Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/745

 THEORY OF IMITATION IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 731

social selection which results from the competition of individ- uals with one another for place and honor in society is recog- nized by Professor Baldwin as constituting truly a part of the process of natural selection. 1 There is nothing in Professor Baldwin's position in this regard, therefore, to prevent his recog- nition of natural selection as a factor in the human social process. Indeed, it is to be feared that it is only his ardor for the recog- nition of imitation and his desire to make a very complex problem unduly simple which prevent him from recogn'zing natural selection in its psychical aspect as a part of the method of progress of human society coordinate with imitation. 2

Our third criticism of the imitation theory of social organiza- tion and progress is, then, that it makes no allowance for the influence of various forms 3 of natural selection in controlling, guiding, and supplementing the process of imitation. Let us take the organization and evolution of the family to illustrate further our meaning. According to the imitation theory, not only has our present form of the family come down to us solely by imitation, but changes in the form of the family in the past have been accomplished by imitative generalization of some variation, which in turn was an imitative adaptation or combina- tion of forms already existing. Indeed, Professor Baldwin implies that the very process of idealizing the family has been essentially a process of imitation. 4 On the other hand, Wester- marck 5 and other ethnologists who have investigated the his- torical and ethnological material bearing upon the evolution of the family hold that the present monogamic form of the family is largely due to a process of natural selection. Other forms of the family have not persisted, they tell us, because individuals and groups which adopted the inferior forms have constantly been eliminated in competition with the individuals and groups

1 Social and Ethical Interpretation s, p. 181.

This seems to be plainly implied in Bagehot's pioneer discussion of the social importance of imitation in his Physics and Politics, pp. 89-111.

3/. e., those which manifest themselves psychically. s The History of Human Marriage.
 * Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 296 ff.