SECOND NATURE. 15 



elements become altered by iis.ige, so that the 

 directive action runs more easily along a certain 

 channel than along any other. Very few acts of 

 our lives are isolated ; most of tlieni move in trains 

 or sequences so associated that one immediately 

 summons up another, each act being, so to speak, 

 the cue or call-word for the next in order. The 

 nervous energy flows most easily along the most 

 accustomed channels; set up the first step in the 

 sequence, and all the other steps follow regularly, 

 exactly as in repeating any well known and famil- 

 iar formula. Habit, in short, becomes a second 

 nature because it modifies to some extent our 

 original minute bodily structure, and makes nerves 

 and muscles act together constantly in certain 

 almost indissoluble chains of co-ordinated action. 

 The oftener we do a thing, the easier it thus be- 

 comes ; and when we have done certain things 

 one after another, over and over again for many 

 years, the tendency of the first to call up the 

 others in due succession becomes at last all but 

 irresistible. 



There is some reason, indeed, to believe that 

 nature itself or personal idiosyncrasy depends 

 ultimately upon mere habit — not, of course, the 

 habit of the individual himself who possesses it, 

 but of liis earlier ancestors, paternal and maternal. 

 It is now fairly well proved that the character with 

 which every one of us is endowed at birth must 



