156 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



a strong habit as it is to turn the direction of a stream of water that 

 has once plowed its way through partly resisting earth. 



Persons who know, the physiologists and the psychologists, say with 

 authority that whatever we do is the result of some thought or idea. 

 Now, the way we begin to get ideas and keep on getting them is 

 through the senses. Something that may be perceived by the sense 

 of sight is before us; what happens? The little nerves carry the mes- 

 sage to the brain, and that is not the end, some action follows; if it is 

 lightning that we see we may start or scream, or apparently do nothing, 

 yet these authorities assure us that it is not possible for us to perceive 

 anything without some result in action, if it be no more than a tension 

 of the muscles or a quickening of the blood. There must be some re- 

 sult, and the explanation is this: These nerves, carrying messages to 

 the brain, deposit them there; it is like carrying and emptying water on 

 a surface not fixed and hard*; the water finds a way out, and in doing so 

 makes a little track across the plastic earth. It is the same with the 

 messages to the brain; they find a way out, they make a path just as 

 the stream does. Go a step farther; you know how water, finding an 

 outlet once in a certain direction, is likely to take the same path next 

 time it is emptied in the same place; it will run off in its old track. 



This is not a figure of speech. The process in the brain is exactly the 

 same. My sense of sight may show me an orange that does not belong 

 to me. The little nerves carry the message to the brain, and then comes 

 the action. I may take the orange; I may leave it. Whichever I do 

 is recorded in the path which my decision took over the soft matter of 

 the brain. The next time a similar message is carried to the brain it is 

 more than likely that it will pass out into action through the same chan- 

 nel that was plowed beforehand. 



Clothes after a while fall in the same folds, gloves keep a certain 

 shape, and the material of the brain has this same characteristic of 

 keeping the form once given to it. 



This helps us to see why it is hard to break old habits. We may wish 

 a stream were flowing in some direction other than through our field, but 

 it is an almost hopeless task to turn it from the old worn bed. We may 

 wish our habits or our children's habits went in some other direction, 

 but if they are of long standing we have to work hard to form a new 

 channel or pathway of action. 



We usually mean bad habits when we use the word habit; but this is 

 a mistake, bur virtues are habits, just as our vices are habits. Acts 

 of courage, of resistance of evil, form their pathway through the brain 

 just as much as any other acts. We are all a mass of habits; our 

 nervous systems have grow^n in the way in which we have made them 

 grow — ''just as a sheet of paper or a coat once folded tends to fall for- 

 ever into the same folds." 



Dressing, eating, walking, are habitual acts. We can scarcely re- 

 member when we first learned to brush our hair. We know how young 

 children struggle over buttoning clothes; probably we all struggled 

 in the same way. But we don't now! We are now ''so in the habit." 

 We talk on important topics while we automatically put out the light 

 or unlock the door. The higher thought need not be bothered about 

 these lesser things. 



Now, what has this discussion of habit to do with the Women's Sec- 



