182 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 
phenomenon of organic imitation? Secondly, does all con- 
scious imitation tend to reproduce the imitating stimulus ? 
Professor Baldwin speaks of organic imitation and conscious 
imitation as “each a circular process tending to maintain 
certain stimulations and to avoid others.” Now, it may be 
granted that the tendency to maintain or repeat certain stimu- 
lations may be regarded as a “circular process.” But can the 
avoidance or non-repetition of others be so regarded? A large 
proportion alike of the hereditary adaptations and the acquired 
accommodations of behaviour are directed to this avoidance or 
non-repetition of hurtful stimulations. The instinctive shrink- 
ing of a chick from an aggressive animal is just as much 
adaptive as the repeated cuddling beneath the warm wing of 
the mother. The avoidance of nauseous cinnabar caterpillars 
is just as much an accommodation to the constitution of the 
environment as the reiterated seizing of palatable grubs. Even 
low down in the scale of animal life, Dr. Jennings’s observations 
on Paramecia seem to show that the retention of favourable 
stimulation is not due to its direct influence, but is the indirect 
result of a reaction to the relatively unfavourable stimulation 
which occurs when the Paramecium passes away from more 
satisfactory surroundings. A favourable environment is secured 
through the avoidance of the unfavourable. Unless, therefore, 
we exclude adaptive avoidance from the category of adaptations, 
we cannot regard all organic adaptation in a changing environ- 
ment as a phenomenon of organic imitation due to a circular 
process tending to the reinstatement of stimulation. 
Passing to the second question—Does all conscious imitation 
tend to reproduce the initiating stimulus ?—we cannot un- 
reservedly give an affirmative answer. It is true that when a 
child more or less successfully reproduces a sound which falls 
upon its ear, a like sound stimulus is afforded which may by a 
circular process incite to renewed effort, and lead to yet more 
successful reproduction. But when Professor Baldwin’s child, 
between nine and ten months old, imitated certain movements 
of the lips, there was no reproduction of the initiating visual 
stimulus, A chick seeing its companions run away or crouch 
