esting persons. Men are apt to imitate the gestures and modes of
speech of those who excite their admiration or affection or some other
personal interest. Children imitate their parents or their leaders in
the playground. Even the mannerisms and tricks of a great man are often
unconsciously copied by those who regard him as a hero. In such
instances the primary interest is in the whole personality of the model;
but this is more vividly and distinctly brought before consciousness by
reproducing his external peculiarities. Our result, then, is that
interest in an action prompts to imitation in proportion to its
intensity, provided the interest is of a kind which will be gratified or
sustained by imitative activity.

b) _Learning by imitation._--Let us now turn to the other side of the
question. Let us consider the case in which the power of performing an
action is acquired in and by the process of imitation itself. Here there
is a general rule which is obvious when once it is pointed out. It is
part of the still more general rule that "to him that hath shall be
given." Our power of imitating the activity of another is strictly
proportioned to our pre-existing power of performing the same general
kind of action independently. For instance, one devoid of musical
faculty has practically no power of imitating the violin playing of
Joachim. Imitation may develop and improve a power which already exists,
but it cannot create it. Consider the child beginning for the first time
to write in a copybook. He learns by imitation; but it is only because
he has already some rudimentary ability to make such simple figures as
pothooks that the imitative process can get a start. At the outset, his
pothooks are very unlike the model set before him. Gradually he
improves; increased power of independent production gives step by step
increased power of imitation, until he approaches too closely the limits
of his capacity in this direction to make any further progress of an
appreciable kind.

But this is an incomplete account of the matter. The power of learning
by imitation is part of the general power of learning by experience; it
involves mental plasticity. An animal which starts life with congenital
tendencies and aptitudes of a fixed and stereotyped kind, so that they
admit of but little modification in the course of individual
development, has correspondingly little power of learning by imitation.

At higher levels of mental development