A reformation, or change of habit, is then dependent upon the plasticity of the organic material. It would take an adult longer to learn to walk than a child, because tissues are less plastic; likewise a child learns to ride a wheel or to perform any physical feat more readily than an adult; yet, on the other hand, in the adult the will power to change, and the strength of character in carrying out one's purpose, are more firm.

It is here that regular, physical exercise, is helpful in the change of muscular, nerve and brain habits, because it tends to make V tissue and cell more plastic. The freedom of the spinal nerves affects the freedom of brain cells and fibres, and the habit of thought is thus more readily changed where the physical formation is kept pliable.

Physical culture, to the average individual, means merely a series of physical movements, not extending beyond the bodily action; but if the regular exercise be accompanied by suggestion of the change needed in thought, the thought current

more readily makes new pathways because tissues are flexible and nerve centers freed.

The effort made by a few scientific men at the head of penal institutions, to introduce physical culture as a reformatory measure has a sound scientific basis. It is one of the most practical efforts yet put forth to change the habits of mind and body of the inmates.

Physical culture, therefore, when accompanied by mental suggestion, is a ready means for the change of thought and the formation of character. Thus the pertinent reply of the physical culturist to his brother who said that he had rather train the brain of an Aristotle than the body of a Samson:-"We physical culturists have more to do with the formation of Aristotles than you realize."

A change in tissue much more readily takes place a second time than a first; a tissue once conforming to a certain disease more readily succumbs to the same dis

*Editors' Note:-The writer has been the means of chang ing the thought current, and thus the entire life and purpose of thousands of women, who had been discouraged and unhappy, by simple exercises to free bodily restrictions and by suggestion and guidance of thoughts, accompanying the exercise.

ease a second time. Catarrh, indigestion, headache, rheumatism, gout or other diseases, recurring until the abnormal condition substitutes itself for the sound one, become habits; when a habit is formed, we term the disease "chronic," and the substitution of the normal for the abnormal, simply means a knowledge of the hygienic laws of life and persistence in following these until the physical, molecular habit be changed.

The digestive, assimilative and eliminative forces of the body, form habits just as any other organic function.

The assimilative process of storing up fat within the body, is a habit which is halted, and a new one installed by diet and exercise. Likewise the nerves form habits of over-tension; this tension requires too much nourishment to supply the energy used, or otherwise interferes with the assimilative process, so that the body becomes thin and poor, being deprived of its natural reserve of energy in the form of fat. This habit is likewise corrected by special ex

ercises for relaxation of nerves and by directions for diet and rest.

Epilepsy, neuralgia, neurasthenia, hysteria, and insomnia are illustrations of perverted nerve currents. Sometimes a medicine prescribed at the right time calls a halt and restores the natural functioning or reinstates the old habit.

In the nervous system, conditions recur and recur for no other apparent reason than the rule of physics stated above-"a body set in motion, tends to keep in motion, etc."

All neural activity or reflex action, referred to in the following pages, is the result of habit.

The habit of nerve irritability, of complaining, of being annoyed by people and the world in general, of unhappiness, are morbid manifestations of the inertia of the nervous system, which can be corrected by physical exercise, diet, cold bathing, and deep breathing of pure air. The change in the nerve habit is effected more quickly if a change of thought accompany the exeercise, that the tension within the nerves

may relax-the nerve matter becomes more plastic, as the physical tension without relaxes.

"If habits are due to the plasticity of materials to outward agents, we can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any, the brain matter is plastic. Not to mechanical pressures, not to thermal changes, not to any of the forces to which all the other organs of the body are exposed; for Nature has so blanketed and wrapped the brain about that the only impressions that can be made upon it are through the blood, on the one hand, and the sensory nerve-roots, on the other; it is to the infinitely attenuated currents that pour in through these latter channels that the hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so peculiarly susceptible. currents, once in, must find a way out. In getting out they leave their traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones; and the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call it an organ in which

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