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accompanying the resolution of this complexity into an integrated monoideistic state, i.e. a new reaction or "trial," more like the "copy."

In what I have called the " circular" process involved in imitative reactions we have the reason that in them is found the material of Will. In reactions which are not imitative this circular process either is not found (e.g. a pain-movement reaction) or is simply a repetition of a sensori-motor process fixed by association or inheritance (i.e. repetition of the ma sound by infants). But in imitation the reaction performed is reported by eye or ear, and becomes itself a new stimulus, existing alongside the "copy; both tend to get motor expression; here is the state of motor plurality necessary to Will-stimulus.

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Evidence. I. The absence of all effort, properly speaking, in infants before the rise of Imitation.

II. The results of a research on students-called "Persistent Imitation Experiments." The subject is told to imitate a movement, such as drawing a simple figure at a single stroke, after a "copy." Then he compares his performance with the "copy and tries again, and so on, until satisfied with the result. This done, the number of his efforts is noted. This may be called Case A. Then he is instructed to do the same with his eyes bandaged, the number of trials being noted as before. Case B. In Case B. he is prevented from comparing his result with the "copy." Now it is evident that the number of trials in each case may be taken to indicate the amount of desire, or of willstimulus. The results show that in Case B. the subject is satisfied usually with the first reaction, i.e., when a new mental picture is not reported through the eye, there is no will-stimulus. But in Case A., effort after effort is made, until success is attained or the subject gives it up, i.e., there is continued willstimulus until either the motor plurality is overcome or the stimulus is inhibited by discouragement. Further, if the "copy" be removed, and the subject rely upon his memory, the number of efforts decreases roughly with the length of time elapsed-which is what we would expect from the law of the progressive fading of memory images as formulated by Ebbinghaus and Wolfe. The stimulus to repeated effort, therefore, arises from the relative lack of co-ordination or identity in two or more motor processes which reach the centre of co-ordination together. As soon, however, as the complexity is overcome, that is, as soon as the effort succeeds, the subject no longer has desire, Will-stimulus dis

appears, and the reaction tends to become involuntary as habit. '

III. The Development of Voluntary Movement is by three stages: (a) The child sees or hears a movement or noise and imitates it persistently, without attention to his muscular apparatus, (vs. Bain, James, and others;) (b) He learns that he works by means of muscles, and directs his efforts on them; (c) The movement once learned, the muscular reaction becomes subconscious means to a pictured end. (cf. Handbook of Psychology II. p. 343 f.) See also my article on Infant's Movements, Science, XIX, 1892, p. 5, for experiments with children in learning to draw figures).

IV. Evidence from Troubles of speech: the degeneration of the elements of the speech faculty is by stages the reverse of the order of acquisition required by the above theory. Compare the table, in which the order of acquisition, required by this theory, is given in one column; and the order of loss, as shown by pathology, inverted in another:

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III. PHYSIOLOGICAL BASIS OF WILL-Physiologically, the difference between Simple Imitation with repetition and Persistent Imitation with effort consists in the conflict of processes at the center which characterises the latter. In Simple Imita

1 This is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to approach the Will experi mentally, i.e., by a determination of the relative amount of motive force exerted by different memories.

tion, the excitement aroused by the second stimulus, as it is reported by eye or ear, finds no outlet except that already utilized in the first imitation; hence it passes off in a repetition of the same motor discharge. See fig. 1.

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But in Persistent Imitation the original reaction is not repeated. Hence we must suppose the development, probably in a new centre, of a function of co-ordination, by which the two processes excited respectively by the "copy" and the reported reaction, are united in a new, more voluminous discharge from the motor region. A movement is thus produced which, in some of its elements, approximates more nearly to the requirements of the "copy." This is again reported by eye or ear only to excite, by its union with the earlier processes, a yet more massive muscular reaction, which, simply from the fact of its greater mass and diffusion, contains still more elements of the copy. And so on until the proper combination is struck, i.e., the effort succeeds. The correct elements then persist because they have emphasis and repetition, and give pleasure, and the useless elements fall away by the ordinary principle of physiological

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cc-Coordinating Centre.
A-Copy.

B-First Imitation.

C-Second Imitation with effort.

Fig. 2.-Persistent Imitation: the Physiological basis
of Will. The two processes vv do not coalesce,
but are coordinated at cc in a new reaction mp' mt' C
which includes all the elements of the copy, A,
and more; the useless elements then fall away.

selection. See fig. 2. For example, a child's early efforts at speaking and writing get moderately successful by becoming massive and difuse, and it is only later that they are reduced to order and the useless muscular elements fall away. If this position be well taken, it enables us to conceive that muscular activities may become, by effort, more purposive, and that new combinations may be selected, without any violation of the law of conservation of energy in brain processes.

In the discussion on Professor BALDWIN's paper, Dr. BAIN said:

That he had no wish to depreciate the value of the evidence that Professor Baldwin had laid before them, to show the important part played by suggestion and imitation in the development of the will. At the same time he did not see that Professor Baldwin's evidence really militated against his own view that the association of pleasure and pain with muscular movement was the chief factor in the gradual process by which the adult faculty of voluntary action is built up. He observed that Professor Baldwin had spoken, in passing, of the "satisfaction" felt when the imitative effort attained the result aimed at: this term appeared to him implicitly to concede all that his own theory required.

Professor SULLY

Regretted the absence of Professor Preyer from that sitting, as that gentleman had, as was well known, made a special study of the first manifestations of imitation in the infant. Professor Preyer was of opinion that imitative and true voluntary action appeared at about the same date, a fact which Professor Baldwin might perhaps have turned to account in support of his theory. Nevertheless, he was disposed to think that Professor Baldwin had put too heavy a strain on the factor of imitation in volitional development. Imitation was a curious phenomenon in so far as it appeared in considerable intensity at a particular stage only of individual development, and, as Dr. Romanes has pointed out a like peculiarity characterises its manifestation in the evolution of animal intelligence (e.g., the voice mimicry of the parrot, the imitation of the monkey). It is probable that we are still without a complete knowledge of the exact psychological nature of an imitative action. He thought, however, we might, with Professor Bain, safely attribute a rudiment of the normal volitional motive, viz., a desire for pleasure, to many if not to all of children's imitative performances.

The PRESIDENT said:

That he agreed with Dr. Bain in thinking that Professor Baldwin should give a somewhat fuller account of the part allowed by him to “satisfaction"in the process of forming the links of association. At the same time he thought that the consilience of different lines of argument which Professor Baldwin's paper exhibited was certainly impressive. It might be worth observing that the earliest instances of intense and prolonged effort which he could recollect out of his own childhood were not strictly imitative, though, of course, the effect was indirectly suggested by some previous experience. For instance, one of his earliest recollections was that, having accidentally found that he could move one ear at will, he was seized with an overmastering desire to move the other also. He laboured for days in vain to do this; then all at once, he knew not how, success was attained and the reluctant ear moved, and never after failed to respond to volition. He should never forget the intense feeling of satisfaction that accompanied the sense of achievement; and this feeling he took to be the psychical counterpart of the physical process that formed the decisive link of association.

Professor BALDWIN, in reply to Dr. BAIN, said:

That his point was that pleasure could not be supposed to enter into the primary operation of suggestion in producing imitative movements. This was most strikingly shown in persistent imitation:-for instance, when the child made the repeated and uniformly unsuccessful efforts he

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