and the slightest flood could wash it out again. But if the bed could withstand the strain until its elements had settled firmly together, it could then stand securely against the flood, and soon turn it into safer channels. And so it is in the breaking up of a habit. At first the old pathways are but insecurely blocked and highly susceptible to a "washout." But the longer the old habit is inhibited the firmer becomes their resistance to the intrusion of the old currents. So in habit breaking, permit, especially in the early stages, no exception.

Substitution.—And finally meet the problem by substitution rather than by direct onslaught. It is hard to maintain a vacuum. The empty mind is the devil's workshop. As Professor Angell says: "Give yourself surroundings which will offer the least possible temptation. Do not try to merely suppress the bad habit. If possible, put something else which is good in place of it. See to it that you are always occupied in some proper way until you feel sure that the grip of the bad habit is loosened."

"How shall I a habit break?"
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse,

Thread by thread the strands we twist
Till they bind us, neck and wrist;
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine, ere free we stand.
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil, unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.

But remember, as we try,

Lighter every test goes by;

Wading in, the stream grows deep

Toward the center's downward sweep;

Backward turn, each step ashore

Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste
Leveling what we raised in haste;
Doing what must be undone
Ere content or love be won.

First across the gulf we cast

Kite-borne threads, till lines are passed,

And habit builds the bridge at last!

EXERCISES

- JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

1. Just what is the similarity in physical structure between habit and the retention of traces of past states in plants or inanimate physical objects?

2. How does the principle of economy through habit apply to a student's making and following a definite study schedule?

3. Is it easier to hold yourself to moderation in such matters as whispering in the study hall, or to repress the tendency entirely? How is it with temptations to major social vices? Discuss the dangers of the policy of moderation.

4. Make a list of some objectionable mannerisms which you have observed, and tell how they could be overcome. Have you examined your own conduct for objectionable mannerisms?

5. Describe the process by which one learns to write on the typewriter, and the mechanism of the finished habit.

6. Cite examples of the fact that one may slip into bad habits gradually and without realizing it.

7. Rousseau says: "The only habit a child should be allowed to form is to contract no habits whatever." Is that good advice? Why?

8. Give examples, from your observation, of half-formed habits which were lost because they were not practiced sufficiently long to finally clinch them. Is it true that the time put into forming them was wasted? Worse than wasted?

9. Why is practice worth so much more if carried on under the stimulus of intense interest than if carried on indifferently? What is the effect of continuing to practice after you have become so tired, or so indifferent, that you make many errors?

10. A certain Austrian, undertaking to break his habit of loafing at a tempting wine-shop, advertised in the newspaper that he would pay fifty gulden to any one who found him in the wine-shop in question. To what psychological principle was he conforming?

CHAPTER XVIII

CHARACTER AND WILL

:

Character grounded in habit. "Sow a thought and reap an act; sow an act and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny."

In our chapter on Suggestion we saw how surely an implanted thought will lead to an act. In the last chapter we found that an act repeated will form a habit. We have now to see that habit come to fruition is character.

Character is often spoken of as if it were some mysterious entity that nature has bestowed upon her favored sons, or that has come in some unexplainable way in recognition of vague, general merit. It is not anything of the sort. There is nothing more definite in its make-up than character. It consists in "an organized set of habits of reaction" and only in this. A man's character rests in his habit of promptness, of industry, of keeping his word, of doing his work systematically, of making few resolutions but putting these into action; in his habitual manner of thinking, of planning, and of executing; in his mode of walking and talking; in his practice of conforming or not conforming to social conventions. And these, clearly, are no sugar plums distributed by the gods. They are all factors which have had to be built up and organized into a whole by long practice. How and why this is, our last chapter has clearly shown us. Habits must be developed through a continuous process, and so - since it consists of habits must character. We can not wish ourselves to perfection, nor go there with sevenleagued boots, in the latter case any more than in the former.

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We must win our way to character. What we do upon some great occasion," says H. P. Liddon, "will probably depend upon what we are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self discipline."

Character result of continuous growth. One often expects that when he moves into a new town, or takes a new position, or enters college, or joins a church, he will be somehow a different person, and his old fears and weaknesses and temptations will not follow him. But he soon finds out, to his chagrin, that character is not made nor unmade by crossing boundary lines. He may, under the artificial stimulus, be able to maintain a different front for a little while, but soon his old self will inevitably poke itself to the fore. There is no such thing as a sudden transition in character. Externally one may seem to change, but the change is only superficial. Psychologists have, of course, found that there are in most lives periods of sudden change of level in one's conscious attitude toward life crises called conversion in religion, but occurring in Philosophy, in Science, in literary appreciation, and even in athletic ability as well but these sudden conversions represent only a shaking of our external life into a new equilibrium upon that level to which our silent inner growth has long been carrying us. Or if these cataclysms lift us, as they sometimes do, to a level for which our inner growth has not yet prepared us, we must build up around them afterwards. their necessary substantial foundation before we are secure. What we become we must earn, either before or after version," and the external change is but our credentials testifying to our continuous inner growth. Many a sad relapse has come because men, ignorant of this fact, prematurely believed themselves to be saved when they were only embarking upon the pursuit of salvation.

con

It is, then, only step by step that character is won. Says Josiah G. Holland,

T

We rise by the things that are under our feet;
By what we have mastered of good and gain;
By pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.

Wings for the angels, but feet for men!

We may borrow the wings to find the way
We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray;
But our feet must rise or we fall again.

Only in dreams is a ladder thrown

From the weary earth to the sapphire walls;
But the dreams depart, and the vision falls,
And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone.

Heaven is not reached by a single bound;

But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.

Long preparation for responsibility. On this, John Todd

says:

Patient labor and investigation are not only essential to success in study, but are an unfailing guarantee to success. The young man is in danger of feeling that he will strike out something new. His spirits are buoyant and his hopes sanguine. He knows not the mortified feeling of being repeatedly defeated by himself. He will burst upon the world at once, and strike the blows of a giant, while his arm is that of a child. He is not to toil up the hill and wait for years of self-discipline, close, patient study, and hard labor not he; but before you know it, he will be on the heights of the highest Alps, with a lofty feeling, looking down upon the creepers below.

Thus multitudes waste life, and absolutely fritter away their existence, in doing nothing except waiting for a golden opportunity to do something great and magnificent. Did not Patrick Henry burst upon the world at once, and at once exhibit the strength of a giant? If he did, he is no specimen of ordinary minds, and no man has a right to presume upon anything more than an intellect of ordinary dimensions as his own. What multitudes of men lie still, and never lift the pen, because the time is not come! When they come out, it must be in a "great book," a splendid address,