These marked examples furnish a sound and unfailing analogy to the principles of unconscious imitation in their application to physiology. The perfectly co-ordinated man or woman does, as a matter of fact, offer less mark for imitation to the ordinary observer than the man or woman who displays an obvious defect, just as the perfectly dressed man or woman passes with less remark than those people who affect some exaggeration of costume in order to attract attention. Were we able at this time to set the Greek model before our children, we should be able to display it only on occasion, and the unconscious imitative powers of the child would seize hold far more readily of the marked defects with which it would be forced into contact during the greater part of its waking life. In a perfect world, unconscious imitation would not be able to exert a perverting influence, and to the conception of such a world we may well turn our attention, but we shall never attain it by any means other than these principles of conscious, reasoning, deliberate construction, or reconstruction, upon which I have based the whole of my theory and practice. And, finally, there is still a serious danger to be reckoned with, even should we find sufficient methods in our present civilisation from which we might learn by unconscious imitation. We must remember that during the advance of civilisation mankind has lost the faculty we call instinct, the faculty which guided mankind in a state of nature as it still guides the lower animal world. During our advance from this primitive condition, the one great defect in our mental, physical, and educational training has been the failure to recognise that civilised life is the death-bed of instinct, and that in civilised life man’s education must always demand conscious instruction. For we see that it is at the critical moments that men fail to rise to the occasion. In such a case as that of Dorando, already cited, we see that a perfectly trained athlete, a man capable of the magnificent effort he made in the great Marathon race, was robbed of his victory by his dependence at the critical moment upon unconscious control as opposed to the conscious control which is the thesis of _Man’s Supreme Inheritance_. And every day we are told that at critical moments, at the crisis of a debate, when suddenly called upon to decide a question of moment, or when faced with terrifying physical danger, men “lose their heads”—and fail. It is more especially at these times, at the crises of life, that the men who had been _educated_ in the principles of conscious control would be capable of acting with the same reason and common-sense that characterised their mental and physical acts on the ordinary occasions of life. If they had relied upon _unconscious_ imitation they would still be dependent, to a certain degree, upon instinct.