210 HOW HABITS ARE FORMED 



Habit Formation. — One object of education is the training of 

 the different areas in the cerebrum to do their work. When we 

 learned to write, we exerted conscious effort in order to make the 

 letters. Now the act of forming the letters is done without our 

 thought. By training, the act has become a habit. The actual 

 performance of the action is then taken up by the cerebellum, 

 medulla, and spinal ganglia. Thus the thinking portion of the 

 brain is relieved of part of its work. 



It is surprising how little real thinking we do during a day, for 

 most of our acts are habitual. Habit takes care of our dressing, 

 our bathing, our care of the body organs, our methods of eating ; 

 even our movements in walking and the kind of hand we write are 

 matters of habit formation. We are bundles of habits, be they 

 good ones or bad ones. 



Different Kinds of Habits. — Habits are of many kinds. 

 They may concern health and well-being, as proper tooth brush- 

 ing, attending to the toilet, maintaining a correct posture, and 

 hundreds of simple things we do automatically. Some concern our 

 dress and our actions in society. We walk or ride or dance or 

 skate or drive a car and have learned to do these things auto- 

 matically. Our habits of disposition have become a very important 

 part of our lives. We may habitually ^' grouch " or be happy, 

 sing or cry, be kind or cross; in short, we may make our own 

 characters those of saints or of sinners just as we please. And we 

 may form our habits of thought, too : concentration or scatter- 

 brain methods, ability to think through our problems, or inability 

 to do any real thinking — it all depends upon ourselves. 



Habits must be Formed Early. — We have often heard the 

 saying, '' You can't teach an old dog new tricks." This is all too 

 true of habit forming. We exercise our muscles and they grow 

 larger. Not so with our brain cells ; the neurons stop growing 

 while we are still of school age, and after that it becomes our busi- 

 ness in life to try to educate a few of the 10,000,000 or so that are 

 present in our brains. Habit formation is a very necessary part of 

 their training. While the nervous system is young the cells are 

 plastic, and pathways are easily established between cells. These 

 pathways, like a rut in soft mud, become deeper and deeper with 

 use. " Practice makes perfect " is a truism, but it illustrates how 



