The Maccabaean

B Y imitation we mean, chiefly in an unfavorable sense, everything man says or does,thinks or feels, not out of the depths ofhis own nature, not as the necessary product ofhis spiritual powers and their relation to the external world, but in consequence of the rootedinclination in him to do as others do, and to act ina certain way only because others act in that way.

If what some philosophers maintain is true,that moral good is absolute good, and evil is absolute evil, and that we distinguish between thetwo by means, not of logic, but of moral intuition:then imitation may be considered morally objectionable, because our moral instinct does notapprove of this apish characteristic. If, however,those are in the right who distinguish betweengood and evil according to the advantage or the disadvantage of society, we are justified in questioning the unfavorable judgment of our instinctin this regard. Though there may be not a littleexaggeration or one-sideness in the theory of theFrench philosopher Tarde, who regards the history of mankind as the result of imitation actingaccording to fixed laws, it requires little thoughtto recognize the principle that this ugly characteristic of imitation forms one of the foundationstones of human society, without which societycould neither have come into existence nor havedeveloped after once in existence. For, let ussuppose no one were in the least influenced byanyone else, each thinking and acting from theimpulses of his own nature, without letting anyexternal spiritual power affect him. How wouldsuch human beings have attained to social conventions, to fixed law and customs, to generalreligious and moral conceptions, and the like?All of these taken as a whole, it is true, are thenatural results of general causes, but in particulars they presuppose special individual causes.For instance, here is a consideration of supremeimportance : how could any language have originated or developed, unless each individual hadimitated the other, without waiting until his ownspiritual forces brought him to designate objectsby exactly the same names as his neighbors.Mankind would have remained without a language, and would never have raised itself abovethe level of brutes.

At the same time imitation would not have sufficed to spread these valuable conventions—language, law and customs, religious beliefs, etc.,—if it simply caused each individual to imitate all his neighbors in the same degree. In that case the number of those imitated would coincide with the number of those who imitate; everybody would, in accordance with the condition of his spiritual powers, select one from among a number as the object of imitation, and again conventions would be rendered impossible. To stamp society with one impress, then, there must exist a single nucleus with the power of attracting all hearts, influencing those nearer to it directly, and those at a distance through the medium of the nearer ones. There should be a single or, at least, a chief object of general imitation.

One such common central point actually existed in every society in the first stages of its development, especially in that hoary time when the spirit of man was painfully struggling out of the depths of brutishness to the heights of human social existence. In this low state of progress, illustrated by the savage tribes of to-day, man, surrounded by dangers, is particularly conscious of the value of physical strength, and confers divine honors on the strong. The family or clan humbly reveres its chief and guardian, the "divine prince;" and before the preeminence of this "ideal," its members renounce, as it were, their personality with all their individual characteristics and inclinations. Naturally, this ideal forms the nucleus of society, the object of the voluntary imitation of his fellows, and his words, deeds and manners become common possessions without any effort on his part, simply in consequence of the renunciation of the lower to the higher individuality. These common possessions descend from father to son; and in each succeeding generation there is a "divine prince" who guards the inheritance of his fathers, and when it no longer suffices for the advanced needs of the time, he adds to it something of his own. This addition, in turn, through imitation, becomes the common possession of society. In this way a strongly marked society spreads and develops, and the individuals in the course of time seem, in a certain measure, to be cast from a common mould.