an sets another coughing, it is evident that imitation
here consists only in the impulse to follow suit. The second man does
not learn how to cough from the example of the first. He is simply
prompted to do on this particular occasion what he is otherwise quite
capable of doing. But if I am learning billiards and someone shows me by
his own example how to make a particular stroke, the case is different.
It is not his example which in the first instance prompts me to the
action. He merely shows the way to do what I already desire to do.

We have then first to discuss the nature of the imitative impulse--the
impulse to perform an action which arises from the perception of it as
performed by another.

This impulse is an affair of attentive consciousness. The perception of
an action prompts us to reproduce it when and so far as it excites
interest or is at least intimately connected with what does excite
interest. Further, the interest must be of such a nature that it is more
fully gratified by partially or wholly repeating the interesting action.
Thus imitation is a special development of attention. Attention is
always striving after a more vivid, more definite, and more complete
apprehension of its object. Imitation is a way in which this endeavor
may gratify itself when the interest in the object is of a certain kind.
It is obvious that we do not try to imitate all manner of actions,
without distinction, merely because they take place under our eyes. What
is familiar and commonplace or what for any other reason is unexciting
or insipid fails to stir us to re-enact it. It is otherwise with what is
strikingly novel or in any way impressive, so that our attention dwells
on it with relish or fascination. It is, of course, not true that
whatever act fixes attention prompts to imitation. This is only the case
where imitation helps attention, where it is, in fact, a special
development of attention. This is so when interest is directly
concentrated on the activity itself for its own sake rather than for the
sake of its possible consequences and the like ulterior motives. But it
is not necessary that the act in itself should be interesting; in a most
important class of cases the interest centers, not directly in the
external act imitated, but in something else with which this act is so
intimately connected as virtually to form a part of it. Thus there is a
tendency to imitate not only interesting acts but also the acts of
inter