materials.

Among the social sciences the need for psychological
interpretation first manifested itself in the studies of
language and mythology. Both of these had already found outside
the circle of the philological studies independent fields of
investigation. As soon as they assumed the character of
comparative sciences it was inevitable that they should be
driven to recognize that in addition to the historical
conditions, which everywhere determines the concrete form of
these phenomena, there had been certain fundamental psychical
forces at work in the development of language and myth.[21]

The aim of folk-psychology has been, on the whole, to explain the
genesis and development of certain cultural forms, i.e., language, myth,
and religion. The whole matter may, however, be regarded from a quite
different point of view. Gabriel Tarde, for example, has sought to
explain, not the genesis, but the transmission and diffusion of these
same cultural forms. For Tarde, communication (transmission of cultural
forms and traits) is the one central and significant fact of social
life. "Social" is just what can be transmitted by imitation. Social
groups are merely the centers from which new ideas and inventions are
transmitted. Imitation is the social process.

There is not a word that you say, which is not the
reproduction, now unconscious, but formerly conscious and
voluntary, of verbal articulations reaching back to the most
distant past, with some special accent due to your immediate
surroundings. There is not a religious rite that you fulfil,
such as praying, kissing the icon, or making the sign of the
cross, which does not reproduce certain traditional gestures
and expressions, established through imitation of your
ancestors. There is not a military or civil requirement that
you obey, nor an act that you perform in your business, which
has not been taught you, and which you have not copied from
some living model. There is not a stroke of the brush that you
make, if you are a painter, nor a verse that you write, if you
are a poet, which does not conform to the customs or the
prosody of your school, and even your very originality itself
is made up of accumulated commonplaces, and aspires to become
commonplace in its turn.

Thus, the unvarying characteristic of every social fact