- 

 stinctive response as such is independent of association, 

 and independent of the pleasurable or unpleasant effects 

 of that response. That which is instinctive is the basis 

 of definite congenital and organic responses ; that which is 

 innate is the basis of acquisition, rendered more or less 

 definite in experience, and leading up to habit. Instinctive 

 imitation is thus an organic response independent of ex- 

 perience; intelligent imitation is due to conscious 

 guidance, the result of experience, and based upon the 

 innate satisfaction which accompanies the act of repro- 

 ductive imitation. 



Let us now pass on to consider the place of intelligent 

 imitation — what we may perhaps fairly term imitation 

 proper — in the animal kingdom. Its very ubiquity makes 

 it difficult to exemplify in a way that shall be adequately 

 convincing. The abnormal arrests our attention more 

 readily than the normal, and hence the cases of imitation 

 usually cited are generally of this class. In the song of 

 birds, for example, imitation is probably a most important 

 factor, but it is chiefly the imitation of another species 

 that arrests our attention. Thus the mocking-bird's feats 

 of imitation are as familiar as an oft-told tale. Mr. L. M. 

 Loomis told Mr. F. M. Chapman of one in South Carolina 



