In the first place, we must remember, and Dr. S—— has himself admitted the fact, that the normal is the rarest of all states. Medical experts find that their most constant source of error in diagnosis arises from the overreadiness to assume normal conditions in patients whose internal economies and muscular co-ordination are, in fact, far from the ideal standard of proportion and interdependence. Yet if the expert trained in physiology fails to note the distortions which are upsetting the whole economy, what body is to be named the supreme authority that shall select the “good models” for unconscious imitation? In the second place, we have to reckon with a psychological factor which at once determines the question of the validity of unconscious imitation. This factor is the demonstrable truth that unconscious imitation does in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand lay hold of the faults of the imitated and pass over the virtues. In a long experience of re-educating many professional men and women for the stage in this country, I have had abundant opportunity to observe the methods of the “understudy” set to “imitate” his or her principal, and my invariable experience has been that subconscious imitation has always been shown by a reproduction of the actor’s or actress’s most prominent failings. The intellectual reading of the part, the subtler inflexions of voice and the finer details of gesture are passed by, and the “understudy” reproduces the “mannerisms,” all those obvious tricks of speech, manner, and gesture which are the least essential factors in the true reading of the part. Again, my experience in cases of stammering has shown me very clearly that especially among boys and young men, the stutter has in a very large majority of cases come about by the imitation of some other boy. We do not find boys so apt to imitate one of their fellows who speaks particularly well.