Chapter XVI: Part II (5)

Having made this critical review of the subject, I may give my undivided attention to the effort to prove that art, in its last analysis, does include the sexual element along with all else that appeals to the feelings, and so is often converted into a love play. But we must distinguish such play as it is manifested in artistic production and that which appears in æsthetic enjoyment. We often find courtship carried on by means of the former, while the latter is concerned only with the playful enjoyment of sexual excitement, unconnected with any serious aim. Courtship by means of artistic production is a subject which has been pretty thoroughly canvassed and will have but brief mention here. It exhibits a playful character, such as the above-mentioned forms of self-display when the wooer enjoys the mere act of unfolding his charms. Among savages it is usually confined to the use of pigments and dancing. Westermarck and Grosse have recently enumerated the principal uses of the former. But, as I have said, such decoration is not exclusively for courtship purposes; the desire to outshine other tribes is often a powerful motive. The psychological aspect of this sort of thing is interesting. The later development of fashion teaches us that mere delight in finery and ornament is a very small part of it; there is a complication of relations. When we see an elegant old gentleman at a watering place with a flower in his buttonhole, we attribute his state of mind to a belated feeling of youthfulness; and so the adornments of savages and the coquette’s toilet owe their effect less to a direct appeal to the senses than to their symbolic meaning. They betray the demand for ornament, and this demand again discloses the adaptability of ornamentation to sexual purposes. Our peasant youths at the fairs put labels in their hats announcing to the interested public that they are in the matrimonial market, and all decoration for courtship purposes says the same thing in effect. Their suggestiveness is not so much in the external appearance as in their symbolism,[518] and this may explain the fact that what is merely striking is as effective in primitive and sometimes in modern decoration as what is really beautiful.

Savage dances sometimes serve the purposes of courtship, and, of course, the wild intoxication of movement which they lead to is itself calculated to produce sexual excitement. Notes on obscene dances may be found in the works of Waitz-Gerland (Australian), Turner (Samoan), Ehrenreich (Brazilian), Powers (Californian), Fritsch (Zulu), and others. When such dances serve the purposes of courtship they are not uninteresting. When they consist of a wild _mêlée_ in which participators and spectators are thrown into a condition of ecstasy, the idea of discriminating choice on the part of the women is difficult to apply. There is, however, no such difficulty in the way of my theory that violent excitement is a necessary preliminary. I give two examples from the bird world: “The black-headed ibis of Patagonia, which is almost as large as a turkey, carries on a strange wild game in the evening. A whole flock seems to be suddenly crazed; sometimes they fly up in the air with startling suddenness, move about in a most erratic way, and as they near the ground start up again and so repeat the game, while the air for kilometres around vibrates with their harsh, metallic cries. Most ducks confine their play to mock battles on the water, but the beautiful whistling duck of the La Plata conducts them on the wing as well. From ten to twenty of them rise in the air until they appear like a tiny speck, or entirely disappear. At this great height they often remain for hours in one place, slowly separating and coming together again while the high, clear whistle of the male blends admirably with the female’s deeper, measured note, and when they approach they strike one another so powerfully with their wings that the sound, which is like hand-clapping, remains audible when the birds are out of sight.”[519] In cases where this sort of orgy, indulged in by flocks of birds, serves sexual purposes, as it probably often does, my theory proves to be more explanatory than Darwin’s, and the same may be said of our general dance with its direct appeal to such stimuli. It is much less likely that some of the dancers will single out special partners than that participant and spectators alike will be thrown into an ecstatic state in which all restraints are cast off.

In considering such dances the question must be met whether they, like the courtship arts of birds, are referable to instinctive tendencies. It may be inferred from the introductory part of this section that I am somewhat sceptical as to that. I do, indeed, doubt whether human dancing should be attributed exclusively to courtship, and I think we can hardly emphasize too much the fact that while man possesses the full complement of instincts, they are subordinated in his case in favour of intellectual adaptations. Of birds we know with comparative certainty that they must learn and practise their courtship arts practically without teachers; but no one will affirm that individual man without tradition or example would turn to ornament and dancing on the awakening of sexual impulse. Only a general disposition toward self-display is instinctive, the how and when being left to invention and tradition. Perhaps some particularly significant movements are specializations of this disposition, as, for instance, the hip movement, which is accentuated in the waltz and which has influenced plastic art since the time of Praxiteles. There must be much more thorough investigation of the subject before we can affirm even the possibilities respecting it.

Of the other arts, that of lyric poetry is about the only one which we need to consider in relation to courtship, and this more especially in its connection with music. Among primitive races dancing invariably accompanies the recital of such poetry. The troubadour is the product of a higher social condition. The lyric, too, played an important part as an instrument of courtship in Mohammedan civilization during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as is apparent from the Thousand and One Nights Tales. “The ear often loves before the eye,” to quote from one of them which deals with the winning power of beautiful verse. In the story of Hajat Alnufus and Ardschir the amorous prince, who is disguised as a merchant, seeks to awaken the love of the proud princess by means of passionate verse, and the description is fine of how a tender interest is aroused in the coy and high-spirited beauty toward the persistent wooer, though it develops, it is true, into genuine love only under his gaze. “O Hajat Alnufus,” runs one of these love poems, “make happy with thy presence a lover whom absence is undoing. My life was surrounded with joy and bliss, but now the nights find me raving and mad with love. Must I always sigh and moan, always be cast down and hopeless? All night long sleep shuns me, and I gaze wearily at the stars. Oh, have pity on a dismayed and suffering lover whose heart is sad and his eyes weary with watching!” In the story of Hasan of Bassrah we have a feminine counterpart of this which deserves to be numbered among the finest pearls of Oriental lyrical poetry. Hasan’s lady is so rejoiced to see him after a long separation that she breaks forth in the following rhapsody: “I breathe in the air which wafts from your land and refreshes you in the morning. I ask the wind about you whenever it blows from that way; I think of no one but you.”

More common are the instances which, while not directed toward a special wooing, yet have the character of play with the sexual emotions which is pleasurable in itself, and involve the question of the connection of such stimuli with æsthetic enjoyment. I maintain that this element is much more conspicuous in the use of cosmetics and in dancing than is actual courtship, and even in the ornamentation which seems far from the sphere of sex, and in architecture itself love play is not entirely lacking at any stage of its development. Von den Steinen has told us what pleasure the Brazilian tribes take in decorating their tools with conventionalized _ulúri_, which are triangular pieces of bark such as the women are fond of wearing. It is very conspicuous in all the adornments of these people, who make no secret of their fondness for it. This feeling, too, is at the foundation of the employment of nude female figures for decorative purposes in renaissance art. Obscene exaggerations of the masculine figure are not uncommon in plastic representation, and are no doubt due as much to sexuality as to any religious significance (such as the exaltation of the idea of productiveness, etc.). Nor is love play lacking in the art of cultured peoples, though here we are not confronted with the crude sensuality, which is of comparatively little psychological interest, but with that more subtile effect of the instinct, that tender, moving, melting sensation which must be felt to be understood, for it can not be described. In my Einleitung in die Aesthetik[520] I have set forth the grounds on which the philosopher Stöckl objects to representations of the nude. “As a result of original sin,” he says, “mankind is susceptible to evil passions which are aroused at the sight of nakedness, and the will is incited to connivance in the sinful lust. Of original sin and its consequences, it is true, most advocates of the nude in art are quite ignorant theoretically, and yet it is a truth testified to by the experience of every man, even though he be a student of æsthetics, that there is in us a law which is at variance with spiritual law, and that we ought to avoid everything that tends to bring us under its power, to which things nakedness in art belongs.”[521] Whatever protest can be made against this in the name of art, and however it may be insisted that there is such a thing as chaste nudity, still I am convinced that in the extraordinary attractiveness of the work of Praxiteles and Canova, for example, subtile emotions connected with the sexual life are involved. I have noticed that for the uneducated person Canova’s Cupid and Psyche is regarded as embodying the acme of sculptured beauty without the observer having the remotest suspicion of the source of much of his intensity of admiration. The higher the æsthetic culture, however, the less as a rule (not always) is this force operative, and therefore directly in the interests of chastity the answer may be made to Stöckl’s challenge, that an artist may experience a purely æsthetic enjoyment of form in the nude figure which is hardly possible to the uncultivated person.

It is hardly necessary to dilate on the influence of the instinct in question in the sphere of painting. Here, too, it is more evident to the average man, with his naïve enjoyment of materiality, than to the connoisseur. Andrée tells us that many tribes of men cherish indecent pictures and statues which have no religious symbolism, and we all know how common is the habit of drawing such things on fences and walls. But more significant than such grossness is the popular preference for sentimentally suggestive pictures. The passionate admiration of some neuropathic persons for the flat illustrations of a fashion paper is but a pathological exaggeration and distortion of the amazing popularity of some insipid, wide-eyed, simpering feminine figure, and the almost worse blond hero of many so-called artists. It is not necessary to call names, but a student of psychological æsthetics should not shrink from stating _sine ira_ the true (though often unconscious) grounds for the admiration bestowed on such things, nor ignore its significance.

While music comes in the province of our inquiry only when the accompanying words, situation, and explanations, or the subjective temper of the hearer lends to the tone movements a sexual meaning,[522] poetry, on the contrary, as has been said, plays a very large part in the business of love, and even more so among civilized than among primitive people. Besides love lyrics, which have been sufficiently illustrated, there are narrative descriptions of love scenes and processes—not only the numerous poetic lucubrations which deserve to be designated as erotic, which means in plain English indecent, but the whole immeasurable sea of novels and romances whose leading interest depends on this theme. Many can read such tales only in their youth (boys are especially liable to this passion for romance immediately after the subsidence to their attack of Indian tales), but the majority retain their capacity for inward sympathy with the trials of lovers; and here, too, the taste of the general public is as opposed to that of connoisseurs as in the case of pictures. The ability to cater to this taste is possessed pre-eminently by women, because the false idealism which abounds in such works accompanies a certain ignorance of the facts of life which women retain oftener and longer than men. The study of some of the better class of these romances—notably those of E. Marlitt—is not without psychological interest. One of our comic papers not long since quoted this passage, ostensibly from a novel: “In an adjoining room sounded a bearded masculine voice”; and the sentence might serve as a motto for the title page of a treatise on the yellow-covered romance of the type which is so highly prized by hundreds of thousands of readers of both sexes. A favourite theme is to follow the fortunes of a young married couple who are estranged at first, as in Marlitt’s Zweiter Frau, Werner’s Glück auf, and Ohnett’s Hüttenbesitzer. It is, of course, psychologically and æsthetically interesting to follow the conversion from real or pretended aversion to attachment, a process from which, Spinoza tells us, deeper love results “quam si odium non præcessisset.” But the extraordinary attractive power of this novel specific for bringing about the desired result arises from a special stimulus not difficult to identify from our point of view, and inherent in the situation.

3. _The Comic of Sex_

This subject offers a difficult problem. The fact that all mankind, adult and child, the refined, cultured person as well as the primitive savage, the latest representative of centuries of civilization and his remotest ancestor, alike show a propensity to take pleasure in things relating to this subject, is one which we may deplore and yet can not characterize as entirely inexplicable. But we may ask why it is considered comical.

It frequently happens that the comic impression is heterogeneous, as in the ribaldry which perverts wit from its proper sphere and makes the offence against good manners take the form of a social blunder, while unintentioned indecency may raise a laugh at the expense of the perpetrator. Yet it can not be denied that the mere introduction of the sexual element is an independent source of amusement and one which requires some special explanation.

The common solution as set forth by Vischer and Zeising is to the effect that this stimulus is identical with that of any other impropriety, the laugh being at the outrage to conventionality.[523] But while this explains some cases there are others which it does not touch. Civilized man who is prohibited by strict rules of propriety any reference to such subjects may experience a feeling of triumph when he boldly bursts the bonds of custom, but with children and savages the case is quite different, and they exhibit a peculiar enjoyment of such things which is not identical with their relish of forbidden fruit. Von den Steinen tells us that the Bakaïri consider it a shameful thing to be seen eating, but do not regard the broadest reference to things sexual as the least breach of good manners.[524] Yet they too find them comic. “It is true,” says the famous and learned traveller, “that things which would seem indecent to us afforded the Bakaïri, both men and women, evident enjoyment, and if any delving pedant who considers modesty in our sense an inborn inheritance of mankind could follow the rising tide of gaiety which would have offended a member of our degenerate race, he would be obliged to admit that their hearty laugh is not shameless in our sense, nor is it an effort to conceal embarrassment. Yet it is undeniably erotic in a mild way, and resembles as much as the difference in circumstances and conditions will allow the laughter over games with us in which the two sexes are thrown together.”[525]

What, then, is the true source of this? Possibly the following considerations may serve to throw some light on it: First, it may be premised that allusion to sexual subjects has some association with the idea of physical ticklishness. “The sexual parts have a ticklishness as unique as their function, and as keen as their importance. The faintest suggestion of them has great power over the risibilities of children.”[526] More important still are two other points which make the sexual comic a special case of offensive and defensive fighting play, such as we considered in the previous chapter. The former may be inferred from the fact that this passion throws men and animals into a state of ecstasy which robs them of self-control, and, like intoxication, temporarily “disables them in the struggle for life.”[527] As a result of this the man who by word or deed actually places himself in any relation to this side of life calls forth in us a feeling of superiority which pleases us and excites our laughter. This applies especially to the amusement which all displays of amorousness induce, whether they are modest or bold—the one so long as it does not move, and the other so long as it does not disgust us. In other cases the fighting play becomes defensive, and this side of the question seems to me to exhibit more delicate psychological distinctions, since it concerns the thrill of sexual emotion which is excited in the hearer or spectator, and which, while it is agreeable, yet, coming as it does from without and therefore not under his own control, he laughingly repels it. Kant notices that amusement is generally caused by what is momentarily deceptive. If we accept the purely intellectual conception of deception—namely, that it is a shock or a slight confusion—then we may regard its conquest as a genuine triumph. Such a triumph we experience when we repel the incipient stimulation, and the contrast of ideas thus called up gives the finishing touch to the comic effect.

III. IMITATIVE PLAYS

The Tschwi negroes have a proverb to the effect that “no one teaches the smith’s son his trade; when he is ready to work God shows him how”; and I. G. Christaller obtained the following explanation from one of the aborigines: “If you have a trade, and a son who watches you at work, he easily learns it. God has implanted in children the faculty of observing and imitating, and when the son does what he has seen his father do so often it is as if he knew of himself. It is, indeed, God who teaches him!” And this childlike elucidation is not a bad one of the significance of playful imitation in life. The inborn impulse enables a child to learn alone what he either could not do at all or only after painful and wearisome teaching. Imitation is the connecting link between instinctive and intelligent conduct. Thanks to it we can add much to our accomplishments without other instruction, and in a manner agreeable to ourselves, for enjoyment of its exercise is natural, so that, to use the language of the African, it is indeed God who teaches us.

The earlier psychologists gave too little attention to imitation. The work of Tarde[528] and Baldwin[529] has first brought to many the knowledge that it is probably destined to win a prominent place in biological psychology, similar to that accorded to the idea of association in the older theories. At any rate these investigators have certainly expanded the common acceptation of the term. Tarde says of a man who unconsciously and involuntarily reflects the bearing of others or accepts outside suggestion, that he is imitating, and he regards such magnified imitation as a special case of the great cosmic law of repetition (ondulation, génération, and imitation are the three forms of “répétition universelle”). Baldwin calls stimulus-repeating repetition in general imitation (so far as it is produced by the organism itself), and so includes the alternate expansion and contraction in the lowest organic forms. According to him, the essence of imitation lies in the fact that when movement follows a stimulus, the stimulus is renewed, giving rise to what may be called “circular” reaction. Imitation of the acts of another individual, from the perception of which a duplicate act results, is a specialized form of this circular reaction. Baldwin has tried to prove that the accommodation of an organism to its environment is a phenomenon of “organic imitation,” and he grounds his new theory of “organic selection” on this principle. I can not here dwell longer on it than to say that it undertakes to mediate in the strife between neo-Darwinism and neo-Lamarckianism, since the survival of the individual with the necessary adaptibility gives selection time to produce hereditary adaptations with the same general trend (selection among coincident variations). Our purpose is best served by confining ourselves to the ordinary use of the term imitation, namely, “The repetition of the acts of one individual by another,”[530] as Lloyd Morgan has defined it.

Even this is of the greatest biological and psychological import, since it is responsible for what Baldwin calls “social heredity”; the psychic heritage or “tradition,” independent of physical heredity,[531] which hands down acquired habits from generation to generation. In using the word tradition, indeed, one naturally thinks more of habits acquired by their owner, who by precept and example imparts them to others, so that emphasis is laid first on the acts of the originator, though the inclination to impart would be fruitless without imitation on the part of the pupil. On close examination we find this literal use of the term far from satisfactory; as a rule, the acquisition of the habits of others depends entirely on the imitator, without intentional assistance from the model, a distinction which finds expression in the common proverb that example is better than precept. The operation of this principle is apparent among the higher animals. Wallace lays great stress on it, though in a somewhat partial way. Weismann employs the word in its wider sense when he says: “A young finch which grows up alone sings untaught the song of its kind, though never so beautifully nor so perfectly as when an older bird which is a fine singer is given him as a teacher” (teacher is here not to be understood literally). “He is largely influenced by tradition, though the fundamental principle of the finch’s song is already implanted in his organization.”[532] Indeed, the data of animal psychology give us a sort of experimental proof of the importance of the imitative impulse, since animals reared away from their own kind but with some other species are often strongly influenced by the alien models, in spite of their inborn instincts. An attempt to formulate satisfactorily the biological significance of imitation results somewhat as follows: To the higher animals imitation of their own species is an important adjunct to instinct. The young finch has, indeed, an inborn instinctive capacity for producing the note characteristic of his kind, but even with the assistance of experimentation this instinct is not adequate to his needs until imitation of practised singers rounds out, so to speak, the inherited capacity by means of acquired adaptations. It is evident that there are two ways of regarding this conception of imitation. The one which Baldwin develops is implied in Weismann’s “already” when he says that the fundamental principle of the finch’s song is “already” implanted in his organism, thus implying that imitation is an essential factor in the growth of his instinctive equipment. When the more intelligent individuals of a species have by means of independent accommodations made new life conditions for themselves they can manage to keep afloat by the aid of imitation until “natural selection, by favoring and furthering” coincident variations (those tending in the same direction), can substitute the lifeboat heredity for the life-preserver tradition.

The other view, as I have presented it in The Play of Animals, takes just the opposite ground—namely, that imitation enables the animal to dispense with instinct to a much greater degree than would otherwise be possible, and so gives free play to the evolution of intelligent control. Here we find imitation tending to relegate instinct to the category of things rudimentary, while, according to the hypothesis analyzed above, it favours the growth of instinct. “It is through instinct,” says Baldwin in a notice of my earlier work, “that instincts both rise and decay.” For our purpose the second view is evidently the more serviceable, since it is undeniable that in man at least, the transition from fixed instincts to more plastic tendencies, with their partial supplanting by acquired adaptations, has been the general course of phylogenetic evolution, and to this process imitation is of extraordinary value.[533]

Finally, in pursuance of the same line of thought, it seems that imitation, at least in man, goes far beyond instinct; for by his untrammelled relations to the external world man has been enabled to climb beyond the ground floor of Nature to a higher plane of culture. Yet of all his means of improvement none to speak of are physically inherited. Thus we see the idea of imitation expanded not only to supply the deficiencies of instinct “not yet” or “no longer” adequate, but to such an extent that on it depends the “social” heritage of culture from generation to generation. This powerful impulse, without which there could be no teaching, no handing down of anything to posterity, thus becomes the indispensable medium of continuity, and therefore the necessary postulate of a cumulative human culture, as opposed to one constantly recommencing _ab ovo_. But the further question arises, May we not be justified in calling the imitative impulse itself an instinct? Once granted the fact of instinct at all, and an affirmative answer seems imperative to one who is familiar with the workings of this impulse in men and animals. On these grounds I have committed myself in my former work to the designation of imitation as an inborn instinct, and yet I must admit the logical inconsistency of this, since the very conception of instinct dispenses with the use of imitation. As commonly understood, instinct may be defined as a hereditary and clearly defined motor reaction to a given stimulus. In imitation, on the contrary, we have a thousand varying reactions, for as the stimulus (the model) varies the whole character of the reaction follows suit. What becomes of the fixed hereditary orbit if at each repetition entirely new movements, sounds unconnected with the foregoing ones, etc., are produced? “To assert that imitation is instinctive,” says Bain, “is to maintain the existence of an infinity of pre-existing associations between sensations and actions.”[534] This appears to me to be the one insurmountable objection among the many which he and others have brought against the conception of imitative instinct, and it is serious enough to cause me to modify my former position.

As a point of departure, suppose we take the assumption that, with certain limitations, a psychophysical adjustment, not in the ordinary sense instinctive, accounts for the genesis of imitation. This adjustment depends on the fact that in conscious activity a necessary connection exists between the movement produced and the antecedent concept of the movement. On the one hand, then, a movement is said to be voluntary only when the motor act is accompanied with such an idea of movement, while the other view implies that the idea itself is the thing which urges its own fulfilment.[535] If this is so, the mere concept of the movement performed by another impels us to perform it as well, and hence arises imitation. Although the difficulty is to establish the correctness of this assumption,[536] yet we may be pretty sure that the concept of a possible movement, if not crippled by antagonistic motives, does induce a certain readiness for fulfilment.[537]

This analysis, it is true, acquaints us with a necessary condition of imitation, but as little accounts for the amazing force of the impulse as the mere conception of movement accounts for voluntary activity. While every concept may impel to the corresponding motor act, we know from experience that such tendencies to form habits are checked and aborted by all sorts of hindrances, mere inertia being sufficient in many cases to counteract the motive power of such concepts. There must be special reasons, then, which lend to the perception of a movement performed by another such extraordinary motive power. We have still to meet the question whether there may not be an inherited relation developed on the foundation and presupposition of the “readiness” described above. The thousand sensory motor paths involved in it can not be determined by heredity, since they presuppose acquired experience (as in learning to speak, first crude experimentation, then imitation). But the strength of the pleasurable quality in the reproduction of a movement accomplished first by another, the strenuousness of the effort which presses for expression, as well as the seriousness of the disappointment in cases of failure, are direct results of selection and the developmental factors connected with it. In support of this proposition we may refer to the social instincts, the simplest of which is the associativeness of members of the same race, tribe, or faction. Its demands lead to a kind of imitation, at least in movement impulses (Hudson assures us that the young pampas sheep runs the instant it is born after its rapidly running mother), and the impulse to answer a warning or alluring call. Pleasure in satisfying this genuine instinct is especially evident where one of the participants (they being usually of the same species) accompanies the signal with appropriate movements.

I permit myself no judgment of the value of this hypothesis, but I believe its adequacy to meet the case is incontrovertible. Bain, too, in the fourth edition of his work cited above, has made a suggestion looking in the same direction, by which the use of the word instinct gains a certain justification. Nor should it be forgotten that to strengthen this “readiness” a whole series of other requirements may be present, which for convenience in this analysis I may call instinctive. Perhaps an illustration of a movement concept which is not imitative in the ordinary sense will make this clear. If we think intentionally and definitely of the movements involved in whistling, we are likely to feel a mild inclination to whistle, which, however, is commonly easy enough to overcome. Therefore we call it a certain “readiness” in preference to a stronger term, such as “impulse.” But let this mental process take place in church during service; the corresponding action, it is true, is not performed, because of the influence of contrary motives, but the impulse may nevertheless be so strong that their subject suffers great annoyance. Why is this? Probably because the idea of not whistling excites the instinctive impulse toward activity of the movement apparatus (experimentation) as well as the fighting instinct,[538] which resents such constraint and lends itself as a powerful auxiliary to the movement impulse. It is just in this way that the perception of movement made by another arouses special instinctive emotions, and illustrates the power of the imitative impulse. This, then, is a brief explanation of the grounds of the theory developed above, according to which imitation serves as a complement to instincts which have been weakened in favour of intellectual development or are, for whatever reason, inadequate to the individual’s life tasks.

Thus we know that a child has the impulse to make use of his motor apparatus, but this impulse is strengthened when another person makes a movement which attracts the child’s attention. The concept as such produces a mild inclination and the natural impulse to move weighs down the scale. The little girl inherits an instinct for nursing; alone, it would probably not be strong enough to originate nursing play, and quite as little would the idea of the movements involved which the child acquires from watching her mother have that result (as witness, the boy). The two together produce the familiar result. In the same way the boy’s fighting instinct impels him to imitate all warlike demonstrations. We may say that the “what” of the subject is answered by the movement idea and the “that” predominantly by the corresponding instinct, though acquired necessity of course may do the same thing. Moreover, imitation has a special affinity for curiosity and the fighting instinct. The former asks concerning an unusual movement by another, “How does he do it?” and an effort to experiment at once ensues, while the fighting instinct is on the alert at the perception of a difficulty, and loses no time in overcoming it in order to enjoy the “I can, too,” of success. This success may be a triumph over the model, since if no superiority is proved we arrogate to ourselves a capacity which up to this time has been the property of another.[539] It may, however, be mere pleasure in overcoming the difficulty, as when we try to imitate qualities which we admire in another, adding to the combative impulse the desire to make one’s self agreeable or to subordinate others. But so far as conscious playful imitation is directly concerned, the struggle with difficulties is still in the foreground. We must remember, too, that with many of the higher kinds of imitation—pre-eminently so with that which may be called constructive, since its material is invariably appropriated from foreign sources—the pleasure which is derived from recognition and from illusion adds to its play the powerful charm of imagination.

Although I have presented here only a few of the leading features which an analysis of the imitative processes reveals, enough has been said to show how complicated and difficult the problem is, and to render advisable a general summing up in more compact form of the results of these somewhat rambling observations. It will not do to call imitation instinct and leave it at that, since it is not a specific but quite an involved reaction. Moreover, the condition of imitation, namely, the tendency of movement ideas to produce corresponding movements, is not itself instinctive; but we have seen that this tendency alone does not explain all that we include under the name of imitation. This tendency of the movement ideas must have special grounds furnished by organic needs, and especially those which are instinctive; when the general idea of movement is coincident with one of these the impulse toward discharge becomes very strong. We cited in illustration of this the general movement-impulse, nursing, curiosity (how is it done?), belligerence (not only as regards distinctly hostile movements, but sensation as well), recognition, and illusion. If there is nothing else, then imitation taken alone is no instinct; it is only in very close connection to instinct, as our biological point of view has shown. It is, however, probable that these limits are not reached by the simplest imitation, such as coughing, gaping, etc., and use may be made of the hypothesis of transference (_loi de transfert_) from specific social instincts, which are themselves the result of a certain degree of imitativeness of the movement idea (agreement, answering, and the like) to movement itself in cases involving the movements belonging to a species. By this means natural selection of whatever developmental factor is employed acquires an essential impetus. Whoever regards such collaboration as probable will consider imitation as a phenomenon at least similar to instinct.

Thirdly—and this point will be quickly disposed of—when is imitation to be regarded as play? Evidently we must apply the psychological criterion; imitation is a play when it is enjoyed for its own sake.[540] Imitation transcends play at its highest and lowest limits. Simple reflex reactions, such as gaping when another gapes, fleeing because another has fled, etc., can not be called play in a psychological sense, nor is the child’s first reproduction of sounds playful. Only when he repeats the performance from enjoyment of his success can we be sure of the thing from a psychological standpoint.[541] The limit is passed in the other direction by rendering the movements mechanical, so that the imitation is performed involuntarily, no longer affording enjoyment of the act itself, as it is now directed toward the external aim. Here belong imitative teaching (so far as it is not in itself enjoyable) and the imitation of an exemplary personality or ideal which is so important to ethics. In the latter, however, a suggestion of playfulness is sometimes present, though it would seem that nothing could be further from the proper sphere of ethics; when poetic figures serve as models, however, it is sometimes hard to mark the limit between the serious and the playful.[542]

In conclusion, I would remark that imitation is almost never merely that; it is creation as well, production as well as reproduction. Close on the heels of imitation comes imagination, and that in the double meaning of the word which we have learned to know. Imagination expands the copy into a full likeness of the original, and then creates the illusion that it is the original. However, imitation may actually be new creation. As Baldwin lucidly puts it, the child’s persistent imitation calls into the arena with the satisfactory copy a host of new combinations which may be non-essential to this special aim, but which claim the child’s attention and interest as discoveries of his own. He is often so interested in these unexpected combinations as to lose sight of his original purpose, and runs to his parents or comrades to show what he can do.[543]

In turning to the consideration of imitative plays I prefer to divide them into the following groups for the sake of convenience. First, I shall speak of playful imitation of simple movements, which are preparatory to more complicated processes, distinguishing between optical and acoustic percepts. Then follow two important specialized groups, namely, the dramatic and plastic or constructive imitation; and finally I shall treat inner imitation as a fourth kind of play.

1. _Playful Imitation of Simple Movements_

(_a_) Optical Percepts

According to Tracy[544] there are few points so generally accepted without question by child psychologists in general as that of the beginning of imitation in the second half year. Yet this agreement is not so universal as might be wished. Thus Baldwin says that experiment with his own children has left him utterly unable to confirm the results reported by Preyer, who thought that he could establish the presence of imitation in the third or fourth month. Baldwin, like Egger, could not be sure of it before the ninth month.[545] Strümpell, on the other hand, thought he recognised the beginnings of it in the twelfth week. “Careful observation assured me that the child was sympathetically excited by the movements of adults in speaking. When any one was talking to him he watched the mouth instead of the eyes, as formerly; and as he watched, his own mouth moved softly, the lips assuming different positions, which undoubtedly resulted from movements in the inner part of the mouth.”[546] Baldwin may be right in regarding such very early observations as frequently misleading, since the correspondence with a model is apt to be accidental, though I do not think that this supposition explains away all cases. However, enjoyment of imitation and consequently play with it is undoubtedly of later origin. This observation of Preyer may be called playful. “In the tenth month correct copies of various movements are constantly produced, and that with full consciousness. In the often repeated hand and arm movement of ‘shaking ta-ta’ the child gazes earnestly at the person showing him the signal, and suddenly repeats it correctly.”[547] This is not the unconscious or involuntary copying of strange models which is so common with young and old. The question no doubt arises in the child’s mind, “How is that done?” and when followed by the successful accomplishment of the task, is further succeeded by the joyful feeling of “I can, too,” and playful use of the imitative faculty. The same is the case with the following instances: “As I, with the intention of amusing the child, waved my right hand to and fro before him, he suddenly began to move his own right hand in the same way, and from that time imitation slowly but surely progressed. On the day following, he was much quicker in repeating the attempt, and evidently wondering at the novelty of his experience, watched attentively now my hand and now his own.... At fifteen months the child learned to put out a candle flame. He blew six or seven times in vain, and kept grasping at the flame, laughing when it eluded him, and straining after it, while puffing and blowing with distended cheeks and lips unnecessarily protruded.... A large ring which I slowly laid on his head and took off again the child seized and unhesitatingly set it on his own head (sixteen months).”[548] Sigismund says: “The child learns all his little arts from his nurse: shaking good-bye, patting, kissing his hand, bowing, dancing, etc. But he copies of his own accord movements and attitudes which strike and please him. He walks with his father’s stick, tries to smoke a pipe, puts wood on the fire, scribbles with a pencil, and, in short, imitates whatever he sees done about him.”[549]

From a psychological standpoint there are various distinctions to be made in these instances. Sometimes it is the movement itself which forms the centre of interest, while again the result of the movement is the thing aimed at, making the muscular exertion only a means to the end (as in blowing out the light).[550] It is significant that the pleasure derived from imitation is more conspicuous in the first case; and another important question is, whether more of curiosity or more of pleasure in competition is involved, since the one likens imitative activity to intellectual experimentation, and the other assimilates it to rivalry. In the one case the child’s attention is fixed on the question, “How is that done?” He is interested in the _modus operandi_ as in the solution of a riddle. In the latter case the movement made in his presence arouses him like a challenge: “You can’t do that!” And his whole effort is directed to the proof that he can. The two factors do not necessarily exclude one another; they may work together. The exhilarating effect is heightened by strong emphasis of the fighting element; the stronger the consciousness that the task was difficult, though now achieved, the more will both child and adult enjoy the imitation—another support to our theory of the comic.

In later life, at least among civilized people, the impulse to playful imitation of the movements of others is not so strong,[551] except in the case of teasing mimicry. Most adult imitation is either of the character of involuntary adaptation, or for some specific end, and is thus partly within and partly without the sphere of play. When, for instance, the southerner who goes north to live, gradually controls his lively gesticulation, it is done unconsciously and involuntarily, unless he assists in the process because he does not wish to appear ridiculous. There may be some imitative play in the indulgence of air-castle building, founded on external models, though careful discrimination would be needed to detect it always. Then there is the callow youth who copies a leader of fashion in his manner of walking, talking, and acting, and finds sufficient satisfaction in the success of his efforts without any further aim. Sometimes, too, that imitation founded on serious effort is manifested in trifling ways. I do not know whether such amusement is now dispensed with in teaching writing; my experience was that the higher classes at school as well as the children tried to model their hand after that of some admired student, teacher, or friend. Sully’s remark that imitation is sometimes “the highest form of flattery” is applicable here.

(_b_) Playful Imitation of Acoustic Percepts

A group occupying a position midway between the foregoing and that which is now to be treated of consists of such imitations as find their antecedent in movement which appeals to the eye and yet whose real effect is in the repetition of acoustic impressions. Preyer records the following unsuccessful effort at the end of the first year: “At this period, if any one struck with a salt spoon on a glass, making it sound, my child would take up the spoon and attempt to hit the glass in the same way, but he could not get the tone.”[552] Quite similar is Baldwin’s observation: “H——’s first clear imitation was on May 24th (beginning of ninth month) in knocking a bunch of keys against a vase as she saw me do it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she repeated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a week later when, from lapse of time, she had partly forgotten how to use the keys.”[553] This sort of imitation, where, as in putting out the light, the result is more important than the movement itself, is more enduring than simple movement imitation, because the end attained is itself a source of pleasure.

The most important phase of acoustic imitation is that which aids in the child’s acquirement of speech. In studying experimentation we found that voice practice is an indispensable antecedent of learning to talk. Add to this the imitative impulse and the equipment is complete for acquiring a mother tongue. The child imitates all the kinds of sound that he hears—the howling of the wind, animal calls, coughing and sneezing—but of course he hears most constantly the sounds of his native language, and so it naturally follows that he gives it particular attention, which constantly increases as he becomes aware of his parents’ delight in his acquirements and as he perceives their practical use.

Sigismund has asked whether imitation of singing may not serve as an introduction to language lessons. He says: “The first real imitation which I observed in my boy was not repetition of articulate speech, but of a musical tone. When he was fourteen months old and had as yet imitated nothing (?), I occasionally sang to him a popular song whose melody began with a downward quarter (F-C), which interval recurred frequently and forcibly in the song. I was greatly surprised when the child, though very drowsy, sang this measure correctly, an octave higher. The following day the same thing happened, and this time without any example.... Is it the rule or the exception that the infant sings imitatively before he speaks so? Many mothers whom I have questioned were uncertain whether such singing had occurred at all, but they had probably simply failed to notice it. The result of my own investigations and observation points to the probability that children, like birds, more easily comprehend and repeat singing tones than speech.”[554] Ufer justly replies to this that while children do indeed often sing before they can talk, we have no reason to affirm that this is the rule. The child observed by Miss Shinn, for example, first made feeble efforts to imitate singing in its fortieth month.[555] It is always unsafe to attach too much importance to isolated cases. It is characteristic of man that many of his inherited capacities are left afloat, as it were, and must be anchored by individual experience, thus affording opportunity for the development of varied individuality. Consequently, it is hardly possible to be too cautious in drawing conclusions for phylogenetic evolution from ontogenetic development.

It is self-evident that not all the sound imitations which underlie the acquirement of speech are playful in a psychological sense. Words are often babbled mechanically without any special enjoyment. Moreover, as soon as the child has overcome the difficulties of the first stage of his language study and knows how to express his wants, he often makes use of expressions whose model exists only in his memory, without any playful intention. Still, a considerable part of the effort to learn to speak is properly imitative play. Preyer’s description shows us how the child put his whole soul in the attempt to understand the lip movements, and in another place (fifteen months) he says, “If he hears a new word, ‘cold,’ for example, which he can not repeat he is angry or turns his head away and cries.”[556] This demonstrates the presence of fighting play; when the effort to be able to say “I can, too,” fails in its aim, consciousness of defeat is betrayed by ill humour. Older children, too, often obtain new acquisitions in speech in a playful fashion. I kept a series of notes on Marie G—— in this connection, extending from the third to the seventh year, and they show this unmistakably. While she lived in Giessen she mimicked the dialect of the servants and many of the peculiarities of Hessian speech, and enjoyed copying the expressions of her playmates in talking to her dolls. In one note, which records the observations of a single day, I find four distinct efforts of this kind, and for many months she adopted the rather forward manner of speaking, practised by a boy of whom she was thrown with for a while. Hardly had we become settled in Basel before she made a rhyme illustrating the local accent here.

The child’s effort, on the whole, is directed toward attaining likeness to his model, whatever may be the difficulty, otherwise he would remain satisfied with his first effort when he found it understood. “Persistent imitation” constantly urges him on to improvement by repetition, constantly striving for betterment. Thus the power is gained to acquire new territory. The child’s enjoyment, too, of recognition constantly furnishes him with alluring models. This progressive method is directly opposed to natural inertia and indolence, which are so strong in some children that we occasionally find them not only satisfied with slipshod methods, but actually going back, after learning better, to the faulty pronunciation. This retrogression, too, is often playful.

We have space but for one illustration from the many which this subject affords; it relates to inventiveness in language imitation. We have already seen that the experimental play of infants (especially in reduplication) furnishes material for a science of language. The easily articulated syllables papa, mamma, baba, fafa, dada, etc., are sufficiently explained in the case of parents, who take them into their own vocabulary and thus confirm the child in their use. Many expressive words have originated in this way.[557] Darwin’s child said “mum” to signify eating or wanting to eat, and Strümpell’s daughter at ten months called all the birds that she saw from the window “tibu.”[558] Older children, too, often indulge in such playful experimental coining of words,[559] as we shall see later. At present we are more concerned with the word building founded on acoustic imitation. Preyer thinks that the only kind of word creation practised by children is the imitation of sounds which they have heard and their repetition in the form of interjections. I quote from him: “When the listener first imitates a word and then makes independent use of it depends with normal children principally on whether much effort is made to instruct them. More important psychogenetically ... are observations on the creation of words with a special sense before the beginning of genuine speech. These are not to be regarded as mistaken, imperfect, or onomatopœic imitations,... but rather as original interjections. In all my observations and studies directed especially to their investigation, I have been able to discover nothing tending to establish a connection of the hearer’s concepts with articulate sounds and syllables.... S. S. Haldemann has in his notes on the invention of words, which include a small boy’s discoveries in that line, citations from Taine, Holden, myself, and others. This boy called a cow “m,” a bell “tin-tin” (Holden’s boy said “ling-dong-mang” for a church bell), a locomotive “tschu-tschu,” the splash of something falling in water “boom,” and applied the same word to throwing, striking, falling, shooting, etc., without regard to the quality of the sound, though always with reference to some sound. In weighing the fact that a sound repeated to him, such as a trumpet call, was fitted with a word suggestive of the sound seems to show that an intelligent child attempts to imitate and repeat what he hears, despite the objection of a Max Müller, and until a better hypothesis is offered affords an object lesson in the study of the origin of language.”