AN ENQUIRY INTO THE FORMATION OF HABIT IN MAN. 149 



the floor with the toe and heel in rapid succession, the 

 process is somewhat like this — 



abode f 9 



A B C JL> E F a 



The small letters being sensory, and the capitals motor centres 

 connected by the nerve threads of habit. The will starts the 

 nerve for this step by placing the toe on the ground by 

 an impulse from a to ^. Before the habit was formed this 

 would be all, but now it is but the jSrst link in a long 

 connected chain, along which the nerve current passes with 

 great rapidity. The moment the toe strikes the ground, 

 the sensation is passed to the brain along A b, and this is 

 reflected as a motor impulse to strike the heel along b B. 

 This in its turn producing a sensation along B c, starts the 

 motion of toe-striking along c C, and thus the motion con- 

 tinues till stopped at G by the fiat of the will. 



Once a habit is well established on such lines as these, the 

 interference of will or mind only spoils its perfect action. 

 Whenever knitting has become automatic, if you thinli: about 

 the formation of each stitch, you have to knit much more 

 slowly, and are more liable to make mistakes. A fixed habit 

 is thus deranged by volition. 



The more fixed a habit becomes, the less of the body is 

 required to execute it, and thus a great economy of force is 

 effected. In commencing piano-playing, the young per- 

 former plays with her hands, and arms, and body, and legs, 

 and head, and often her tongue. As she forms a perfect 

 artificial reflex, less and less of the body is moved, until at 

 last it is literally nothing but the hands and wrists that are 

 engaged, the brain being at perfect rest, or thinking of some- 

 thing else altogether. Habit is thus of great economic 

 value. 



Habit which is physical memory is of such importance 

 to character that a spinal cord or brain without such 

 memory is either idiotic or infantile. Artificial reflexes last 

 long if well formed. In early life Robert Houdin, the 

 conjurer, trained himself in the difficult habit of reading 

 aloud while keeping four balls going in the air. He did 

 not practice this for many years, and yet after thirty years 



