(.CHAPTER IV.» 



HABIT. 



When we look at living creatures from an outward point 

 of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they 

 are bundles of habits. lu wikl animals, the usual round of 

 daily behavior seems a necessity implanted at birth; in 

 animals domesticated, and especially in man, it seems, to a 

 great extent, to be the result of education. The habits to 

 which there is an innate tendency are called instincts; some 

 of those due to education would by most persons be called 

 acts of reason. It thus appears that habit covers a very 

 large part of life, and that one engaged in studying the 

 objective manifestations of mind is bound at the very out- 

 set to define clearly just what its limits are. 



The moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led 

 to the fundamental properties of matter. The laws of 

 Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the 

 different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions 

 and reactions upon each other. In the organic world, how- 

 ever, the habits are more variable than this. Even instincts 

 vary from one individual to another of a kind; and are 

 modified in the same individual, as we shall later see, to 

 suit the exigencies of the case. The habits of an elemen- 

 tary particle of matter cannot change (on the principles of 

 the atomistic philosophy), because the particle is itself an 

 unchangeable thing ; but those of a compound mass of 

 matter can change, because they are in the last instance due 

 to the structure of the compound, and either outward forces 

 or inward tensions can, from one hour to another, turn that 

 structure into something different from what it was. That 

 is, they can do so if the body be plastic enough to maintain 



* This chapter has already appeared in the Popular Science Monthly 

 for February 1887. 



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