IN HIGHER PEOPLES 123 



in upon us and mold us during our earlier years. 

 We may form habits of honesty or dishonesty, of 

 kindness or unkindness, of truth or falsehood, etc., 

 and as the years go by these habits will harden 

 into character as certainly as the world goes 

 round. If we could only realize while we are yet 

 young how soon we shall become a mere walking 

 bundle of habits, we would be much more careful 

 as to what habits we fasten upon ourselves "while 

 we are still in the habit-forming stage. We begin 

 at the wrong end of life. We just get ready to 

 live when we are called upon to die. 



4. Useful and Vestigial Instincts. 



Useful instincts are instincts which we need in 

 our business. They are the urges in our nature 

 which cause us to go in the directions which are of 

 advantage to us. Every animal has to do certain 

 things in order to live and perpetuate its species. 

 And the urges or inclinations which cause an ani- 

 mal to do what it should do are the useful in- 

 stincts. Anything that an animal does that is not 

 useful or advantageous is vestigial. 



One of the things that used to puzzle me as a 

 boy on the farm was the fierce nature that cows, 

 horses, sheep, and other domesticated animals 

 showed at the time young were born to them. We 

 would go out to the barnyard some morning and 

 find a cow with a young calf. She may have been 

 the gentlest cow on the place, and one that ordi- 

 narily we could do anything with. But when she 



