370 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



special tendencies transmitted from the organisation of our parents, 

 but it is certain that if we did not strongly and habitually exercise the 

 faculties favoured by these tendencies, the special organs concerned 

 would never have developed. 



In truth, every individual, from the moment of his birth, is in the 

 midst of a set of circumstances altogether peculiar to himself, which 

 to a large extent contribute to make him what he is at the different 

 stages of his hfe, and which put him in the way of exerting or not 

 exerting one or other of his faculties or inherited tendencies ; so that 

 it may be said in general that we only have quite a moderate share in 

 bringing about the condition in which we find ourselves throughout 

 our existence, and that we owe our tastes, propensities, habits, 

 passions, faculties, and knowledge to the infinitely varied but special 

 circumstances in which each of us has been placed. 



From our earliest infancy, those who bring us up sometimes leave us 

 entirely at the mercy of surrounding circumstances, or themselves 

 create circumstances highly disadvantageous to us by their mode of 

 life, thought, and feehng ; and sometimes by ill-advised weakness they 

 spoil us and let us acquire many pernicious faults and habits, whose 

 consequences they do not foresee. They laugh at what they call our 

 tricks, and make jokes over all our follies, in the belief that they will 

 be able later on easily to change our vicious inchnations and correct 

 our faults. 



It is difficult to conceive how great is the influence of early habit 

 and inclinations on the propensities which will some day dominate 

 us, and on the character which we form. The very pUable organisa- 

 tion of early youth yields readily to the habitual movements of our 

 nervous fluid in one or other direction, in correspondence with our 

 inclinations and habits. The organisation thence acquires a modifi- 

 cation which may increase under favourable circumstances, but which 

 can never be entirely obliterated. 



It is in vain that after our infancy, we make efforts to guide our 

 inchnations and actions by means of education towards whatever 

 may be useful to us, in short, to give ourselves principles to form our 

 reason and manner of judging, etc. We meet with so many circum- 

 stances that are difficult to master, that we are each of us, so to speak, 

 constrained by them and gradually acquire a mode of hfe in which we 

 ourselves have only had a very small share. 



I need not here enter upon the numerous details which form a special 

 environment for each individual, but I must observe, since I am con- 

 vinced of it, that everything tending to make any of our actions 

 habitual modifies our internal organisation in favour of that action ; 

 80 that as a result this action becomes a sort of necessity for us. 



