AN E^QUIRr INTO THE FORMATION OV HABIT IN MAN. 147 



omaipotent in the body. No power of mind or will can stop 

 the beating of the heart or the movement of the stomach, 

 and a habit may be so formed as to be ahnost as difficult to 

 check. Darwin found he had acquired in common with most 

 men the habit of starting back at the sudden approach of 

 danger, and no amount of will-power could enable him to 

 keep his face pressed against the plate glass front of the cage 

 of the cobra in the Zoo while it struck at him, even though 

 he exerted the full force of his will, and his reason told him 

 there was no danger. 



The Duke of Wellington is credited with the dictum that 

 liabit is as strong as ten natures, and certainly to see what 

 a soldier will do and is worth in a campaign when seasoned 

 and well drilled, compared with a raw recruit, one feels that 

 tliis statement is under rather than over the mark ; for he 

 owes all his value to" habit ^'! If an established habit is 

 broken by the will the lower centres rise up in rebellion, so 

 accustomed are they to the easy yoke of that which has 

 been often repeated, that the effort of control required, as in 

 the process ot breaking a habit, over lower physical centres, 

 often extremely painful. 



Physiology of habit. Hoio formed. — Referring to the des- 

 cription of the brain in childhood it will be remembered that 

 it is something like a wide common over which are traces of 

 many ancient tracks but no fresh paths. Habit strikes out 

 fresh paths if the result of education, or re-forms old ones 

 if \h.ej are the outcome of heredity. In all cases of true 

 artificial reflexes or habits the will is the starting point, and 

 a purely voluntary action takes place. This is repeated 

 continually until, as C. Bastian and others believe, not only 

 is a well defined brain path established between the arbi- 

 trarily associated groups of cells, but this path is physiologi- 

 cally present in the brain in the form of nerve threads or 

 fibres ; or in the graphic language of Dr. Michael P'oster : 

 " The will, blundering at first in the maze c-f the nervous 

 network, gradually establishes easy paths. When once this is 

 effected the slightest impulse seems to start the nerve current 

 along the whole of the associated groups and produce the 

 habitual action. The nerve current follows this route not 

 now because it is guided by intelligence, but because this 

 route offers the least resistance from habitual use." 



There are one or two interesting points in the formation 

 of a hal)it. 



In the first place the action must never be varied even 



