250 ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY 



early enough to let you go to a meeting you are anxious to 

 attend. And each one of us learns through practice to do 

 these various kinds of thinking, and each one of us becomes 

 more skillful at one kind than at others — one person has habits 

 that enable him to solve mathematical problems more rapidly 

 than you or I can solve them, another person has habits that 

 make him a ready debater, and so on, 



302. Feeling habits. We may have the habit of feeling 

 envy on seeing something new in the possession of another 

 person, or we may have the habit of just feeling glad that 

 the other person has something nice. We may have the 

 habit of feeling contempt toward people who are different 

 from ourselves, — people who wear different kinds of clothes, 

 or who go to a different kind of church, or who speak a dif- 

 ferent language, — and we may have the habit of feeling friendly 

 toward strangers. The sight of a bird or a squirrel may make 

 us feel like throwing something at it ; we may have acquired 

 the habit of inhibiting the impulse to throw, and yet retain the 

 habit of feeling destructive or cruel. Our feeling habits show 

 themselves in the attitudes that we assume in various kinds 

 of situations. 



The habits which people acquire become so fixed and con- 

 stant that we may rely upon these sets of habits under all 

 circumstances. This is what we mean when we speak of a 

 person's cJiaracter. We mean that totality of habits of feeling 

 and thinking and doing which distinguishes him from others. 



We differ very much from each other in amount of think- 

 ing power, in the strength of our muscles, in our endurance, 

 in the depth of our feelings. But we can all acquire certain 

 habits that will constitute the sort of character that can be 

 depended upon, to the extent of our abilities, in all emergencies. 



303. Selecting our habits. In acquiring habits of doing, feeling, 

 and thinking we must notice that habits of inhibition are just as im- 

 portant as positive habits. We must suppress the impulse to sneer and 

 the feeling that goes with it ; we must inhibit the rising temper or 



