Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/188

 174 B. BOSANQUET : fore, we must look not to this extended account of imitation, but to the passage in which imitation and invention are explained and reconciled. And there, as we said above, it is unquestionable that a strong effort is being made to weld the two together, but it seems no less unquestionable that the welding is artificial, and must be so, so long as we start from the point of view of similarity and imitation, which as such have no essential aspect of difference. The process of imitation is to reproduce a copy. In this reproduction we are told a variation may arise from accessory circumstances, which may be selected as valuable, and that is an invention. Can there be a doubt that we are here working with the machinery of Association by Similarity, and the old notion of a rack full of photograph slides stored in the mind, each of which is in the normal case reproduced without modi- fication? Additional stimuli, it appears to be intended, may produce additional reactions, which form variations which have to be reconciled with the imitation-reaction, as parts of a system ; but this is quite different from saying that the reaction to stimulus is ipso facto proportional to the place of the stimulus in a system. I can find in the whole theory absolutely no suggestion, unless there was some hint of it in the brief passage referred to above, that the mind can appro- priate a law or principle the scheme of a whole, and naturally and necessarily differentiate its reactions in accordance with the bearing of such a principle on the new situation presented. And yet to the student of social philosophy such a doctrine is an absolutely fundamental necessity. Nothing of serious importance happens by genuine imitation. There is no grain of truth in the restriction of invention to the individual, as opposed to generalisation which takes place by a plurality of individuals copying the one. All the business of society goes on by differentiated reactions. We never do simply what another person does. We do something different, which has a definite reference to it. I do not build my house. I give instructions and I pay for it; and of all the persons concerned, no one simply reproduces the action of another ; but all do different things as determined by the scheme or law of action which is the universal working in their minds. The house is an invention, and a joint invention, a universal in which many minds have met. Pure imitation is an extreme sub- case of this principle, a sub-case in which differentiation is at a minimum. But strictly speaking, differentiation is always there. Even if I buy a straw hat because my neigh- bour has one, I buy one that fits me, and not one that fits him. Every man in society is what he is through a law or scheme which assigns him an individual position, differing