We find young animals clinging even in their imitations pretty closely to their own proper fathers and mothers, who are thus enabled to bring them up _comme il faut_.
5.

There is every reason to think, moreover, that the tendency to imitate is itself instinctive.

Young animals, notably the monkey and the child, fall spontaneously to imitating when they reach a certain age.

Imitation shows itself to be instinctive in the case of the mocking bird, the parrot, etc.

Furthermore, the mechanism of this function of imitation is now very well known.