resist the propensity to copy. Every educated man has a large inward
supply of ideas to which he can retire, and in which he can escape
from or alleviate unpleasant outward objects. But a savage or a
child has no resource. The external movements before it are its very
life; it lives by what it sees and hears. Uneducated people in
civilised nations have vestiges of the same condition. If you send a
housemaid and a philosopher to a foreign country of which neither
knows the language, the chances are that the housemaid will catch it
before the philosopher. He has something else to do; he can live in
his own thoughts. But unless she can imitate the utterances, she is
lost; she has no life till she can join in the chatter of the
kitchen. The propensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are
mostly strongest in those who have least abstract minds. The most
wonderful examples of imitation in the world are perhaps the
imitations of civilised men by savages in the use of martial
weapons. They learn the knack, as sportsmen call it, with
inconceivable rapidity. A North American Indian--an Australian even-
-can shoot as well as any white man. Here the motive is at its
maximum, as well as the innate power. Every savage cares more for
the power of killing than for any other power.

The persecuting tendency of all savages, and, indeed, of all
ignorant people, is even more striking than their imitative
tendency. No barbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate
from the old barbarous customs and usages of their tribe. Very
commonly all the tribe would expect a punishment from the gods if
any one of them refrained from what was old, or began what was new.
In modern times and in cultivated countries we regard each person as
responsible only for his own actions, and do not believe, or think
of believing, that the misconduct of others can bring guilt on them.