simply automatic,
it becomes more and more volitional. The child intends to imitate what
the teacher shows as an example. This intentional imitation is certainly
one of the most important vehicles of social organization. The desire to
act like certain models becomes the most powerful social energy. But
even the highest differentiation of society does not eliminate the
constant working of the automatic, impulsive imitation.

The inner relation between imitation and suggestion shows itself in the
similarity of conditions under which they are most effective. Every
increase of suggestibility facilitates imitation. In any emotional
excitement of a group every member submits to the suggestion of the
others, but the suggestion is taken from the actual movements. A crowd
in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which
each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing. Even
an army in battle may become, either through enthusiasm or through fear,
a group in which all individuality is lost and everyone is forced by
imitative impulses to fight or escape. The psychophysical experiment
leaves no doubt that this imitative response releases the sources of
strongest energy in the mental mechanism. If the arm lifts the weight of
an ergograph until the will cannot overcome the fatigue, the mere seeing
of the movement carried out by others whips the motor centers to new
efficiency.

We saw that our feeling states are both causes and effects of our
actions. We cannot experience the impulse to action without a new
shading of our emotional setting. Imitative acting involves, therefore,
an inner imitation of feelings too. The child who smiles in response to
the smile of his mother shares her pleasant feeling. The adult who is
witness of an accident in which someone is hurt imitates instinctively
the cramping muscle contractions of the victim, and as a result he feels
an intense dislike without having the pain sensations themselves. From
such elementary experiences an imitative emotional life develops,
controlled by a general sympathetic tendency. We share the pleasures and
the displeasures of others through an inner imitation which remains
automatic. In its richer forms this sympathy becomes an _altruistic
sentiment_; it stirs the desire to remove the misery around us and
unfolds to a general mental setting through which every action is
directed toward the service to others. But from the faintest echo