Human Infancy and the Recapitulation Theory 69 



supplementations of habit. In the view of Morgan intelligence 

 has two functions, that of setting up an equipment of specialized 

 habits during immaturity, and that of the readjustment of these 

 habits in some degree in maturity. "It is in the period of youth- 

 ful plasticity that intelligence has its most important part to 

 play so far as the genesis of habit is concerned." 10 Some intel- 

 ligence remains over for adult life; the higher the mental grade 

 and the more varied the conditions, the greater is the balance 

 left over. But habit formation is peculiarly the affair of infancy. 



Another significant idea from this writer, taken in turn from 

 Hudson's "Naturalist in La Plata," as Morgan acknowledges, 

 is that of tradition, or the transmission by imitation from one 

 generation to another of successful acquired modes of behavior. 

 This fact of imitation has been greatly emphasized in human 

 society since by Tarde, 11 Baldwin, 12 Royce, 13 and Sumner. 14 



Imitation and tradition are to be regarded as two sides of the 

 same fact, the one standing for the process by which the other 

 is brought about. More recent study of animal behavior has 

 tended to minimize the amount of imitation among animals in 

 general, but its presence among the primates is admitted, and 

 in the human species imitation and tradition are so impressive 

 as to be considered by some authorities the most significant of 

 all the factors of its life. It would follow logically, although 

 confirmation from a sufficient knowledge of the life of the higher 

 primates is still lacking, that in the evolution of man and espe- 

 cially in the progression from the ape-like to the human condi- 

 tion, biological well-being and success were closely identified 

 with the transmission of socially derived habits or tradition, 

 in connection with neuro-muscular plasticity. Nature's method 

 of guaranteeing this transmission was through the invention of 

 the instinct or impulse of imitation, a special device, according 

 to Groos, by which modes of action not resting upon well-defined 

 instinctive tendencies could be taken up by the young wholesale, 

 so to speak. There seems to be no other way of adequately ac- 



" p. 157. 



« Laws of Imitation, 2nd. ed. trans., 1902. 



" Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 1895. 



" Outlines of Psychology, 1903. 



« Folkways, 1907. 



