of these movements, and show their knowledge by their surprise if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way. But our higher thought centers know hardly anything about the matter. Few men can tell off-hand which sock, shoe, or trouser leg they put on first. They must first mentally rehearse the act; and even that is often insufficient-the act must be performed. So of the question, Which valve of my double door opens first?, Which way does my door swing?, etc. I cannot tell the answer; yet my hand never makes a mistake. No one can describe the order in which he brushes his hair or teeth; yet it is likely that the order is a pretty fixed one in all of us."

Habit as a Stabilizer of Action

Habit not only thus saves time but stablizes action, and where the habits acquired are effective ones, this is invaluable. Habits of prompt performance of certain daily duties on the part of the individual are a distinct benefit both to him and to others, as certain customary efficient office practises, when they are really habitual, immensely facilitate the operation of a business. On a larger scale habit is 'society's most precious conservative agent'. Individuals not only develop personal habits of dress, speech, etc., but become habituated to social institutions, to certain occupations, to the prestige attaching to some types of action and the punishment correlated with others. Education in the broadest sense is simply the acquisition of those habits which adapt an individual to his social enviornment. It is the instrument society uses to hand down the habits of thinking, feeling, and action which characterize a civilization. Society is protected from murder, theft, and pillage by law and the police, but it is even better protected by the fact that living together peacefully and cooperatively is for most adults habitual. In a positive sense the multifarious occupations and professions of a great modern city are carried on from day to day in all their accustomed detail, not because the lawyers, the businessmen, the teachers who practise them continuously reason them out, nor from continuous instinctive promptings. They are striking testimony to the influence of habit. As a recent English writer puts it:

James: Psychology, Vol. I, p. 115.

The population of London would be starved in a week, if the flywheel of habit were removed, if no signalman or clerk or policeman ever did anything which was not suggested by a first-hand impulse, or if no one was more honest or punctual or industrious than he was led to be by his conscious love on that particular day, for his master, or for his work, or by his religion, or by a conviction of danger from the criminal law."

From etiquette and social distinction, from formalities of conversation and correspondence, of greeting and farewell, of condolence and congratulation to the most important 'customs of the country', with respect to marriage, property, and the like, ways of acting are maintained by the mechanism of habit rather than by arbitrary law or equally arbitrary instinctive caprice.

The Danger of Disserviceable Habits in the Individual

Habitual behavior which can become so completely controlling in the lives of so many people is not without its dangers. The nervous system is originally neutral, and can be involved on the side either of good or evil. A human born with a plastic brain and nervous system must acquire habits, but that he will acquire good habits (that is habits serviceable to his own happiness and to that of his fellows) is not guaranteed by nature. Habits are indeed more notorious than famous, and examples are more frequently chosen from evil ones than from good. Promptness in the performance of one's professional or domestic duties, care in speech, in dress and in demeanor, are, once they are acquired, permanent assets. But if these fail to be developed, dishonesty or superficiality, slovenliness in dress and speech, and surliness in manner, may and do become equally habitual. The significance of this has been eloquently stated at the close of James' famous discussion:

The hell to be endured hereafter of which theology tells is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are 7 Graham Wallas: Great Society, p. 74.

spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of vice or virtue leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle in Jefferson's play excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, “I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up, to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do, is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.8

Social Inertig

If the acquisition of bad, that is, disserviceable habits, is disastrous to the individual, it is in some respects even worse in the group. The inertia of the nervous system, the tendency to go on repeating connections that have once been made is one of the strongest obstacles to change, however desirable. It is not only that habits of action have been established, but that with them go deep-seated habits of thought and feeling. The repression of people's accustomed ways of doing things may bring with it a sense of frustration almost as complete and painful as if these obstructed activity were instinctive. This is not true merely in the melodramatic instances of drug addicts and drunkards. It is true in the case of social habits which have become established in a large group. Any Utopian that dreams of revolutionizing society over night fails to take into account the enormous control of habits over groups which have acquired them, and the powerful emotions, amounting sometimes to passion, which are aroused by their frustration.

The Importance of the Learning Habit

That habit is at once the conserver and the petrifier of society has long been recognized by social philosophers. There is one habit, however, the acquisition of which is itself a preventive of the complete domination of the individual or the group by hard and fast routine. This is the habit of learning, which is necessary to the acquisition of any habits at all. Man in learning new habits, 'learns to learn'. This ability to learn is, of course, correlated with a plasticity of brain and James: Psychology, Vol. I, p. 127.

nerve fibre which is most present in early youth. The disappearance of this capacity is hastened by the pressure which forces individuals in their business and professional life to cling fast to certain habits which are prized and rewarded by the group. A sedulous cultivation on the part of the individual of the habit of open-minded inquiry, of the habit of learning, and the encouragement of this tendency by the group are the only antidotes that can be provided against this marked physiological tendency to fossilization and the frequent social tendencies in the same direction.

Whether habits shall master us, or whether we shall be their masters, depends also on the method by which they were acquired. If they were learnt merely through mechanical drill, they will be fixed and rigid. If they were learnt deliberately to meet new situations, they will not be retained when the conditions they were acquired to meet are utterly changed.

The Specificity of Habits

One important consideration, finally, that must be brought to consideration is that habits are, like instincts, specific. They are not general 'open sesames' which, learned in one situation, will apply with indiscriminate miraculousness to a variety of others. Just as an instinct is a definite response to a definite stimulus, so is a habit. The chief and almost only observable difference is that the former is unlearned, while the latter is learned or acquired.

But while habits are specific, they are within limits transferrable. Such is the case when a situation which calls out a certain habitual response is paralleled in significant points by another. Thus the situation: one's-room-at-home-cluttered

up-with-a-miscellany-of-books-papers-tennis-apparatus-andclothing has sufficiently similar significant points to the situation one's-office- littered-with-documents-old-letters-manuscripts-blueprints-and-proofs to call forth, if the habit has been established in one case, the identical response of 'tidying up' in the other. But unless there are marked points of similarity between two different sets of circumstances, specific habits remain specific and non-transferable. There is in the laws of

habit no guarantee that an industrious application to the batting averages of the major league on the part of an alert twelve-year-old will provoke the same assiduous assimilation of the facts of the American Revolution; that a boy who works hard at his chemistry will work equally hard at this English, or that one who is careful about his manners and pronunciation in school will display the slightest heed to them among his companions on the ball-field. One of the most cogent arguments against the stereotyped teaching of Latin and Greek has been the serious doubt psychologists have held as to whether four years' training in Latin syntax will develop in the student general mental habits which will be applicable or useful outside the Latin classroom.

Education and Habit Formation

The older 'faculty' psychologists presumed that different subjects trained various so-called 'faculties' of 'memory', 'imagination', and 'intellect'. It has now become clear on experimental evidence that in education we are training no isolated faculties, but are training the individual to certain specific habits. The more widely applicable the habits are, obviously the more valuable or dangerous will they be in the conduct of life. But when habits do become general, such as a habit of promptness, honesty, and regularity, not in one situation but 'in general', it is because they are something more than habits in the strict physiological sense. They are intellectual as well as merely motor in character; they are deliberate and conscious methods rather than mechanical rules-of-thumb. Habits that have been drilled into an individual will appear only when the situation very closely approximates the one in which the drill has been performed. The cat that has learned to get out of a certain type of cage by pressing a button will be utterly at a loss if the familiar features of the cage are changed. The intelligent human will detect and take pains to detect among the minor differences of the situation some significant fact which he has met in another setting, and he will apply a habit useful in this new situation despite the slightly changed accompanying circumstances. The man who can drive an automobile with /