Sufficient has now been said to illustrate some of the ways in which instinct and intelligence interact in the evolution of behaviour. Such interaction is further exemplified in the social life of animals, which will be dealt with in the next chapter.
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
I.—Imitation
The characteristic feature of social behaviour is that it is in large degree determined by the behaviour of other members of the social community. In all animals which mate there is a temporary or more lasting influence on each other of the individuals which unite to procreate their kind; and in those which foster their young there is a social relation of parents and offspring. Some of these mutual relationships will be discussed, in their emotional aspects, in the next chapter. Here we will consider the more general factors which serve to determine the course of social evolution.
Among these is commonly reckoned imitation. M. Tarde says, “La société c’est l’imitation.” But this word, like so many others which are employed alike in popular speech and in more or less technical discussions, carries a somewhat wide range of meaning, and is by some writers used in a broader, by others in a narrower sense. Thus Professor Mark Baldwin[74] says, “that all organic adaptation in a changing environment is a phenomenon of biological or organic imitation,” under which category will fall, therefore, the organic behaviour of the protozoa and of plants. On the other hand, Professor E. L. Thorndike, though he admits in the lower animals “certain pseudo-imitative or semi-imitative phenomena,” has been led by experiments, to be presently noticed, to the conclusion that animals as high in the scale of life as cats and dogs cannot form new associations under the influence of imitation. “It seems sure,” he says,[75] “from these experiments, that the animals were unable to form an association leading to an act from having seen another animal, or animals, perform the act in a certain situation.” In face of such apparently diverse usage it is necessary to show within what limits and with what qualifications the word may profitably here be used to indicate a factor in social evolution.
Professor Mark Baldwin’s use of the term “imitation” can only be understood in its relation to an hypothesis of organic and mental evolution, which he develops with no little skill and brilliancy.[76] He regards the processes of life as issuing in a great twofold adaptation, due to expansions and contractions,—the former representing waxing, the latter waning vitality; and he holds that all special adaptations are secured by the new hold upon beneficial stimulations reached by the expansive out-reaching movements. “Among the variations in organic forms,” he says, “it is easy to see that some of them might react in such a way as to keep in contact with the stimulus, to lay hold of it, and so keep on reacting to it again and again—just as our rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organism in vital contact with the oxygen of the air. These organisms will get all the benefit or damage of the repetition or persistence of the stimulus, or of their own reactions, again and again; and it is self-evident that the beneficial stimulations are the ones which should be maintained in this way, and that the organisms which did this would live. The organisms which reacted in such a way as to retain the damaging stimulations, on the other hand, by this same process, would aid nature in killing themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimulations in what I have called, in speaking of imitation elsewhere, a ‘circular way’ of reacting.... So, when we come to consider phylogeny and ontogeny together, we find that if by an organism we mean a thing of contractility or irritability, whose round of movements is kept up by some kind of nutritive process supplied by the environment—absorption, chemical action of atmospheric oxygen, etc.—and whose existence is threatened by dangers of contact and what not, the first thing to do is to secure a regular supply to the nutritive processes, and to avoid these contacts. But the organism can do nothing but move, as a whole or in some of its parts. So, then, if one of such creatures is to be fitter than another to survive, it must be the creature which, by its movements, secures more nutritive processes and avoids more dangerous contacts. But movements toward the source of stimulation keep hold on the stimulation, and movements away from the contacts break the contacts; that is all. Nature selects these organisms; how could she do otherwise?”
“Thus a ‘circular’ activity is found in operation; life-processes issuing in increased movements, by which in turn the stimulations to the life-processes are kept in action.” But when a child imitates, himself reproducing the “copy” set for imitation, the reaction at which imitative suggestion aims is one which will reproduce the stimulating impression, and so tend to perpetuate itself. The stimulus starts a motor process, which tends to reproduce the stimulus, and, through it, the motor process again. It is a “circular activity.” Thus “we are able to reconstruct the theory of adaptation in such a way as to show that this kind of organic selection by movement, and this kind of imitative selection by consciousness, are the same thing. Organic imitation and conscious imitation—each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimulations and to avoid others—here is one thing;” and to this one thing the common term “imitation” is applied by Mr. Baldwin.
This extended usage is admitted by the author to be somewhat of an innovation. But if his hypothesis be sound this need be no bar to its acceptance. Two salient questions must, however, receive satisfactory answers. First, is all organic adaptation in a changing environment a circular process—a phenomenon of organic imitation? Secondly, does all conscious imitation tend to reproduce the imitating stimulus?