n8 MEMORY, HABIT, AND IMITATION 



observation or enquiry. This is the condition of 

 a people who are completely dominated by the 

 authority of a religion, or superstition, which 

 provides a specious explanation for every inci- 

 dent of man's experience. Without scepticism 

 there can be no enquiry : science can make no 

 appeal to a mind which attributes every happen- 

 ing to the visioned intervention of Providence or 

 Fate. Such is, generally, the state of Oriental 

 peoples, and they owe to it that they are so in- 

 different to new impressions, so firmly addicted 

 to traditional practices. We may see in the 

 material progress of the Japanese the effect of 

 a strongly developed scepticism, which urges 

 them to receive new ideas with attention and 

 to investigate them carefully before rejecting 

 them. A Turk, a Persian, an Indian is politely 

 inattentive to suggestions for the improvement 

 of his agriculture or processes of manufacture. 

 A Japanese listens to them with the keenest 

 interest. 



So far considered habit is the enemy of free- 

 dom. But, with the strange contrariety which 

 we may discern everywhere in life, it is also 

 a means of gaining freedom. It enables us 

 to redistribute the strain of the shackles with 

 which we are fettered from our birth. By facili- 

 tating the action of particular instinctive impulses, 

 it subjects us more strongly to their influence, and 

 proportionately weakens the influence of impulses 

 which compete with them. Often, indeed, the 

 result is harmful. The propensity to drink is 

 reinforced by indulgence : so may a child become 

 addicted to sucking its thumb, or biting its 

 nails proclivities which are outgrowths of the 

 instinctive actions of sucking and mastication. 



