heredity, each generation simply imitating the last. Into the
particulars of this most fascinating chapter of psychology I have no
time to go. The moment one hears Tarde's proposition uttered, however,
one feels how supremely true it is. Invention, using the term most
broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the
human race historically has walked.

Imitation shades imperceptibly into _Emulation_. Emulation is the
impulse to imitate what you see another doing, in order not to appear
inferior; and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the manifestations
of the two impulses, so inextricably do they mix their effects.
Emulation is the very nerve of human society. Why are you, my hearers,
sitting here before me? If no one whom you ever heard of had attended a
'summer school' or teachers' institute, would it have occurred to any
one of you to break out independently and do a thing so unprescribed by
fashion? Probably not. Nor would your pupils come to you unless the
children of their parents' neighbors were all simultaneously being sent
to school. We wish not to be lonely or eccentric, and we wish not to be
cut off from our share in things which to our neighbors seem desirable
privileges.

In the schoolroom, imitation and emulation play absolutely vital parts.
Every teacher knows the advantage of having certain things performed by
whole bands of children at a time. The teacher who meets with most
success is the teacher whose own ways are the most imitable. A teacher
should never try to make the pupils do a thing which she cannot do
herself. "Come and let me show you how" is an incomparably better
stimulus than "Go and do it as the book directs." Children admire a
teacher who has skill. What he does seems easy, and they wish to emulate
it. It is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her
pupils to wake up and take an interest. She must first take one herself;
then her example is effective, as no exhortation can possibly be.

Every school has its tone, moral and intellectual. And this tone is a
mere tradition kept up by imitation, due in the first instance to the
example set by teachers and by previous pupils of an aggressive and
dominating type, copied by the others, and passed on from year to year,
so that the new pupils take the cue almost immediately. Such a tone
changes very slowly, if at all; and then always under the modifying
influence of new personalities aggressive enough i