imitation and style

I agree with Wolfflin that "the personal style must b added the style of the school, the country, and the race." (P7) " Different time give birth to different art. Epoch and race interact. We must first establish how many general traits a style contains before we can give it the name of a national style a special sense."(P9) Wofflin uses Italian Renaissance and the baroque as examples to illustrate his ideas. But among his writings, i am interested with the section of "Imitation and Decoration", because they represent a rational psychological process.
I believe that all artists has went through the period of imitation, and that has bothered many of us. We learnt how to imitate others when we were kids, and it is natural to humans. When we start practicing art, nearly all the art around us contradicts us. when we imitate somebody's art, at least we agree with something in that person, either the skill or the concept. When the imitation accumulate to a certain level, we want to do some "changes", since we have our own life experience and our own believes. However, whatever the changes, the past always continued nature imitation.