largely composed of pure impulses. It is incapable of driving the individual in a definite and predetermined direction. It is wobbly and haphazard. The intelligence of the child is also undeveloped. It can't think. It believes whatever it is told. I have often noticed, when I have been out walking with children, how much they were inclined to cough or to expectorate when I did, to walk with their hands behind them when I did, to call out when I did, to adopt immediately any opinion I expressed; in short, to reproduce as nearly as possible in every way the copy I set for them. And I can recall myself how as a boy I used to be everlastingly trying to shape myself in accordance with those I from time to time took a fancy to.

The savage is in many ways a child. He has the same untrained will as the child, the same unsteadiness, the same tendency to be ruled by the impulses that rise within him from moment to moment, the same lack of experience, the same mental weakness, and the same dependence on others for cues as to what to do and think in life. Savages dress like each other, build their huts like each other, worship in the same way, and bow to the same customs and traditions.

Savages are natural mimics. They are able to imitate perfectly the sounds of other animals, and to repeat a sentence word for word that is spoken to them, mimicking the manner and voice of the speaker. There is a tendency in the nature of sav

ages to repeat a question that is asked them, instead of giving the answer. While savages are excellent mimics, they bungle greatly if anything is left to their intelligence.

Fashions are exhibitions of the imitative instinct. Women are much more inclined to imitate each other than men are, because they have, on the whole, more of the characteristics of the child psychology.

There are fashions in ideas just as there are fashions in dress. If nearly everybody in a community believes in a certain way, it is almost as hard for any one of us to think differently from what the rest do as it is for a bird not to fly up when the rest do.

Independence, self-reliance, and originality are opposed to the imitative instinct and tend to weaken and displace it. These qualities indicate strength and maturity, just as the tendency to imitate others indicates weakness and inferiority. "The eccentricity of genius" is a common expression of the fact that persons of extraordinary originality are disposed to act in ways that are unlike those of ordinary people. I remember once of hearing Prof. Lester F. Ward, of Brown University, say that he came very nearly being mobbed one warm day in September when he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C., with a straw hat on. It was the custom to put aside straw hats the first of September, and the small boys and small-bore adults who gar

nished Pennsylvania Avenue that late-summer afternoon didn't purpose to allow even a philosopher to be comfortable, if by so doing he violated the sacred usage of the tribe regarding straw hats.

It is often surprising to persons of progressive tendencies that men are so fixed and helpless that they go along year after year and age after age in the same old paths of prejudice, without ever being able to see other and better ways of looking at things. Reforms always move up-hill. Converting people to new ideas is like wearing away stone.

Mental evolution has not proceeded far as yet. Human reason (what there is of it) has grown out of animal instinct. Originality is so rare that it is almost discreditable. The foundations of human thinking are still largely instinctive.

Progress is not natural. We are geared to go round and round. The reformer should not expect too much. We are only as far along as we are. It is the nature of granite to be hard. And it is the nature of man to be mechanical.

No wonder we have such high regard for the past! No wonder we shake our heads at new ideas! No wonder we burn our geniuses at the stake! Considering the kind of beings we have been made out of, it is surprising that we are not worse than we are.

Imitation will not always be stronger than reason, but it is today.

3. The Instinct of Indolence.

Another survival from primitive times is the loafing instinct, laziness, the disinclination to expend large or sustained amounts of energy. Higher peoples put forth an immense amount of energy-in contending with each other in war and in overcoming and controlling the forces of nature along the various lines of human industry.

But our bodies do not generate energy in sufficient abundance for us to regard labor as a blessing. We don't work, as a rule, because we would rather work than not. We work because we would rather work than starve. Labor is a sort of necessary evil. We endure it because it is not so bad as some other things we would have to undergo if we didn't work. To labor as men do in producing civilization-in producing the food, houses, machinery, and luxuries of modern peoples--is not natural in the present stage of development of the human machine. It is a strained and artificial expenditure. This is shown by our fondness for holidays, by our constant search for labor-saving machines, and by the fact that we are all the time looking forward to a Golden Age in our lives when we can lead a life of leisure. We generally classify toil with trouble and tears-with the evil things of life, not with the good things. The Happy Places that men dream of for themselves after death are invariably places where there is not much work to do.

The instinct of indolence is a survival from

primitive men. The savage is not an energetic animal. His bodily machine produces a rather small amount of energy-merely the energy required for occasional hunting and war expeditions and for the creation of his rude weapons, boats, huts, etc. The life of the savage is a simple, indolent, hand-to-mouth existence, demanding few necessities and no luxuries. The savage doesn't use toothbrushes, and hence does not have to make them—nor easy-chairs, nor books, nor railroads, nor plum pudding, nor silks, nor automobiles, nor any one of the ten thousand other things that the higher races have got into the habit of considering necessary for a full, rounded existence. The savage eats wild fruits instead of chocolate creams, and walks instead of taking a Pullman.

So-called civilized peoples are always surprised, when they come in contact with primitive peoples, to find how indolent they are. They call them lazy and good-for-nothing, and assume that the savage is lazy rather as a matter of choice. Laziness is merely the state of being without energy. It is not a disease, nor an evidence of moral degradation. In a sense it is the natural condition of men, while industry is the derived state. The savage does not like to work because work is painful to him. He has not the apparatus to put forth prolonged exertion. Many primitive peoples can not be induced to do any kind of sustained labor unless they are driven either by the hunger or the sex impulse.