Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/202

 l88 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

aesthetic self, but the social self. He has shown us with psychological exactness the working of a new dialectic in the grftwth of the mind — the real or action dialectic of a self whose competing tendencies to movement are harmonized and balanced by the social forces of imitation and accommodation and inven- tion, and so on.

As to positive psychology proper, the importance of the book lies, it seems to me, in the fullness of detail with which the relations of the thought-process to the movement or action- process are worked out. Our own sense of the " general " (this is a point in which Professor Dewey entirely concurs) is in entire accordance with the philosophy of association and suggestiofi, always assumed to be motor attitude ; and from the general exposition of a " man's interests as the intellectual reflection of his habits," and a man's habits as motor phenomena to be explained out of earlier activities, and a " man's wants as a func- tion of the social situation," we gain an insight into the real truth of the two formulae, (i) that what we do is a function of what we think, and (2) that what we shall think is a function of what we have done. It is only when we bear in mind the detailed completeness of Mr. Baldwin's study of the relation of thought to movement, not only in his second, but also in his first volume on genetic psychology, that we can see the possibility of imita- tio7i playing, in his eyes, the role of the chief " method " in the process of social development. Imitation is to him a peculiar " circular " order of reaction, by virtue of which the organism discharges certain repetitions of movements that further life- processes. Applied to the individual it denotes that process by which he modifies his sense of himself by following out the action-suggestions that come to him from those round about him. And applied to society it indicates that process by which society appropriates or generalizes the thoughts of individuals by repro- ducing such of those habits and actions to which the thoughts of individuals lead, as tend to further social development. We are, as individuals and as a society, subject to imitative tenden- cies, because we are subject to suggestion, and because such suggested actions and movements as further our development