Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/103

. Why should the nurse sometimes sing to it, and sometimes scold it? Why does mother sometimes whip it, and sometimes kiss it? That these variations in mother's and nurse's behaviour may be due to variations in its own behaviour does not at first occur to the child. But eventually the child recognises that it, like other persons, is a person whose behaviour is liable to change.

(a) Since persons, including itself, are apparently capricious and variable in their behaviour, they become the special objects of the child's attention. Persons are much more interesting than things. Thus the child pays special attention to its self and other selves.

(b) But the child is not content simply to attend to others. It pays attention to them in order to imitate them. The child is the most imitative of all animals. Up to the age of seven or eight, every normal child persistently imitates everything in its environment, but especially the persons with whom it comes in contact. Persons are so much easier and so much more interesting to imitate than things. The child imitates first the actions, and then the customs and habits of his parents; and thus he may acquire many of his parents' traits. When the child resembles his parents closely in character, the similarity is usually due far more to the influence of the early home environment than to the direct inheritance of particular qualities.

The child imitates not only its parents, but also everybody with whom it comes in contact, and even the examples suggested to it by fairy tales and the ideals inspired by religious instruction. The