At its simplest level, imitation shows up in dress. If the local cavemen are wearing leopard this year, then leopard too shall be your mode of attire. Are they now tying their hair on top of their head, then so will be your tonsorial style. Suffice it to mark, all cows in a herd look alike, and all herds are constructed of cows who want to look alike and do so through their imitation of each other. (Though rarely given conscious note, the omnipresent reality of this is too obvious to belabor, and is of no specific significance to the core of our interest in this affair).
The work of the imitation gland that directly bears on the search for fresh understanding has to do with how it affects man’s collective mind. Indeed, every herd has such, which exerts near total control over which thoughts each cow therein can meaningfully entertain. In fact, those who have done advanced study in this area do not say that cows can think, they say instead that they imitate…(which fulfills their needs just the same).
When all around him are sporting beaver hats, a normal man will don one himself, and via the route that, “they are attractive.” It is not: “I must wear one because everyone else is,” but rather: “Everyone else is wearing them because they are so attractive. It just shows how good taste amongst tasteful people, spreads.” When the imitation gland’s effects rise above the material level of fashion and into the realm of thought, its manifestations are likewise justified: “I do not believe that such-and-such idea is correct because most everyone else believes it is – contraire the proof that the idea is correct, is in the fact that so many people believe it is.” You are then in-fashion, and with no damage done to your mind’s concept of it being independent and free to consider, then choose, the ideas proper for it to embrace.
In matters from fashion, to art, to music, movies, literature, politics, religion and social morality; imitation is the key to the game. From top to bottom, back to front, imitation is what holds civilization together, and presents to man a sensation of comfortable continuity; of predictability.
Within a group, if everyone is trying to imitate everyone else this creates an atmosphere of safety. Each cow person feels that she can depend on every day to be about like the previous one, and if enough people begin to wear a new style of shoe you find off putting, not to sweat: “Soon everyone will be wearing them (including me), and things will quickly be back to calm and normal.” Nothing contributes more to the sustenance of civilized existence, to peace and order, than imitation. Not laws, not threats, but mere imitation.
(Note that creatures without this gland have no civilizations).