The argument may perhaps be forcibly brought home by considering the following instance. One man is in splendid condition as regards strength, skill and judgment. Another man is not in good condition at all. Both are set to learn a business in which the three qualities mentioned are required. The former will learn it with ease, the latter with difficulty. The former already possesses much of what is required in the business, the latter does not. The former recognises much that is not new to him, the latter very little. Countless difficulties have been overcome by the former in other connections, and thus many perplexities do not exist for him.

It is only in an arbitrary sense that the developed mode of writing can be said to have had a beginning. The mass of what is organised was so before the child learnt writing, and remains organised alongside of the special capacity we are considering. We cannot, therefore, consistently speak of beginning to learn to write, or, rather, when we so express ourselves, we must understand clearly that we are utilising the components of other organic trends, and that we are contemplating a compound of new and old tasks. In the new activity we have a specialisation of old activities.

An average adult so readily forms primary and secondary combinations and is so swift to adapt himself to an immense variety of circumstances that nothing but miracle seems to explain his activity. A saner view, however, results when we pry into the history of these combinations. We find then that steady growth in adaptation accounts for the fertility of resource. The infant learns with irritating slowness to use his senses, and in the course of instinctively determined movements he gradually acquires the physical skill which the adult so readily applies. Only by protracted stages do the senses come to act together, and only in this manner does the child come to use his hands for the purpose of grasping. As with primary combinations, so with secondary ones. Under the pressure of needs more and more complications of a primary and a secondary character develop until we have the magic rapidity of adult life. Here the muscular and the neural systems have reached their greatest efficiency. Since we, then, can observe the factor of growth, we have no option but to regard the secondary, like the primary, world as a highly organised system of combinations. In other words, the thoughts and actions of adult existence are intelligent and varied because they are the product of a long process of natural selection. Habitual process, therefore, if it is regarded as organised process, is a fact that embraces all primary and secondary combinations without exception. For the same reason, spiritistic theories, placing as they do an unanalysed man behind the man, must be unprofitable to the student who wishes to understand the facts of adult life. The study of evolution alone yields an intelligent account of the human machine.

63.-EACH HABIT FORMS A BASIS FOR OTHERS OF ITS KIND.

In learning to write we start with organised reactions. Naturally, when we have learnt to write, this new trend (the strength, skill and knowledge acquired) forms a partial basis for other trends. Thus a sign painter or lithographer profits from knowing how to write; the position. we place ourselves into when writing may be advantageous for many purposes; the way we hold the pen may assist us in drawing; and writing itself might possibly be considered a department of drawing. We conclude,

then, that the mechanism of writing is not self-contained, since it presupposes organised reaction and serves as a basis, or forms a department, of other such processes.

64.-WHAT IS A HABIT?

We have analysed at full length a particular example. In the last two sections we saw that an organised trend is not self-contained (if we allow that writing is a fair type of it). How then is a habit to be described? What are its distinguishing marks? Is it a bundle of such habits? Or is there no such thing? Or is the notion of a trend a mere generalisation of convenience?

A man wishes to know the time, and he pulls out his watch and looks. The hand points to two o'clock, while the hour must be about eight. Then he re-collects that his watch has stopped for some days. The compass of this trend is very limited, and its development must have been correspondingly simple. As there is but one complicated movement, and that one common to other movements, he has had next to nothing to learn. Even the fact that he takes hold of the watch by the ring, is matched by similar reactions. What is new is that he accustoms himself, in the manner explained in sec. 55, to look at his watch without allowing the action to interfere with the general current of thought. Even this is overstating the case. The element alluded to can hardly be called a new one. The whole process is primitive. We are constantly engaged in doing with but the slightest interference what might be called fresh things, so that all we have new in this action is the somewhat greater ease with which the attention is divided. The obviousness of feeling accompanying the suggestion of the act is reduced to an inconsiderable extent.

We may speak of climbing over a stile as an acquired habit, yet that action embraces perhaps not one new feature. A man climbs over a stile as he has been accustomed to surmount similar obstacles. Thus fifty different activities might be considered as fifty distinct sets of organised reactions when there is in reality but one. In the instance of the stile we are considering, not at all a simple one, there is, roughly speaking, no learning, no mistake, no oblivion, no effort of attention. A person scales the hundredth stile with perhaps no greater ease than the first.

Consider a man's general bearing. May he speak of it as organised? Perhaps he has seen some one bow in a certain fashion. He admired the elegance of the gesture, and when he had to bow, he re-called his model. Or as he grew up he bowed as his sister or brother did, without deliberation. Or he adopted the various portions of the bow from various persons, not connecting in thought the different movements he has imitated.

Thus with the smile present on his lips; the manner he holds his head; the way his eyes meet others' eyes; the normal expression on his face. In short, he may speak of his total bearing as a definite settled whole; as acquired deliberately and in a logical order of which he is precisely aware. As a matter of fact, a mass of independent units are probably included in

our bearing. A small portion of it, such as the way in which we bow, may have been, as shown, acquired at different times and independently. But further than this, the bow is perhaps not a stable quantity. Parts of it may vary, or the whole of it change, as the outcome of a multiplicity of factors. So with the whole of a man's bearing. From the point of view of a careful analysis he cannot speak of his bearing as one trend, acquired and fixed in a deliberate order. He has before him rather an indefinite complex. A habit is not bound by any dimensions; it is not independent of other habits; it may consist of a single elementary reaction or of a multiplicity of reactions.

The exact turning at which an activity becomes organised cannot be decided, mainly for the reason that no such turning is imaginable. Its hold even varies. Looking at a hat, we recognise it instantly as being a hat.* How far a set of reactions can be simplified and apparently detached from general thought and control is a moot point. A trend, especially when the organism is predisposed to it, might require very little effort in the acquiring. The apparently mechanical opening and closing of the eyelids, for instance, resembles an activity such as writing. In simple routine the stimulus may be so faint that though it be recognised sufficiently to be acted upon, yet it is too faint for clear recognition. Moving the eyelids with or without deliberation yields apparently indistinguishable results. This we should expect, for the process is so elementary that deliberation or absence of deliberation makes no appreciable difference. Opening and shutting my eyelids deliberately as I am writing, I cannot discover anything in the action that would differentiate it from a normal trend. No distinct feeling of effort is traceable. There is only the feeling which accompanies the movement. [Test.] There is present probably under average circumstances, a feeling of fatigue which is relieved by shutting the eyes. This feeling is very faint; but ordinary organised reactions have often no more distinct feelings accompanying them. In the case of moving the eyelids, there is every reason to believe that the act is initiated at birth, currents of energy being easily discharged in that direction. How far respiration and other similar processes may be classed as routine, the reader must decide for himself.

*The learning of every word in a language, of every fact, argues organised reaction, and every word or fact so acquired implies an established trend. From week to week, perhaps from hour to hour, we are building up and breaking down temporary habits. Let me transcribe from my note book: "A certain noise made by boots. I recognise the noise and the purpose; but there is nothing present except a sense of familiarity and such feelings as might go with verbal and other images. Then, as expected-here again there is but a feeling-I feel a tap on my arm. Then a voice says, 'Are you ready?' I knew what was going to be asked of me, and so I at once quietly nod my head." Observe the total absence of verbal and other imagery. Essentially I react as I had reacted before. The creaking boots were familiar, so was the implication, so was the tapping, so was the short speech, and so was my nod. The noise of the boots was expected about that time. The moment I heard the voice, I did not so much know what was coming as felt its purport. In this way we act according to innumerable habits more or less transitory, attention being reduced whenever a thing is thought, or said or done a second time. Thus the way I turn over the pages of a book is a distinct trend, the manner in which I open and shut the door, the fashion in which I read, and the like.

Probably no distinct boundary exists. The mere absence of traceable effort, even the absence of an observable evolution in the action, applies to many processes which would not be looked upon as inherited. Every trend, by the very fact of its existence, must be considered as implying at least a modicum of predisposition. Hence the difficulty of drawing a line of

demarcation.

If habitual actions tend, in one direction, to merge into bodily functions, they tend to merge into deliberateness in another. What, indeed, is to divide these classes? As we reflect we become convinced that a vast number of actions are repeated, that the majority of our activities resemble each other, that the various new tasks we perform are new but to an insignificant degree, and that certain principles elaborated in the school of life lie at the foundation of activity as a whole. It would be safe to state that the overwhelming mass of what is new is more or less routine in character. Again, not all routine processes require little effort. So great are the variations in this respect that while some activities scarcely make a call on our intelligence or our energy, others exclude nearly all unrelated effort and are most fatiguing.

Repetition of a process is no trustworthy guide as to the extent of the stability of an established line of action. The following illustrates one extreme. A man is required to do something which he has not attempted before, a similar cycle of actions having to be attended to about every three minutes. An instrument which he needs he puts in an awkward place. During the first quarter of an hour the mistake is pointed out to him. He agrees that he is wrong. He appears anxious not to repeat the blunder. Though only three minutes intervene between the time he is corrected and the time he is to correct himself, he yet persistently errs. Often he declares he will put the instrument in the right place, and perhaps a second or two afterwards he becomes completely unaware of his declared intent. Though his eyes sweep across the object lying in the wrong place, he does not notice it. Many like instances might be cited proving the fact that mere repetition, or extent of time, are not essentials in the growth of particular habits. The argument becomes self-evident when we reflect that present activities are based on preceding activities, and that all action is more or less organised.

While the slightest exercise, as we have just noted, may firmly establish an activity, sometimes years of constant exercise will not accomplish that object. I performed for years, and day after day, a certain action in a certain manner. Then I observed some one proceeding more intelligently. I resolved to imitate and found no difficulty in breaking with a settled custom. The next day a new era was inaugurated. No effort was requisite. No relapse ensued.

The relative ease with which an organised trend can be removed is not in proportion to the number of times the action has been repeated. For scientific purposes this must be understood. For practical purposes it is nevertheless well not to forget that habits require normally a certain

time to grow, and that a vast aggregate of activities, once they become fixed, are simplified, require little effort, and are hard to remove. Though no rigorous and comprehensive statement can be drawn up, it is advisable. to note the general drift of the conclusions here arrived at.

p.

A widely-prevalent mistake must be touched upon here. Ward (Psychology, 1886, 40, col. 1) incidentally remarks: “Use we know blunts feeling and favours intellection, as we see in chemists, who sort the most filthy mixtures by smell and taste without discomfort." See also Bain, Emotions and the Will, 1875, pp. 80-2; Bouillier, Du Plaisir, 1865, pp. 21-2; Destutt de Tracy, Idéologie, ch. 14; Dumont, De la Sensibilité, 1875, pp. 77-8; Dumont, De l'Habitude, 1875, p. 344; Gratacap, De la Mémoire, 1866, who says that "the principal law of habit reads in effect that, in repeating itself, that which partakes of the nature of passion becomes enfeebled and effaced, and that which partakes of the nature of action becomes strengthened and tends to reproduce itself” (p. 205); Höffding, Wiederholung, 1883, p. 323; Horwicz, Analysen, 1872, i, p. 360; Jodl, Lehrbuch, 1896, p. 388; Ravaisson, De l'Habitude, 1838, p. 27; Rümelin, Reden, 1881, i, pp. 162-3; Sully, Human Mind, 1892, ii, p. 33; Titchener, Psychology, 1896, p. 97. These authors, and many others, hold that use blunts feeling. Needless to say that the opposite is just as true-as when filthy mixtures become more and more objectionable--and that both cases are to be explained teleologically. We come to love our country, our parents, our habitual resorts, our avocations, in the same manner as we come to grow neglectful of objects. Indeed the whole tendency of this chapter is to prove that use blunts intellect and decomposes it when needs are in opposition or lend no support. In this manner familiar objects whose details are of no importance grow more and more indistinct because we attend to them less and less. Thus the chapters of this book become meaningless to me through incessant re-reading.

65.-ALL THOUGHT IS ORGANISED.*

We have analysed a particular routine case. We have attempted, in a general survey, to arrive at a conclusion as to its essential nature. Now it must be evident that organised reactions cover an enormous area in the province of muscular action; but what position, if any, do they occupy in the more exclusively neural realm? I have reserved the answer to this question. The examples chosen, were, generally speaking, such as implied motion, and purposely so, in order to avoid prejudging the problem which we are about to consider.

Let a man imagine himself walking along a lane, playing with a ring on his finger, scanning the scenery around him, and secondarily rehearsing a poem. When he first endeavoured to repeat the poem could he have repeated it as easily as now? Not if he was a normal individual. Some practice was necessary, equivalent to that detailed in the analysis of writing, before the verses could be repeated with so little effort that there was not even a suspicion of rehearsing them. We have here a routine act, similar to that of writing, but there is an important new element. The immediate stimulus and the reaction are both present in the secondary realm. The verses proceed within. One secondary system suggests or is followed by another such system. When we first thought of rehearsing a poem inaudibly we could not help re-membering irrelevant, unessential

*This problem forms the subject of ch. 4.