Mimicry

“ The principle of mimicry is implanted so deep in human nature and has exerted so far-reaching an influence on the development of religion as well as of the arts that it may be well, even at the cost of a short digression, to illustrate by example some of the modes in which primitive man has attempted to apply it to the satisfaction of his wants by means of religious or magical dramas. ”

“ Such mimicry, not only inner and felt, but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result from very lively empathic imagination. But as it is the mimicking, inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the rising of the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes such previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be taken either as constituting or explaining Empathy itself. ”

“ The production of mimicry in an individual animal has no more to do with consciousness or “taking thought” than any of the other processes of growth. Protective mimicry is here defined as an advantageous and superficial resemblance of one animal to another, which latter is specially defended so as to be disliked or feared by the majority of enemies of the groups to which both belong—a resemblance which appeals to the sense of sight, sometimes to that of hearing, and rarely to smell, but does not extend to deep-seated characters except when the superficial likeness is affected by them. ”

“ Because a rite has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it will cease to be done. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art. ”

“ One of the most effective of artifices in telling stories to young children is the use of mimicry—the imitation of animals' voices and sound in general is of never-ending joy to the listeners. However, I should wish to introduce a note of grave warning in connection with this subject. This special artifice can only be used by such narrators as have special aptitude and gifts in this direction. There are many people with good imaginative power but who are wholly lacking in the power of mimicry, and their efforts in this direction, however painstaking, remain grotesque and therefore ineffective. ”

“ If humanity had been born deaf and dumb, it would long since have perfected its mimic apparatus so completely that it would be the tool and [114] symbol of thought. What can the gesture mean to us? Feeling that is so familiar to us that it awakens sympathy on the slightest provocation. Only that which is from the very beginning impulse within us is sensuality. Mimicry is the symbol of sensual values. The sign, the prognostic, the distinctive mark of mimic action is the sensual style. And since this art signifies the expression of the soul, the motion picture is the sensual soul. ”

“ Though "mimicry" is but a small corner in this vast field of inquiry it is a peculiarly favourable one owing to the great interest which it has excited for many years and the consequently considerable store of facts that has been accumulated. ”

“ When a sailor wants a wind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles for it; when a savage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it. But it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was once intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing, becomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our modern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in; the earnest, zealous act sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of child’s-play.
5 These instances are all taken from The Golden Bough,3 The Magic Art, I, 139 ff. ”

“ The former process would be a true instance of "active mimicry," as defined by Mr. Distant, but the latter cannot be included under that term; indeed, in such cases, experience in the individual is the equivalent of natural selection in the species.
In the preliminary portion of his paper, Mr. Distant has given us many excellent examples and arguments to show that mimicry and protective resemblance probably existed in very remote antiquity; (n10) and he has done well in drawing attention to the matter, which is apt to be overlooked. ”

“ But, as regards the exact means whereby the condition of mimicry is induced and perfected, or concerning the exact causes of its assumption and development, natural history science, in its practical aspect, remains silent; although the bolder march of theory and speculation may indeed lead us for a little way toward the solution of the problem. At any rate, there can be no difficulty to our clearly appreciating the workings of a great law of purpose and design in the production of mimicry, as serving to protect the weak and less powerful against stronger and better-provided animals. ”

“ Mimicry was not only one of the first great departments of zoological knowledge to be studied under the inspiration of natural Selection, it is still and will always remain one of the most interesting and important of subjects in relation to this theory as well as to evolution. In mimicry we investigate the effect of environment in its simplest form: we trace the effects of the pattern of a single species upon that of another far removed from it in the scale of classification. ”

“ The last six cases of mimicry are especially instructive, because they seem to indicate one of the processes by which dimorphic forms have been produced. When, as in these cases, one sex differs much from the other, and varies greatly itself, it may be that individual variations will occasionally occur, having a distant resemblance to groups which are the objects of mimicry, and which it is therefore advantageous to resemble. Such a variety will have a better chance of preservation; the individuals possessing it will be multiplied ”

“ Newton's limitation of mimicry to the status of unconscious resemblance (cf. Zool. 1899, p. 529) is in accord with that prevailing tone of thought which denies to the lower animals the power of abstract reasoning so constantly evident in man. I hope that Mr. Distant will not conclude his highly interesting treatment of the mimetic faculty without some reference to vocal mimicry, [1] for this demonstrates (as it would seem, beyond dispute) the occurrence of a desire on the part of certain animals to do something that another animal is doing or has done, solely for the purpose of mimicking it. ”

“ The voluntary imitations are, when we imitate deliberately the actions of others, either by mimicry, as in acting a play, or in delineating a flower; or in the common actions of our lives, as in our dress, cookery, language, manners, and even in our habits of thinking. ”

“ The dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend one is someone else, contains this pleasure of mimicry as one of its elements. Another element seems to be a peculiar sense of power in stretching one's own personality so as to include that of a strange person. In young children this instinct often knows no bounds. ”

“ In certain extreme cases we call it ‘mimicry’, and invoke hypotheses to account for this ‘mimetic’ resemblance; and those of us who reject these hypotheses must fain take refuge in others, as far-reaching in their way. ”

“ It must, of course, be understood that the mimicry is unconscious, the result, as in the cases of cryptic resemblance, having been brought about by natural selection—the less perfect the mimicry the more liable are the individuals to be attacked, and the less chance have they of reproducing their kind. ”

“ In these days, when it is the vogue to express generic resemblances as always due to the phenomenon of mimicry, it is perhaps well to remember that the explanation is at least of not universal acceptance. ”

“ But, what is more important, mimicry and resemblance are only particular aspects of the principle of natural selection, and therefore if the factors of mimicry do not exist to-day, then, a posteriori, neither do those of natural selection. A single glance at nature is sufficient to justify the rejection of such a conclusion, and we must, therefore, admit that the factors of mimicry are in actual operation now ”

“ The propensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are mostly strongest in those who have least abstract minds. The most wonderful examples of imitation in the world are perhaps the imitations of civilised men by savages in the use of martial weapons. ”

“ It is this, that while, among various kinds of animals, it is possible to discover traces of all the other faculties of man, especially the faculty of mimicry, yet that particular form of mimicry which shows itself in the imitation of form, either by modelling or by drawing, is not to be met with. As far as I know, there is no sculpture or modelling, and decidedly no painting or drawing, of animal origin, I mention the fact, in order that such comfort may be derived therefrom as artists may feel inclined to take. ”

“ In my opinion we are all influenced by the people amongst whom we live, by social circumstances and by many other factors. We are all subject to a kind of mimicry, but that does not necessarily mean that we are just chameleons and nothing else. ”

“ I am inclined to the view that it is unnecessary to assume, in man, a special imitative instinct, but that “as Preyer and others have shown in the case of young children, mimicry arises mainly from pleasure in activity as such, and not from its peculiar quality as imitation.” [5] An intelligent child imitates because he has faculties crying for employment, and imitation is a key that lets them loose: he needs to do things and imitation gives him things to do. ”

“ Newton maintains that mimicry must have the prefix "unconscious," "which in every department of Zoology should be always expressed or understood"; and, again, wherever mimicry is not only possible, but even probable, "we must always remember that however produced it is unconscious." ”

“ If, however, the mimetic resemblance is not fully established and the mimic bears only what supporters of the mimicry theory term a "rough" resemblance to the model, it is clear that it will have far less chance of being mistaken for the model. ”

“ These five conditions are of historical interest and may also serve as a peg for sundry criticisms in connection with the mimicry theory. They are as follows:
(1) That the imitative species occur in the same area and occupy the very same station as the imitated.
(2) That the imitators are always the more defenceless.
(3) That the imitators are always less numerous in individuals.
(4) That the imitators differ from the bulk of their allies. ”

“ Palm trees, like human beings, are male and female. The garden plants, the date bearers, were females; the desert plants were males; and the waving of the branches over the females meant the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust from the one to the other." [54]
The time has arrived when the whole theory of "protective resemblance" and (or) "mimicry" [55] requires to be expressed and understood in two senses, viz. Demonstrated, and Suggested or Probable. I propose also to give instances of what may be considered as Disputed or Mistaken Mimicry, and likewise Purposeless Mimicry. ”

“ This sort of imitativeness is possessed by man in common with other gregarious animals, and is an instinct in the fullest sense of the term, being a blind impulse to act as soon as a certain perception occurs. It is particularly hard not to imitate gaping, laughing, or looking and running in a certain direction, if we see others doing so. Certain mesmerized subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their [Pg 409] operator makes before their eyes. [372] A successful piece of mimicry gives to both bystanders and mimic a peculiar kind of æsthetic pleasure. ”

“ To the mere animal cries and various instinctive exclamations, either of joy and grief, of passion and want, were associated the deliberate imitation, together with a childlike mimicry of different sounds, similar to what we may even now observe in children, with whom such mimic intonations and mocking word-play is a common and favorite amusement. ”

“ Analysis has proved pretty conclusively that the mediums have originally mimicked acquaintances whom they found strange, persons apparently selected for having completely different outlooks on life, both from the medium and from each other, different religions, different emotional processes and usually different dialects. This mimicry has given rise to unconscious impersonations of these people, impersonations so complete that the medium is in a state of trance and unconscious of any other existence. ”

“ The dramas are played, the mysteries are performed, not to teach the spectators the doctrines of their creed, still less to entertain them, but for the purpose of bringing about those natural effects which they represent in mythical disguise; in a word, they are magical ceremonies and their mode of operation is mimicry or sympathy. We shall probably not err in assuming that many myths, which we now know only as myths, had once their counterpart in magic ”

“ There are now very few cases of an accidental resemblance found between two species in nature which are not set down by someone to "mimicry," some in which even the wildest imagination might well fail to see any possible benefit to the supposed mimic. ”

“ On the theory of mimicry all the members of both of these groups must be regarded as specially protected owing to their conspicuous coloration and distasteful properties. What advantage then can an Ithomiine be supposed to gain by mimicking a Heliconine, or vice versâ? Why should a species exchange its own bright and conspicuous warning pattern for one which is neither brighter nor more conspicuous? ”