SECOND NATURE. 9 



dren descended from musical families are nnisicil 

 almost from their very birth — those born of 

 parents both of whom have constantly played the 

 Iiarp or the piano exhibit a suppleness and ease of 

 movement in the arms and fingers entirely wanting 

 to the sons and daughters of agricultural laborers 

 or unskilled mechanics. So, too, mountaineers of 

 many generations' standing have limbs specially 

 adapted to mountain climbing — for example, the 

 Indians of the Andes differ immensely in the pro- 

 portions of their bones, and particularly of their 

 thighs, from all other individuals of the human 

 race ; and from babyhood upward this originally 

 acquired difference makes itself evidently seen in 

 the children of such Indians. In these and num- 

 berless other like cjises we recognize at once that 

 habit has at last produced a positive physical dif- 

 ference in the individuals of the particular profes- 

 sion or tribe concerned, and that the difference so 

 begotten is handed down, as a matter of original 

 nature, to the second generation. Our nature, in 

 short, depends upon the structure with which we 

 are at birth endowed ; and this structure itself in 

 turn depends, in part at least, upon the acquired 

 haoits and functional practices of our parents and 

 our remoter ancestors. 



But habit itself, within a single person's own 

 lifetime, also tends to acquire the fixity and rigidity 

 of nature — becomes in time almost irresistible 



