I will first take up the psychological interpretation. The question we have to answer in this connection is: Why did these sub-divisions or classes, if you please, industrial, religious or otherwise, become self-enclosed or endogamous? My answer is because the Brahmans were so. Endogamy, or the closed-door system, was a fashion in the Hindu Society, and as it had originated from the Brahman caste it was whole-heartedly imitated by all the non-Brahman sub-divisions or classes, who, in their turn, became endogamous castes. It is “the infection of imitation” that caught all these sub-divisions on their onward march of differentiation and has turned them into castes. The propensity to imitate is a deep-seated one in the human mind and need not be deemed an inadequate explanation for the formation of the various castes in India. It is so deep-seated that Walter Bagehot argues that “we must not think of … imitation as voluntary, or even conscious. On the contrary it has its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose notions, so far from being consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The main seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes predisposing us to believe this or disinclining us to believe that are among the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the imitative nature [pg 92] of credulity there can be no doubt.”⁴ This propensity to imitate has been made the subject of a scientific study by Gabriel Tarde, who lays down three laws of imitation. One of his three laws is that imitation flows from the higher to the lower or, to quote his own words, “Given the opportunity, a nobility will always and everywhere imitate its leaders, its kings or sovereigns, and the people likewise, given the opportunity, its nobility.”⁵ Another of Tarde’s laws of imitation is: that the extent or intensity of imitation varies inversely in proportion to distance, or in his own words “the thing that is most imitated is the most superior one of those that are nearest. In fact, the influence of the model’s example is efficacious inversely to its _distance_ as well as directly to its superiority. Distance is understood here in its sociological meaning. However distant in space a stranger may be, he is close by, from this point of view, if we have numerous and daily relations with him and if we have every facility to satisfy our desire to imitate him. This law of the imitation of the nearest, of the least distant, explains the gradual and consecutive character of the spread of an example that has been set by the higher social ranks.”⁶ ⁴ _Physics and Politics_ 1915, p. 60. ⁵ _Laws of Imitation_, Tr. by E. C. Parsons, 2nd ed. p. 217. ⁶ _Ibid_. p. 224.