In both of these cases I was a good deal impressed with the idea that the life of children, as compared with that of adults, is less determined in a merely suggestive way, and involves more will and choice, than is commonly supposed. Imitation, in the sense of visible or audible repetition, was not so omnipresent as I had expected, and when present seemed to be in great part rational and voluntary rather than mechanical. It is very natural to assume that to do what someone else does requires no mental effort; but this, as applied to little children, is, of course, a great mistake. They cannot imitate an act except by learning how to do it, any more than grown-up people can, and for a child to learn a word may be as complicated a process as for an older person to learn a difficult piece on the piano. A novel imitation is not at all mechanical, but a strenuous voluntary activity, accompanied by effort and followed by pleasure in success. All sympathetic observers of children must be impressed, I imagine, by the evident mental stress and concentration which often accompanies their endeavors, whether imitative or not, and is followed, as in adults, by the appearance of relief when the action has come off successfully.[[3]]
The “imitative instinct” is sometimes spoken of as if it were a mysterious something that enabled the child to perform involuntarily and without preparation acts that are quite new to him. It will be found difficult, if one reflects upon the matter, to conceive what could be the nature of an instinct or hereditary tendency, not to do a definite thing previously performed by our ancestors—as is the case with ordinary instinct—but to do anything, within vague limits, which happened to be done within our sight or hearing. This doing of new things without definite preparation, either in heredity or experience, would seem to involve something like special creation in the mental and nervous organism: and the imitation of children has no such character. It is quite evidently an acquired power, and if the act imitated is at all complex the learning process involves a good deal of thought and will. If there is an imitative instinct it must, apparently, be something in the way of a taste for repetition, which stimulates the learning process without, however, having any tendency to dispense with it. The taste for repetition seems, in fact, to exist, at least in most children, but even this may be sufficiently explained as a phase of the general mental tendency to act upon uncontradicted ideas. It is a doctrine now generally taught by psychologists that the idea of an action is itself a motive to that action, and tends intrinsically to produce it unless something intervenes to prevent. This being the case, it would appear that we must always have some impulse to do what we see done, provided it is something we understand sufficiently to be able to form a definite idea of doing it.[[4]] I am inclined to the view that it is unnecessary to assume, in man, a special imitative instinct, but that “as Preyer and others have shown in the case of young children, mimicry arises mainly from pleasure in activity as such, and not from its peculiar quality as imitation.”[[5]] An intelligent child imitates because he has faculties crying for employment, and imitation is a key that lets them loose: he needs to do things and imitation gives him things to do. An indication that sensible resemblance to the acts of others is not the main thing sought is seen in such cases as the following: M. had a trick of raising her hands above her head, which she would perform, when in the mood for it, either imitatively, when someone else did it, or in response to the words “How big is M.?” but she responded more readily in the second or non-imitative way than in the other. This example well illustrates the reason for my preference of the word suggestion over imitation to describe these simple reactions. In this case the action performed had no sort of resemblance to the form of words “How big is M.?” that started it, and could be called imitative only in a recondite sense. All that is necessary is that there should be a suggestion, that something should be presented that is connected in the child’s mind with the action to be produced. Whether this connection is by sensible resemblance or not seems immaterial.
There seems to be some opposition between imitation of the visible, external kind, and reflection. Children of one sort are attracted by sensible resemblance and so are early and conspicuously imitative. If this is kept up in a mechanical way after the acts are well learned, and at the expense of new efforts, it would seem to be a sign of mental apathy, or even defect, as in the silly mimicry of some idiots. Those of another sort are preoccupied by the subtler combinations of thought which do not, as a rule, lead to obvious imitation. Such children are likely to be backward in the development of active faculties, and slow to observe except where their minds are specially interested. They are also, if I may judge by R., slow to interpret features and tones of voice, guileless and unaffected, just because of this lack of keen personal perceptions, and not quickly sympathetic.
Accordingly, it is not at all clear that children are, on the whole, any more given to imitation of the mechanical sort, any more suggestible, than adults. They appear so to us chiefly, perhaps, for two reasons. In the first place, we fail to realize the thought, the will, the effort, they expend upon their imitations. They do things that have become mechanical to us, and we assume that they are mechanical to them, though closer observation and reflection would show us the contrary. These actions are largely daring experiments, strenuous syntheses of previously acquired knowledge, comparable in quality to our own most earnest efforts, and not to the thoughtless routine of our lives. We do not see that their echoing of the words they hear is often not a silly repetition, but a difficult and instructive exercise of the vocal apparatus. Children imitate much because they are growing much, and imitation is a principal means of growth. This is true at any age; the more alive and progressive a man is the more actively he is admiring and profiting by his chosen models.
A second reason is that adults imitate at longer range, as it were, so that the imitative character of their acts is not so obvious. They come into contact with more sorts of persons, largely unknown to one another, and have access to a greater variety of suggestions in books. Accordingly they present a deceitful appearance of independence simply because we do not see their models.
Though we may be likely to exaggerate the difference between children and adults as regards the sway of suggestive influences, there is little danger of our overestimating the importance of these in the life of mankind at large. The common impression among those who have given no special study to the matter appears to be that suggestion has little part in the mature life of a rational being; and though the control of involuntary impulses is recognized in tricks of speech and manner, in fads, fashions, and the like, it is not perceived to touch the more important points of conduct. The fact, however, is that the main current of our thought is made up of impulses absorbed without deliberate choice from the life about us, or else arising from hereditary instinct, or from habit; while the function of higher thought and of will is to organize and apply these impulses. To revert to an illustration already suggested, the voluntary is related to the involuntary very much as the captain of a ship is related to the seamen and subordinate officers. Their work is not altogether of a different sort from his, but is of a lower grade in a mental series. He supplies the higher sort of co-ordination, but the main bulk of the activity is of the mentally lower order.
The chief reason why popular attention should fix itself upon voluntary thought and action, and tend to overlook the involuntary, is that choice is acutely conscious, and so must, from its very nature, be the focus of introspective thought. Because he is an individual, a specialized, contending bit of psychical force, a man very naturally holds his will, in its individual aspect, to be of supreme moment. If we did not feel a great importance in the things we do we could not will to do them. And in the life of other people voluntary action seems supreme, for very much the same reasons that it does in our own. It is always in the foreground, active, obvious, intrusive, the thing that creates differences and so fixes the attention. We notice nothing except through contrast; and accordingly the mechanical control of suggestion, affecting all very much alike, is usually unperceived. As we do not notice the air, precisely because it is always with us, so, for the same reason, we do not notice a prevailing mode of dress. In like manner we are ignorant of our local accent and bearing, and are totally unaware, for the most part, of all that is common to our time, our country, our customary environment. Choice is a central area of light and activity upon which our eyes are fixed; while the unconscious is a dark, illimitable background enveloping this area. Or, again, choice is like the earth, which we unconsciously assume to be the principal part of creation, simply because it is the centre of our interest and the field of our exertions.
The practical limitations upon the scope of choice arise, first, from its very nature as a selective and organizing agent, working upon comparatively simple or suggestive ideas as its raw material, and, second, from the fact that it absorbs a great deal of vital energy. Owing to the first circumstance its activity is always confined to points where there is a competition of ideas. So long as an idea is uncontradicted, not felt to be in any way inconsistent with others, we take it as a matter of course. It is a truth, though hard for us to realize, that if we had lived in Dante’s time we should have believed in a material Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, as he did, and that our doubts of this, and of many other things which his age did not question, have nothing to do with our natural intelligence, but are made possible and necessary by competing ideas which the growth of knowledge has enabled us to form. Our particular minds or wills are members of a slowly growing whole, and at any given moment are limited in scope by the state of the whole, and especially of those parts of the whole with which they are in most active contact. Our thought is never isolated, but always some sort of a response to the influences around us, so that we can hardly have thoughts that are not in some way aroused by communication. Will—free will if you choose—is thus a co-operative whole, not an aggregation of disconnected fragments, and the freedom of the individual is freedom under law, like that of the good citizen, not anarchy. We learn to speak by the exercise of will, but no one, I suppose, will assert that an infant who hears only French is free to learn English. Where suggestions are numerous and conflicting we feel the need to choose; to make these choices is the function of will, and the result of them is a step in the progress of life, an act of freedom or creation, if you wish to call it so; but where suggestion is single, as with religious dogma in ages of faith, we are very much at its mercy. We do not perceive these limitations, because there is no point of vantage from which we can observe and measure the general state of thought; there is nothing to compare it with. Only when it begins to change, when competing suggestions enter our minds and we get new points of view from which we can look back upon it, do we begin to notice its power over us.[[6]]
The exhausting character of choice, of making up one’s mind, is a matter of common experience. In some way the mental synthesis, this calling in and reducing to order the errant population of the mind, draws severely upon the vital energy, and one of the invariable signs of fatigue is a dread of making decisions and assuming responsibility. In our complicated life the will can, in fact, manage only a small part of the competing suggestions that are within our reach. What we are all forced to do is to choose a field of action which for some reason we look upon as specially interesting or important, and exercise our choice in that; in other matters protecting ourselves, for the most part, by some sort of mechanical control—some accepted personal authority, some local custom, some professional tradition, or the like. Indeed, to know where and how to narrow the activity of the will in order to preserve its tone and vigor for its most essential functions, is a great part of knowing how to live. An incontinent exercise of choice wears people out, so that many break down and yield even essentials to discipline and authority in some form; while many more wish, at times, to do so and indulge themselves, perhaps, in Thomas à Kempis, or “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.” Not a few so far exhaust the power of self-direction as to be left drifting at the mercy of undisciplined passions. There are many roads to degeneracy, and persons of an eager, strenuous nature not infrequently take this one.
A common instance of the insidious power of milieu is afforded by the transition from university education to getting a living. At a university one finds himself, if he has any vigor of imagination, in one of the widest environments the world can afford. He has access to the suggestions of the richest minds of all times and countries, and has also, or should have, time and encouragement to explore, in his own way, this spacious society. It is his business to think, to aspire, and grow; and if he is at all capable of it he does so. Philosophy and art and science and the betterment of mankind are real and living interests to him, largely because he is in the great stream of higher thought that flows through libraries. Now let him graduate and enter, we will say, upon the lumber business at Kawkawlin. Here he finds the scope of existence largely taken up with the details of this industry—wholesome for him in some ways, but likely to be overemphasized. These and a few other things are repeated over and over again, dinned into him, everywhere assumed to be the solid things of life, so that he must believe in them; while the rest grows misty and begins to lose hold upon him. He cannot make things seem real that do not enter into his experience, and if he resists the narrowing environment it must be by keeping touch with a larger world, through books or other personal intercourse, and by the exercise of imagination. Marcus Aurelius told himself that he was free to think what he chose, but it appears that he realized this freedom by keeping books about him that suggested the kind of thoughts he chose to think; and it is only in some such sense as this implies that the assertion is true. When the palpable environment does not suit us we can, if our minds are vigorous enough, build up a better one out of remembered material; but we must have material of some sort.