Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/737

 THEORY OF IMITATION IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 723

There is not a word that you say which is not the reproduction, now unconscious, but formerly conscious and voluntary, of verbal articulations reaching back to the most distant past, with some special accent due to your

immediate surroundings even your very originality itself is made up

of accumulated commonplaces, and aspires to become commonplace in its turn. 1

Just as all the phenomena of the universe can be reduced to the three forms, repetition, opposition, and adaptation, the last two of which are in reality only outcomes of the first ; 2 so all the phenomena of human society can be reduced to three corre- sponding forms imitation, conflict, and invention. But the last two are again merely outcomes of the first ; for conflict is but the interference of two dissimilar waves of imitation, and invention but the union of two harmonious imitations. 3 Finally, M. Tarde thinks that the process of imitation going on through- out society may be formulated into two general laws. The first is that all imitations tend to spread throughout society in a geo- metrical progression, and do so spread if interferences in the form of competing imitations are absent. 4 The second law, already implied in the conditioning of the first, is that imitations are always refracted by their media. 5 These laws of imitation "are to sociology," M. Tarde thinks, "what the laws of habit and heredity are to biology, the laws of gravitation to astron- omy, and the laws of vibration to physics." 6

More careful and more scientific, though not essentially dif- ferent from M. Tarde's, is the formulation of the imitation theory given by Professor Baldwin. As noted above, Professor Baldwin gathered the material for his theory in child-study. His conclusion from the study of mental development in the child is that "the prime and essential method of his [the child's] learning is by imitative absorption of the actions, thoughts, expressions of other persons ;" 7 further, that "all his personal absorption from his immediate associates is through his tendency

1 Ibid., pp. 40, 41. * Les Lois de limitation, p. 1 8.

Ibid., p. 7. * Ibid., p. 24.

^ Ibid., pp. 133-5, 202-4. 6 Social Laws, p. 6l.

i Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, p. 58.