138 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 
conative attitude is that of imitation. Miss Romanes has 
described how skilfully a capuchin imitated the actions neces- 
sary to unlock a trunk. Jt does not seem necessary to assume 
that reflective imitation is here exemplified. The monkey 
need not regard the key and lock as the related parts of a 
puzzle to be practically solved, need not have any free idea of 
the difficulty it presents, need not in unlocking the trunk 
grasp the true nature of the difficulty or have any conception 
of its solution. Every several act of the capuchin, the seizing 
the key, the directing it here or there, and so on, is already 
supplied with the impulse of which Dr. Thorndike speaks. 
Attention, itself charged with impulse, directs and combines 
these pre-existing impulses to a new end. And since that 
which directs the attention is the act of another, we call the 
procedure imitative. But the varied and persistent effort 
differs in no essential respect from that of a two days’ chick, 
which pecks again and again at some speck which catches its 
eye, or that of a nestling jay, which will peck for long at some 
rail or piece of wire in its cage, twisting and turning its bill 
in many and varied ways. And success in opening the trunk 
is reached by the capuchin, not, it would seem, through any 
real appreciation of the essential kernel of the practical pro- : 
blem, but through the chance results of many varied efforts. 
Although in no other animals is it developed to so high a 
degree as in the monkeys, interest in the doings of others is 
an attitude by no means rare, and affords the basis of intelli- 
gent imitation. Perhaps the conditions in Dr. Thorndike’s 
experiments were not the best for the development of such 
interest in the procedure of another. And in any case the 
imitation of a particular mode of procedure, reached by the 
gradual defining of the impulse, could hardly be expected in 
the absence of the series of experiences by which that defini- 
tion had been reached, unless the cat were capable of what 
has been above spoken of as reflective imitation. 
If, then, we agree to exclude from the category of imita- 
tive behaviour in animals, on the one hand, any “ circular 
process”? which may occur in the same individual, and on the 
