_Imitation_. Man has always been recognized as the imitative animal
_par excellence_. And there is hardly a book on psychology, however old,
which has not devoted at least one paragraph to this fact. It is
strange, however, that the full scope and pregnancy of the imitative
impulse in man has had to wait till the last dozen years to become
adequately recognized. M. Tarde led the way in his admirably original
work, "Les Lois de l'Imitation"; and in our own country Professors Royce
and Baldwin have kept the ball rolling with all the energy that could be
desired. Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue
of his imitativeness. We become conscious of what we ourselves are by
imitating others--the consciousness of what the others are precedes--the
sense of self grows by the sense of pattern. The entire accumulated
wealth of mankind--languages, arts, institutions, and sciences--is
passed on from one generation to another by what Baldwin has called
social heredity, each generation simply imitating the last. Into the
particulars of this most fascinating chapter of psychology I have no
time to go. The moment one hears Tarde's proposition uttered, however,
one feels how supremely true it is. Invention, using the term most
broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the
human race historically has walked.

Imitation shades imperceptibly into _Emulation_. Emulation is the
impulse to imitate what you see another doing, in order not to appear
inferior; and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the manifestations
of the two impulses, so inextricably do they mix their effects.
Emulation is the very nerve of human society. Why are you, my hearers,
sitting here before me? If no one whom you ever heard of had attended a
'summer school' or teachers' institute, would it have occurred to any
one of you to break out independently and do a thing so unprescribed by
fashion? Probably not. Nor would your pupils come to you unless the