nder impossible a monopoly or a censorship of intercommunication
between peoples. The traditional cultures, the social inheritances of
ages of isolation, are now in a world-process of interaction and
modification as a result of the rapidity and the impact of these modern
means of the circulation of ideas and sentiments. At the present time it
is so popular to malign the newspaper that few recognize the extent to
which news has freed mankind from the control of political parties,
social institutions, and, it may be added, from the "tyranny" of books.

c) _Imitation and suggestion the mechanistic forms of
interaction._--In all forms of communication behavior changes occur, but
in two cases the processes have been analyzed, defined, and reduced to
simple terms, viz., in imitation and in suggestion.

Imitation, as the etymology of the term implies, is a process of copying
or learning. But imitation is learning only so far as it has the
character of an experiment, or trial and error. It is also obvious that
so-called "instinctive" imitation is not learning at all. Since the
results of experimental psychology have limited the field of instinctive
imitation to a few simple activities, as the tendencies to run when
others run, to laugh when others laugh, its place in human life becomes
of slight importance as compared with imitation which involves
persistent effort at reproducing standard patterns of behavior.

This human tendency, under social influences, to reproduce the copy
Stout has explained in psychological terms of attention and interest.
The interests determine the run of attention, and the direction of
attention fixes the copies to be imitated. Without in any way
discounting the psychological validity of this explanation, or its
practical value in educational application, social factors controlling
interest and attention should not be disregarded. In a primary group,
social control narrowly restricts the selection of patterns and
behavior. In an isolated group the individual may have no choice
whatsoever. Then, again, attention may be determined, not by interests
arising from individual capacity or aptitude, but rather from _rapport_,
that is, from interest in the prestige or in the personal traits of the
individual presenting the copy.

The relation of the somewhat complex process of imitation to the simple
method of trial and error is of significance. Learning by imitation
implies at once both identification of t