120 PSYCnOLOGY. 



a book is placed under his right iinupit, which he is ordered to hold 

 fast by keeping the upper arm tight against his body. The muscular 

 feelings, and feelings of contact connected with the book, provoke an 

 impulse to press it tight. But often it happens that the beginner, 

 whose attention gets absorbed in the production of the notes, lets drop 

 the book. Later, however, this never hajipens; the faintest sensations 

 ■of contact suffice to awaken the impulse to keep it in its jilace, and the 

 attention may be wholly absorbed by the notes and the fingfU'ing with 

 the left hand. Tl^e simultaneous combination of movements is thus 

 in the first instance conditioned by the facility with which in us, along- 

 side of I'ntellectital processes, processes of inattentive feeling may still 

 goon.''''* 



This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical 

 implications of the law of hahit. They are numerous and 

 momentous. Dr. Carpenter, from whose ' Mental Physiol- 

 ogy ' we have quoted, has so prominently enforced the 

 principle that our organs grow to the way in which they 

 have been exercised, and dwelt upon its consequences, that 

 his book almost deserves to be called a work of edification, 

 on this account alone. We need make no apology, then, 

 for tracing a few of these consequences ourselves : 



" Habit a second nature ! Habit is ten times nature," 

 -the Duke of Wellington is said to have exclaimed ; and the 

 degree to which this is true no one can probably appreciate 

 as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily 

 drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man 

 ■completely over again, as to most of the possibilities of his 

 conduct. 



" There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not 

 be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran 

 carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, ' Attention ! ' where- 

 upon the man instantly bi'ought his hands down, and lost his mutton 

 and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its 

 effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure." t 



Hiderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been 

 seen to come together and go through their customary 

 evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call. Most trained 

 domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and omnibus- and car- 



* ' Der menschliche Wille,' p. 439. The last sentence is rather freely 

 translated — the sense is unaltered. 



\ Huxley's 'Elementary Lessons in Physiology,' lesson xii. 



