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(4.) It is notorious to observation, that more is done by the nurse imitating the child, than by the child imitating the nurse. When an articulation is stumbled on, it is caught up by all around, and the child is made familiar with the sound as proceeding from other voices, in addition to its own. This would obviously promote the growth of the needful adhesive connexion.

(5.) Imitation varies with the natural abundance of spontaneous activity, being most efficient where the spontaneous variety and flexibility are good. A child will learn to imitate singing, in proportion as, of its own accord, it falls into musical notes. Its own native song must come first: the goodness of that will be a condition of its acquiring the song of others. In whatever department any individual shows spontaneous and unprompted facility, in that department will the same individual be imitative or acquisitive.

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(6.) Imitation advances with the acquired habits. learning to dance, the deficiency of the association between the pupil's movements and the sight of the master's, renders the first steps difficult to acquire. The desired movements are not naturally performed at the outset. Some movements are made; sufficient voluntary command of the limbs and body has been acquired, in other shapes, to set a-going action of some kind; but the first actions are seen to be quite wrong; there is a manifest want of coincidence, which originates new attempts; and these failing, others are made, until at last the posture is hit. The grand process of trial and error brings on the first coincidence between a movement, and the appearance of that movement in another person; repetition, by constituting a cohesive link, makes the imitation at last easy. Upon this acquisition, other acquisitions of the same kind are based, and the improvement is accelerating. Thus it is that we pass through an alphabet of imitation in all arts; the fixing of the association in the first links is the most difficult part of the process.

(7.) It is in harmony with all that has now been advanced, that imitation depends likewise on the delicacy of the sense that perceives the effect.

PROGRESS OF THE POWER OF IMITATION.

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This is not the place to exhaust the subject of Imitation in particular, or the acquisitions that enter into volition in general. It is enough, for the present, to show that the associative principle is an indispensable requisite here as elsewhere. All the conditions already specified, as affecting the rate of adhesiveness in other acquirements, might be exemplified likewise in these. The great peculiarity in their case arises from the circumstances of their commencement. Being the starting point of every other branch of education, they must find their own way through struggles and accidents, trials and failures. Reposing upon the great fundamental link between consciousness and present action,between pleasure or pain, and the activity happening at the time, they come at last to supply definite connexions between our feelings and exertions, so as to enable us not merely to control a movement at work, but to call dormant actions into being at the instance of our reigning desire.

Of the various circumstances affecting the progress of these volitional associations, the engagement of the cerebral energy or concentrated attention is of signal consequence. This condition, necessary at any age, seems the all-important one in the early months of our existence. The moment of an acquisition seems generally to turn upon some happy concurrence of aroused attention, or mental engrossment, with the action; if an impression is not detained for a time by the influence of some feeling, it is void of effect. When the child hits upon an exercise that gives it pleasure, and is thereby led to repeat the act, earnestly and intently, the occasion is sure to bring a sensible advance in fixing the whole connected train.

NATURAL OBJECTS-AGGREGATES OF NATURAL QUALITIES.

53. One of the principal components of human intelligence is our permanent hold of the external, or object, world as it strikes the senses.

External things usually affect us through a plurality of

senses. The pebble on the sea shore is pictured on the eye as Form and Colour. We take it up in the hand, and thereby obtain the impression of Form, together with the Tactile sensation of the Surface. Knock two together, and there is a characteristic Sound. To retain the impression of an object of this kind, there must be an association of all these different effects. Such association, when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual grasp of the pebble.

Passing to the organic world, and plucking a rose, we have the same effects; form to the eye and to the hand, colour and touch, with the addition of odour and of taste. A certain time is requisite for the coherence of all these qualities in one aggregate, so as to give us the enduring image of the rose. When fully acquired, any one of the characteristic impressions may revive the others; the odour, the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk,-each of these by itself will hoist the entire impression into the view. Should we go to work and dissect the flower botanically, we obtain new impressions to enter into the common aggregate.

It is by rapidly associating these qualities, in other words, by the ready adhesion of impressions of sight, touch, and the other senses, that a person becomes largely conversant with Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal bodies. In the mind of the Naturalist, the sensations of sight and of touch, more especially, must take a ready hold. A good general adhesiveness, aided by the special or local susceptibilities, is chiefly to be depended on. The element of concentration of mind must be present likewise, in the shape of an interest for the study. To this requisite, however, we must attach an important qualification. When a department of acquisition involves a great mass of detail, the attention, spread over a wide area, cannot be strongly concentrated at any point; the concentration must be relative to alien subjects which excite no interest at all. The natural or unprompted adhesiveness, whether from general or from local endowment, is called for alike in Natural History and in Languages.

The power of observation ever fresh and buoyant, the

COMPLEX OBJECTS OF SENSE.

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energy of the brain thrown into visual and tactile sensation, are characteristics not of the naturalist alone, but of all men that deal with outward things in the concrete; as the engineer, the military commander, and the poet. In those things that appeal to other senses also-as articles of foodthere is an additional motive, growing out of their special interest. So, there may be a superadded charm of the artistic kind, determining a preference, with some minds, for all objects of a nature to gratify the artistic sensibilities. But the naturalist should be above such partialities; to him every natural object must possess a moderate interest, and no one more than a fair share; it is only by this moderation that he can keep his mind equal to the multitude and variety of nature.

54. From the objects of the world thus apprehended, as they strike the immediate sense, we pass to a higher group of aggregates, things with properties not always present to the view. For example, a cup in its completeness must be conceived as containing something, as serving this purpose or use. We have to associate with the permanent sensible qualities this other quality of usefulness for some end, which has a special interest in it to quicken our retentiveness of the entire total. Furniture and tools and implements of every description have this superadded quality, which, however, instead of burdening the memory, rather lightens it by the spur of a special interest. All related objects are more easily fixed in the mind than those that are unrelated, particularly if the relation be an interesting one. A monarch is more impressive than a man; a millstone is more firmly remembered. than a useless block on a moor. When the interest in industrial production is naturally high in an individual, every kind of machine arrests the regards and makes a stronger impression. We have here another example of that select or special attention, which concentrates the mind upon some things to the neglect of others, and is also in strong contrast with the catholic tendencies of the naturalist mind. Not only is there a restriction as regards the objects in the narrow point

of view, but the properties attended to are more limited. If a tool has a good edge, its specific gravity is a matter of indifference; if a quarry yields good building stone, the owner leaves it to others to determine its mineral composition and its geological era.

NATURAL AND HABITUAL CONJUNCTIONS-STILL LIFE.

55. The things about us that maintain fixed places and relations, become connected in idea as they are in reality, and we thus lay up a phantasmagoric representation of our habitual environment. The house we live in, with its furniture and fittings, the street, town, or rural scene that we encounter daily, by their incessant iteration, cohere into abiding recollections; and any one part easily brings all the rest into the view. These familiar haunts exemplify pictorial adhesion in a high degree; numerous repetitions and lively interest combine to the result. We likewise associate a number of human beings with their abodes, dresses, avocations, and all other constant accompaniments.

Objects at a distance from our daily circle afford a better opportunity of testing the natural adhesiveness of the mind for pictorial expanse. A house we have visited only once or twice, a strange street, a new scene, puts to the proof the visual persistence of the mind. This resolves itself partly into the case of coloured impressions, and partly into that of visual forms, the tenacity for colour being the essential point. A coloured decoration is quite irrecoverable, if the sense of colour is not very powerful; the same may be said of a heterogeneous and formless collection of ornaments or curiosities. The recollection of dresses turns principally upon the hold we have of colour. The interior of a room implies form, and may be retained as such; but if the sense of colour is indifferent, it will be revived only in outline. A garden, a shrubbery, an array of fields, also rely upon the coloured element. The more irregular the outlines of things are, the more do we depend upon the tenacity of the mind. for coloured impressions.

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