AN ENQUIRY INTO THE FORMATION OE HABIT IN MAN. 103 



all know that habit can be formed, and I think that perhaps I rather 

 omitted to give full force to those admirable remarks which my 

 friends here have given for me. I have only to return my thanks 

 for the way in which jou have received this paper (applause). 

 The meeting was then adjourned. 



REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 



Dr. Riddle, M.R.O.S.E., writes :— 



I feel convinced that all who read Dr. Schofield's paper, will 

 agree that it gives a most lucid account of the formation of habit. 

 It is only with a few of his iticidental remarks that I crave the 

 indulgence to differ. I cordially agree with his denunciation of 

 the late Professor Clifford's dictum, " To say, will, influences matter 

 is neither true nor untrue, but simply nonsense." For Clifford, 

 though an excellent mathematician, was an indifferent meta- 

 physician, and a very sorry theologian. But when, in contro- 

 verting this dictum, Dr. Schofield announces that "we have the 

 power of choice, selection, memory, and attention," and that these 

 (all of them) " have no correspondence with any form of nerve 

 action," I must record my inability to follow him. Surely, if he 

 has not heard of that Hebrew scholar who had all the Hebrew 

 knocked out of him bj a blow on the head, but whose life was 

 spared, and who re-acquired a knowledge of the language, he must 

 be aware that memory, at least, shows itself as belonging in great 

 part to the body, by decaying with it, and otherwise varying in 

 power with the health of the body. I think Dr. Schofield will 

 agree that habit itself is of the body and not of the spirit, and is 

 more due to a negative than a positive influence of the latter. It 

 is of great importance to distinguish the powers of the human 

 spirit as being mainly those of feeling and willing ; and these can 

 only be exercised through a properly organised instrumentality. 

 Science is here supported by the Christian doctrine of the resur- 

 rection, in contra-distinction to the platonic and heathen dogma of 

 the immortality of the soul. 



Voluntary actions originate in motives ; that is, the human spirit 

 wills from some cause which is presented to it. 



Heredity and environment go a very long way in the formation 

 of habits, and therefore of character (apart from supernatural 



