acquired specific characters. This applies to psychic as well as to physical characters. In the same way the earlier, during the course of his life, a man assimilates a strong suggestion, the greater will be its effect and the longer its influence will last. Let us now consider instinct in relation to moral conceptions. Dr. McDougall gives prominence in his "Social Psychology" to the following instincts, which, together with the emotional excitements which accompany them, play the foremost part in the evolution of moral ideas: (1) The reproductive, parental and erotic instincts, responsible for the earliest form of social feeling; (2) the instinct of pugnacity, with which are connected the emotions of resentment and revenge, which give rise, when complicated with other instincts, to indignation at anti-social conduct; (3) the gregarious instinct, which inclines animals to gather together in aggregations of their own species--this impulse has an important bearing upon the sympathetic emotions and is at the root of tribal loyalty; (4) the instincts of acquisition and construction, which have been developed with the idea of property, and the moral judgments connected therewith; (5) the instincts of self-abasement (or subjection) and of self-assertion (or self-display), with which are connected the emotions of "depression" and "elation"--the former instinct gives rise to feelings of respect towards superiors, divine or human, and the latter is the basis of self-respect.[66] Other writers lay greater emphasis on a distinct instinct of Imitation. It is undoubted that imitation, both when it is spontaneous and when it is deliberate--the distinction between the two forms should be carefully observed--plays a great part in the formation of moral judgments. Theological and ethical writers are fond of saying that the sense of moral obligation arises from the consciousness of approval, and consequent imitation, of an ideal or a standard which is submitted to our judgment; this implies deliberate imitation. The imitative tendency (purely spontaneous) is strongly marked in every child in its first efforts at vocalization, which are pure "Echolalia," i.e. incessant repetition of the sounds it hears; in fact, imitation marks every step of a child's growing consciousness. Practically all phenomena, however, attributed to the imitative instinct is in reality a manifestation of response to extrinsic suggestion. James speaks of "the imitative tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and produces panics, and orgies and frenzies of violence, and which only the rarest individuals can actively withstand.... Certain mesmerized subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their operator makes before their eyes."[67]