SECOND NATURE. 11 



meiits, and are incapable of performing any alter- 

 native motion with equal facility. If any person 

 watches himself for a single day in this manner, he 

 will find there are thousands of similar little actions 

 he performs almost unconsciously, by mere organic 

 routine, each step in the process being followed, 

 without the necessity for thinking, by the next 

 in order, exactly as the words and rhymes of any 

 familiar piece of poetry help to call up one another 

 in memory, without the slightest conscious effort. 

 As the French proverb quaintly puts it, he who 

 says A must say B also. 



A very good example of this automatic power 

 of habit is seen in the way we almost all wind up 

 our watches every evening. At a certain fixed 

 stage in the process of going to bed, one hand seeks 

 automatically the waistcoat pocket and pulls the 

 watch out; the other dives without sense of effort 

 into the recesses of the purse in search of the 

 watch-key which is oftenest recognized not by 

 siglit but by mere feeling. Then the watch is 

 opened as if by clockwork, the key is turned 

 round automatically a certain familiar number of 

 times, and duly replaced in the proper pocket; 

 the face is shut down again without ever thinking 

 about it; and finally the watch itself is hung up 

 on its peg or laid down upon the table by the bed- 

 side, as the case may be, while all the time perhaps 

 we have been steadily reflecting or talking about 



