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9
EXTRA-LOGICAL LAWS OF IMITATION *1
1888
Imitation, then, contrary to what we might infer from certain appearances, proceeds from the inner to
the outer man. It seems at first sight as if a people or a class began to imitate another by copying its
luxury and its fine arts before it became possessed of its tastes and literature, of its aims and ideas, in
a word, of its spirit. Precisely the contrary, however, occurs. In the sixteenth century fashions in dress
came into France from Spain. This was because Spanish literature had already been imposed upon us
at the time of Spain’s pre-eminence. In the seventeenth century, when the preponderance of France
was established, French literature ruled over Europe, and subsequently French arts and French
fashions made the tour of the world. When Italy, overcome and downtrodden as she was, invaded us
in the fifteenth century, with her arts and fashions, but, first of all, with her marvelous poetry, it was
because the prestige of her higher civilisation and of the Roman Empire that she had unearthed and
transfigured had subjugated her conquerors. Besides, the consciences of Frenchmen were Italianised
long before their houses or dress or furniture through their habit of submission to the transalpine
Papacy.
Did these very Italians who fell to aping their own Greco-Roman restorations begin by reflecting
the externals of the ancient world, its statues, its frescoes, its Ciceronian periods, in order to become
gradually filled by its spirit? On the contrary, it was to their hearts that their transplendent model
made its first appeal. This neo-paganism was the conversion of a whole community, first its scholars
and then its artists (this order is irreversible), to a dead religion; and whenever a new religion, it
matters not whether it be living or dead, that is made fascinating by some compelling apostle, takes
hold of a man, it is first believed in and then practised. . . .
The invention of language wonderfully facilitated, but did not originate, the inoculation of ideas
and desires of one mind by another and consequently the progress of imitation ab interioribus ad
exteriora. For had not this progress already existed, the birth of language would be inconceivable. It
is not difficult to understand how the first inventor of speech set to associating in his own mind a
given thought and a given sound (perfected by gesture), but it is difficult to understand how he was
able to suggest this relation to another by merely making him hear the given sound. If the listener
merely repeated this sound like a parrot, without attaching to it the required meaning, it is impossible
to see how this superficial and mechanical re-echoing could have led him to understand the meaning
of the strange speaker or carried him over from the sound to the word. It must then be admitted that the
sense was transmitted with the sound, that it reflected the sound. And whoever is acquainted with the
feats of hypnotism with the miracles of suggestion, that have been popularised to so great an extent of
late, should certainly not be reluctant to admit this postulate. . . .
This progress from within to without, if we try to express it more precisely, means two things: (1)
That imitation of ideas precedes the imitation of their expression. (2) That imitation of ends precedes
imitation of means. Ends or ideas are the inner things, means or expressions, the outer. Of course, we
are led to copy from others everything which seems to us a new means for attaining our old ends, or
satisfying our old wants, or a new expression for our old ideas; and we do this at the same time that
we begin to adopt innovations which awaken new ideas and new ends in us. Only these new ends,
these needs for novel kinds of consumption, take hold of us and propagate themselves in us much