Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/743

 THEORY OF IMITATION IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 729

psychical side. If the organization which animal societies reveal is wholly a physiological matter, 1 and not also a matter of feeling, intelligence, and impulse, then Professor Baldwin is justified in leaving them out of consideration in his attempt to give a psychological interpretation of the human social process. If, on the contrary, the unity and organization of animal groups is in some measure psychical, and if human society be supposed to have arisen out of some pre-human form of association, then the burden of showing why human society differs from ar imal societies in its process of organization rests upon the supporters of the imitation theory.

Let us consider the case of the social insects the ants, bees, and wasps to bring out our point still clearer. As is well known, these animals exhibit a marvelous degree of organization in the groups which they form, the division of labor and the corresponding division of individuals into classes among them often surpassing that found in human societies of considerable development. From an objective point of view these groups of insects seem as truly societies as any human groups. Moreover, we cannot well deny to these creatures some degree of mental life, for they are known to show, both as individuals and as groups, considerable power of adaptation in the presence of danger. 2 Some have even gone so far as to claim that they see among them the beginning of that process of suggestion and imitation 3 which M. Tarde and Professor Baldwin make the sole factor in the human social process. However, it is usually recognized that the organization which colonies of these insects exhibit is an outcome of certain habits of cooperation which have become innate in the species through a process of natural selection in the course of a long period of evolution. In other words, the societies formed by ants, bees, and wasps are organ- ized upon the basis of instinct. Now, if instinct plays such a

1 This Professor Baldwin appears to assert, Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 476 ; but in this case the criticism given at the end of the next paragraph would apply.


 * Cf. LUBBOCK, Ants, Bees, and Wasps.


 * Cf. GIDDINGS, Principles of Sociology, p. 143