446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whose attention gets absorbed in tbe production of the notes, lets drop 

 the book. Later, however, this never happens ; the faintest sensations 

 of contact suffice to awaken the impulse to keep it in its place, and the 

 attention may be wholly absorbed by the notes and the fingering with 

 the left hand. The simultaneous combination of movements is thus 

 in the first instance conditioned by the facility with which, in tis along- 

 side of intellectual 2^'occsses, %>rocesses of inattentive feeling may still 

 go on." * 



This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical implica- 

 tions of the law of habit. They are numerous and momentous. Dr. 

 Carpenter, from whose " Mental Physiology " we have quoted, has so 

 prominently enforced the principle that our organs grow to the way 

 in which they have been exercised, and dwelt upon its consequences, 

 that his book almost deserves to be called a work of edification, on 

 this account alone. We need make no apology, then, for tracing a few 

 of these consequences ourselves : 



" Habit a second nature ! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of 

 Wellington is said to have exclaimed ; and the degree to which this is 

 true no one can probably appreciate as w T ell as one who is a veteran 

 soldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by 

 fashioning a man completely over again, as to most of the possibilities 

 of his conduct. " There is a story, which is credible enough, though 

 it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged vet- 

 eran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, 'Attention ! ' 

 whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his 

 mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and 

 its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure." f 



Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come 

 together and go through their customary evolutions at the sound of the 

 bugle-call. Most trained domestic animals, dogs, and oxen, and omni- 

 bus- and car-horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple, un- 

 doubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties 

 they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an 

 alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in 

 prison have asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a 

 railroad accident to a traveling menagerie in the United States some 

 time in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have 

 emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by 

 his new responsibilities, so that he was without difficulty secured. 



Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious 

 conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds 

 of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious up- 

 risings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive 



* " Dor menschliche Wille," p. 439. The last sentence is rather freely translated — 

 the sense is unaltered. 



f Huxley's "Elementary Lessons in Physiology," lesson xii. 



