life seems due as much to leaving things out as to putting them in. Attention to one idea is largely inhibition of others. Reasoning is largely neglecting unessentials. Willing is largely rejecting certain ideas, motives and impulses. To adopt an Hibernian mode of expression, 'What we are is largely what we are not!' Are there any other remarks?"

"You remind me," said Miss Clark, "of an observation which I dropped into the box long ago. May I look it up and read it to you? Here it is:

"A lady of a very nervous organization would frequently, while at table, spend ten minutes deciding whether or not to eat oatmeal (or some such simple question). She would alternately think of reasons for and against the act, and would frequently be unable to act at all, until by diverting her attention from the matter altogether one impulse was allowed to prevail. In all sorts of things where her decision one way or the other was really of no consequence she seemed to have no power to make up her mind. If she started to decide one way, something would come up in her mind which would make her take back her decision.'

"This lady, I suppose, had too much, or rather, misplaced, inhibition. Whenever she thought of doing anything, some other idea would come up which would work against the thought."

"Yes," said Dr. Leighton; "her will was diseased in that any one idea aroused a lot of contradictory, inhibiting ideas, and her attention vacillated among them, not letting any one idea hold the field long enough to work out in action. I gave you a case of the exactly opposite tendency earlier in the evening,

that of the man who had to go down to lock the door In his case, not the inhibiting ideas, but the

nights.
impelling ones, were too strong.

His attention was

too firmly possessed by a single idea."

"Let's adjourn before we get too deep into the unhealthy side of human nature," said Mrs. Ralston. "You can talk that over by yourselves."

NOTES BY THE EDITOR.

Human conduct is, as the club found, a complex matter. (1) We do some things because we are made so that a certain situation calls forth a certain act; we do others (2) by accident; others (3) by force of imitation; others (4) because any idea which has in the past led to a certain act tends, when again present, to lead to that same act. Finally (5) we may, by controlling our ideas by attention, voluntarily choose certain acts —that is, will them.

Willing a thing thus means attending to the idea of doing it. The effort of will is the effort of attention. Diseases or weaknesses of will are instances of defective impulsion or defective inhibition. The man with the healthy will is the man in whom natural impulses are strong but under control, and in whom inhibition is not excessive or misplaced.

CHAPTER XII

HABIT AND CHARACTER

"In discussing the will and its influence on our conduct I think we left out one rather important matter," said Mr. Tasker, as soon as the club was called to order. "After an act or a series of acts has been done several times as a result of willing it, it tends to become habitual, to be done without much thought, as a matter of course. To put the thing exactly, any acts or series of acts which have been done in a given situation tend to be done again when the same situation recurs.

"But that isn't true," was the quick response from Miss Atwell. "Suppose I face the situation, 'sight of a new fruit,' and my act is to take and eat it. Suppose it tastes very nasty. Now let me next day be in that same situation. Will I take and eat the fruit? Not at all. For the previous result was disagreeable. ▾ Only when the result of the act is pleasurable or indifferent is a habit formed."

"I'll accept that amendment," said Mr. Tasker. "I remember now that we made that distinction at one of our first meetings. But you must agree to amend it by saying that often if one does repeat the act many times, its result may come to be pleasurable. For instance, eating olives does.

"There's another modification needed," said Arthur. "A pleasurable thing too often repeated may

become disagreeable; for instance, the same kind of food or the same walk."

"Are there any more modifications?" said Mr. Tasker. "If there aren't, I'll go on. We form habits of acting, and such habits grow stronger and stronger with each repetition—that is, certain movements become surer and surer to be made in certain situations. As we saw in our first meetings, this represents the formation of closer and closer connections between nerve-cells aroused to action by the outside situation and nerve-cells whose action brings about the movements in question. Now, as any series of acts thus become habitual, there is less and less need of our willing them, attending to them, or even thinking about them at all. We may carry them out without consciousness-that is, automatically. Thus our wills are freed from the care of a big percentage of our activities."

"You could say, too, couldn't you," said Mr. Henshaw, "that the fact that every decision, every act of will, left a permanent effect on a man in the shape of so much bias toward some habit, made our decisions, our acts of will, all the more important. Last time we rather tended to belittle the importance of our wills, because we became interested in seeing how many things we did without willing to do them. But many of those acts were acts which at the start we did will. In many cases we did have to attend to them and think about them once in order that later they might become habits and run off automatically."

"Yes. Every act or thought, not only those resulting from deliberation, but also from chance,

impulse, imitation or what not, leaves a trace, prepares the way for others like it. We may forget it, and our friends and foes may, but its influence has been felt. Dr. Leighton says our brains are affected by every activity in them, that their growth depends on the sort of work they do, and that they register a man's good and bad deeds as faithfully as the recording angel."

"To come back to your point, that the growth of a lot of fixed habits leaves one's will and attention free to attend to other matters," said Miss Fairbanks; "you can see how important and helpful that is by taking piano-playing as an illustration. At first you have to think where to put your fingers for each note, but you soon form the habit of hitting the right key when you see the note. The sight of the score brings the right movement to pass automatically, and you are free to attend to combining certain movements so as to play chords, etc. The associations between the sight of certain combinations of notes and the proper movements involved in playing them soon become habitual, and you can think of something more advanced. After a while the mere playing of ordinary pieces becomes automatic, and you devote your mental efforts to getting improved tone and expression, etc. One could never get very far on in music if the brain didn't look after a great many things without help from our thinking powers."

"Imagine," said Mrs. Elkin, "what life would be like if we had always to think about things the way we do at the start-if, for instance, when eating, we had to think about our knives and forks the way fouryear-olds do. There couldn't be much table-talk."