its activities. Every time an act is performed this nerve-force makes, as it were, a track for itself along which it will run more easily next time, and after a few repetitions it is difficult to make the nerve-force run in any other way. Now, in the economy of nature, the use of the hands in labor or athletics will no more surely harden the muscles and make callous spots on the palms than it will cause the nervous force to run along certain lines and result in certain regular movements. And when one thinks the same thing happens; the nerve force is wearing channels for itself-mental habits are forming. And if one talks, habits of speech are forming. If he acts, habits of life are forming.

And thus the new psychology of which some good people have been afraid is, as Professor James has shown, the strongest ally of sound moral instruction. Every right action helps to form a right habit which is a source of strength; every

wrong action tends to break down a good habit or establish a bad one. In the play, Rip Van Winkle excuses himself for each new drink by saying, “We won't count this time." So young men say nowadays. Well, they may not count it, their friends may not count it, kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among the cells of the brain and along the lines of the nerves, the molecules and fibers are steadily registering and storing it up against the time of the next temptation. And how often the account becomes too heavy for the man to pay, and, try as he will, he cannot reform! He has been running in debt to nature till he is morally insolvent.

But, fortunately, it is not our mistakes and sins alone that are thus registered. Every right choice leaves its impress; every manly decision is counted no less certainly. The youth who resists the temptation to shirk to-day makes it easier

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to do good work to-morrow. Industry, integrity and self-control may become so habitual that temptation along these lines cannot move us, and even happiness and cheerfulness may become habits by always looking on the bright side. The student who keeps faithfully busy each day may rest assured of the final result. The little molecules will find their appropriate places in his brain as certainly as they will in a crystal or a flower. Only let him persevere in wholesome effort and study and he will certainly find as the years glide by that right mental activities have become mental habits, and right moral activities have become moral habits, and have given him strength to take his place among the strong and successful men of his generation.

He will have some battles to wage, but he will win, and it will do him good to win them. There is a fable of a Norman captain who inherited all the virtues,

—courage, sagacity, foresight, perseverence, whatever they were, of the persons slain by him in battle. Thus only could he grow strong. This fable becomes fact in the life of every one who conquers an evil habit or acquires a good

one.