[74]. Maine, Ancient Law, p. 62.
[75]. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, v., 16, Carlyle’s Translation.
[76]. In reading studies of a particular aspect of life, like M. Tarde’s brilliant work, Les Lois de l’Imitation, it is well to remember that there are many such aspects, any of which, if expounded at length and in an interesting manner, might appear for the time to be of more importance than any other. I think that other phases of social activity, such, for instance, as communication, competition, differentiation, adaptation, idealization, have as good claims as imitation to be regarded as the social process, and that a book similar in character to M. Tarde’s might, perhaps, be written upon any one of them. The truth is that the real process is a multiform thing of which these are glimpses. They are good so long as we recognize that they are glimpses and use them to help out our perception of that many-sided whole which life is; but if they become doctrines they are objectionable.
The Struggle for Existence is another of these glimpses of life which just now seems to many the dominating fact of the universe, chiefly because attention has been fixed upon it by copious and interesting exposition. As it has had many predecessors in this place of importance, so doubtless it will have many successors.
[77]. Decline and Fall, vol. vii., p. 82; Milman-Smith edition.
[78]. Emerson, address on New England Reformers.
[79]. Psychology, vol. ii., p. 409.
[80]. See Darwin’s Life and Letters, by his son, vol. i., p. 47.
[81]. Emerson, New England Reformers.
[82]. Psychology, vol. ii., p. 314.