Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/346

342 he shall become released from all bonds as the teachings of Brahma make possible. This is what the Froebelian conception leads to.

Action is the key-note to habit and character. Good habits make for progress. Habits are definite actions resulting from sensations, motor modifications in nervous matter which have become stable through repetitions of actions. They are thus more easily performed. At first there is friction between sensory and motor nerve cells and this must be decreased by work. Memory is thus the same as habit; the nerve cells continuing to act in the way they have been induced to act before. We remember most easily things or acts which have been most often performed; new paths are thus ploughed out in nervous matter. When actions have been repeated often enough there are then almost no new paths to be formed. Hence habits acquired become fundamental courses of action, they constitute organic memory, which may or may not be accompanied with consciousness. To form these there must be accurate repetitions of dynamic associations between nerve cells in early life, during the plastic period. After plasticity of these cells has passed away guiding habits can only be acquired imperfectly, and if at all at enormous expense of energy. Hence the imperative need to form correct early habits, which are bundles of memories or tendencies enabling us to act again in the way we acted before. They become parts of our essential nature. A man does in middle life what he began to do in childhood—it may be good or bad—it is imperative. The boy unconsciously molds and trains his nervous mechanisms in such fashion that they will continue to act and react in the same way. At the start he is master, after a time habits master him. When these facts are more clearly appreciated there will be broader acceptance of the truth of the principle that dogmatic authoritative training in early life is best, provided always parents and teachers can be trusted to initiate action judiciously. Many a man is a failure in some direction, because he omitted to acquire the habit of courtesy, self-restraint, correct diction, punctuality, dexterity, accuracy in fundamental motions, even truth-telling. What evil may follow from the acquirement of vicious habits, however heroically resented, can readily be imagined. Habit is the process of associating a definite muscular action with a sense impression or with an idea. A child properly trained gives the right motor response with unerring accuracy. Sensation must be associated so often with action that one shall flow automatically into the other. An image is a revised sensation leading to mental conceptions, impulses, etc. No image can be formed without causing a more or less intense motor outflow. Movements can be checked by the introduction of cause, and counter cause. Thus the will is invited to oppose a movement through the function of inhibition, whereby it is modified in accordance with judgment.