omes before them. There is nothing in their
minds to resist the propensity to copy. Every educated man has a large
inward supply of ideas to which he can retire, and in which he can
escape from or alleviate unpleasant outward objects. But a savage or a
child has no resource. The external movements before it are its very
life; it lives by what it sees and hears. Uneducated people in
civilised nations have vestiges of the same condition. If you send a
housemaid and a philosopher to a foreign country of which neither knows
the language, the chances are that the housemaid will catch it before
the philosopher. He has something else to do; he can live in his own
thoughts. But unless she can imitate the utterances, she is lost; she
has no life till she can join in the chatter of the kitchen. The
propensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are mostly strongest
in those who have least abstract minds. The most wonderful examples of
imitation in the world are perhaps the imitations of civilised men by
savages in the use of martial weapons. They learn the knack, as
sportsmen call it, with inconceivable rapidity. A North American
Indian--an Australian even--can shoot as well as any white man. Here
the motive is at its maximum, as well as the innate power. Every savage
cares more for the power of killing than for any other power.

The persecuting tendency of all savages, and, indeed, of all ignorant
people, is even more striking than their imitative tendency. No
barbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate from the old
barbarous customs and usages of their tribe. Very commonly all the
tribe would expect a punishment from the gods if any one of them
refrained from what was old, or began what was new. In modern times and
in cultivated countries we regard each person as responsible only for
his own actions, and do not believe, or think of believing, that the
misconduct of others can bring guilt on them. Guilt to us is an
individual taint consequent on choice and cleaving to the chooser. But
in early ages the act of one member of the tribe is conceived to make
all the tribe impious, to offend its peculiar god, to expose all the
tribe to penalties from heaven. There is no 'limited liability' in the
political notions of that time. The early tribe or nation is a
religious partnership, on which a rash member by a sudden impiety may
bring utter ruin. If the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes
wicked. A permitted deviation