There are two qualities of nervous tissues (possibly of all
living tissue) that are basic in all nervous and mental
processes. They are dependent upon the modificability of nerve
cells and fibers by stimuli, e. g., a light flashing through the
pupil and passing along the optical tracts to the occipital
cortex produces changes which constitute the basis of visual
memory. Experience modifies nervous tissue in definite manner,
and SOMETHING remembers. Who remembers? Who is conscious? Believe
what you please about that, call it ego, soul, call it
consciousness dipped out of a cosmic consciousness; and I have no
quarrel with you.
Memory has its mechanics, in the association of ideas, which
preoccupied the early English psychologists and philosophers; it
is the basis of thought and also of action, and it is a prime
mystery. We know its pathology, we think that memories for speech
have loci in the brain, the so-called motor memories in Broca's
area.[1] We know that a hemorrhage in these areas or in the
fibers passing from them, or a tumor pressing on them may destroy
or temporarily abolish these memories, so that a man may KNOW
what he wishes to say, understand speech and be unable to say it,
though he may write it (motor aphasia). In sensory aphasia the
defect is a loss of the capacity to understand spoken speech,
though the patient may be able to say what he himself wishes. (It
is fair to say that the definite location of these capacities in
definite areas has been challenged by Marie, Moutier and others,
but this denial does not deny the organic brain location of
speech memories; it merely affirms that they are scattered rather
than concentrated in one area.)
[1] Foot of the left or right third frontal convolutions,
auditory speech in the supramarginal, etc.
In its widest phases memory alters with the state of the brain.
In childhood impressibility is high, but until the age or four or
five the duration of impression is low, and likewise the power of
voluntary recall. In youth (eighteen-twenty) all these capacities
are perhaps at their highest. As time goes on impressibility
seems first of all to be lost, so that it becomes harder and
harder to learn new things, to remember new faces, new names.
The typical difficulty of middle age is to remember names,
because these have no real relationship or logical value and must
be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the
dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be
preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain,
temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is
present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral
arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide
poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas
inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is
impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they
occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent
past, though his remote past is clear. Since memory is the basis
of certainty, of the feeling of reality, these unfortunates are
afflicted with an uncertainty, a sense of unreality, that is
almost agonizing. As the effects of the poison wear off, which
even in favorable cases takes months, the impressibility returns
but never reaches normality again.
Unquestionably there is an inherent congenital difference in
memory capacity. There are people who are prodigies of memory as
there are those who are prodigies of physical strength,--and
without training. The IMPRESSIBILITY for memories can in no way
be increased except through the stimulation of interest and a
certain heightening of attention through emotion. For the man or
woman concerned with memory the first point of importance is to
find some value in the fact or thing to be learned. Before a
subject is broached to students the teacher should make clear its
practical and theoretic value to the students. Too often that is
the last thing done and it is only when the course is finished
that its practical meaning is stressed or even indicated. In
fact, throughout, teaching the value of the subject should
constantly be emphasized, if possible, by illustrations from
life. There are only a few who love knowledge for its own sake,
but there are many who become eager for learning when it is made
practical.
The number of associations given to a fact determines to a large
extent its permanence in memory and the power of recalling it. In
my own teaching I always instruct my students in the technique of
memorizing, as follows:
1. Listen attentively, making only as many notes as necessary to
recall the leading facts. The auditory memories are thus given
the first place.
2. Go home and read up the subject in your textbooks, again
making notes. Thus is added the visual associations.
3. Write out in brief form the substance of the lecture, deriving
your knowledge from both the lecture and the book. You thus add
another set of associations to your memories of the subject.
4. Teach the subject to or discuss it with a fellow student. By
this you vitalize the memories you have, you link them firmly
together, you lend to them the ardor of usefulness and of
victory. You are forced to realize where the gaps, the lacunae of
your knowledge come, and are made to fill them in.
Thus the best way to remember a fact is to find a use for it and
to link it to your interests and your purposes. Unrelated it has
no value; related it becomes in fact a part of you. After that
the mechanics of memory necessitate the making of as many
pathways to that fact as possible, and this means deliberately to
associate the fact by sound, by speech and by action. The
advertised schemes of memory training are simply association
schemes, old as the hills, and having value indeed, but too much
is claimed for them. A splendid memory is born, not made; but any
memory, except where disease has entered, can be improved by
training.
It is because lectures on the whole do not supply enough
associations or arouse enough interest that the lecture is the
poorest method of teaching or learning. Man's mind sticks easily
to things, but with difficulty to words about things. To maintain
attention for an hour or so, while sitting, is a task, and there
develops a tendency either to a hypnoidal state in which the mind
follows uncritically, or to a restless uneasiness with wandering
mind and fatigue of body. A demonstration, on the other hand, a
laboratory experiment with short, personal instruction, a bodily
contact with the problem calls into play interest, enthusiasm,
curiosity, motor images, the use of the hands, and is THE method
of teaching.
There are at present excellent psychological methods of testing
out the memory capacity. Every one engaged in any responsible
work, or troubled about his memory, should be so tested. While
there are other qualities of mind of great importance, memory is
basic, and no one can really understand himself who is in doubt
about his memory. In such diseases as neurasthenia one of the
commonest complaints is the "loss of memory," which greatly
troubles the patient. As a matter of fact, what is impaired is
interest and attention, and when the patient realizes this he is
usually quite relieved. The man who has a poor memory may become
very successful if he develops systems of recording, filing,
indexing, but his possibilities of knowledge are greatly reduced
by his defect.[1]
[1] It is the growth of the subject matter of knowledge that
makes necessary the elaborate systems of indexing, etc., now so
important. It is as much as man can do to follow the places where
the men work, let alone what they are doing. This growth of
knowledge is getting to be an extra-human phenomenon. Of this
Graham Wallas has written entertainingly.
A second fundamental ability of living tissue, and of particular
importance in character, is habit formation. Habit resides in the
fact that once living tissue has been traversed by a stimulus and
has responded by an act, three things result:
1. The pathway for that stimulus becomes more permeable; becomes,
as it were, grooved or like a track laid across the living
structure of the nervous system.
2. The responding element is more easily stirred into activity,
responds with more vigor and with less effort.
3. Consciousness, at first invoked, recedes more and more, until
the habit-action of whatever type tends to become automatic.
There is in this last peculiarity a tendency for the habit to
establish itself as independent of the personality, and if an
injurious or undesired habit, to set up the worst of the
conflicts of life,--a conflict between one's intention and an
automaton in the shape of a powerfully entrenched habit.
Habits are economical of thought and energy, generally speaking;
that is their main recommendation. A dozen examples present
themselves at once as illustrative: piano playing, with its
intense concentration on each note, with consciousness attending
to the action of each muscle, and then practice, habit formation,
and the ease and power of execution with the mind free to wander
off in the moods suggested by the music, or to busy itself with
improvisations, flourishes and the artistic touches. Before true
artistry can come, technique must be relegated to habit. So with
typewriting, driving an automobile, etc.
More fundamental than these, which are largely skill habits, are
the organic habits. One of the triumphs of pediatrics depends
upon the realization that the baby's welfare hangs on regular
habits of feeding, that he is not to be fed except at stated
intervals; as a result processes of digestion are set going in a
regular, harmonious manner. In other words, these processes may
be said to "get to know" what is expected of them and act
accordingly. The mother's time is economized and the strain of
nursing is lessened. In adults, regular hours of eating make it
possible for the juices of digestion to be secreted as the food
is ingested; in other words, an habitual adjustment takes place.
If there were one single health habit that I would have
inculcated above all others, it would be the habit of regularly
evacuating the bowels. While constipation is not the worst ill in
the world, it causes much trouble, annoyance and a considerable
degree of ill health, and, in my opinion, a considerable degree
of unhappiness. A physician may be pardoned for frank advice: all
the matters concerning the bowels, such as coarse foods, plenty
of water and exercise, are secondary compared to the habit of
going to the stool at the same time each day, whether there be
desire or not. A child should be trained in this matter as
definitely as he is trained to brush his teeth. In fact, I think
that the former habit is more important than the latter. The mood
of man is remarkably related to the condition of his
gastro-intestinal tract and the involuntary muscle of that tract
is indirectly under the control of the will through habit
formation.
Sleep[1] the mysterious, the death in life which we all seek each
night, is likewise regulated by habit. Arising from the need of
relief from consciousness and bodily exertion, the mechanism of
sleep is still not well understood. Is there a toxic influence at
work? is the body poisoned by itself, as it were, as has been
postulated; is there a toxin of fatigue, or is there a
"vaso-motor" reaction, a shift of the blood supply causing a
cerebral anaemia and thus creating the "sleepy" feeling? The
capacity to sleep is a factor of great importance and we shall
deal with it later under a separate heading as part of the
mechanism of success and failure. At present we shall simply
point out that each person builds up a set of habits regarding
sleep,--as to hour, kind of place, warmth, companionship,
ventilation and even the side of the body he shall lie on, and
that a change in these preliminary matters is often attended by
insomnia. Moreover, a change from the habitual in the general
conduct of life--a new city or town, a strange bed, a disturbance
in the moods and emotions--may upset the sleep capacity. Those in
whom excitement persists, or whose emotions are persistent,
become easily burdened with the dreaded insomnia. Sleep is
dependent on an exclusion of excitement and exciting influences.
If, however, exciting influences become habitual they lose their
power over the organism and then the individual can sleep on a
battle field, in a boiler factory, or almost anywhere.
Conversely, many a New Yorker is lulled to sleep by the roar of
the great city who, finds that the quiet of the country keeps him
awake.
[1] As good a book as any on the subject of sleep is Boris
Sidis's little monograph.
Sleeplessness often enough is a habit. Something happens to a man
that deeply stirs him, as an insult, or a falling out with a
friend, or the loss of money,--something which disturbs what we
call his poise or peace of mind. He becomes sleepless because,
when he goes to bed and the shock-absorbing objects of daily
interest are removed, his thoughts revert back to his difficulty;
he becomes again humiliated or grieved or thrown into an
emotional turmoil that prevents sleep. After the first night of
insomnia a new factor enters,--the fear of sleeplessness and the
conviction that one will not sleep. After a time the insult has
lost its sting, or the difficulty has been adjusted, there is no
more emotional distress, but there is the established
sleeplessness, based on habitual emotional reaction to sleep. I
know one lady whose fear reached the stage where she could not
even bear the thought of night and darkness. It is in these cases
that a powerful drug used two or three nights in succession
breaks up the sleepless habit and reestablishes the power to
sleep.
People differ in their capacity to form habits and in their love
of habits. The normal habits, thoroughness, neatness and method
come easily to some and are never really acquired by others.
People of an impetuous, explosive or reckless character, keenly
alive to every shade of difference in things, find it hard to be
methodical, to carry on routine. The impatient person has similar
difficulties. Whereas others take readily to the same methods of
doing things day by day; and these are usually non-explosive,
well inhibited, patient persons, to whom the way a thing is done
is as important as the goal itself.
Here comes a very entertaining problem, the question of the value
of habits. Good habits save time and energy, tend to eliminate
useless labor and make for peace and quiet. But there is a large
body of persons who come to value habits for themselves and,
indeed, this is true to a certain extent of all of us. Once an
accustomed way of doing things is established it becomes not only
a path of least resistance, but a sort of fixed point of view,
and, if one may mix metaphors a trifle, a sort of trunk for the
ego to twine itself around. There is uneasiness in the thought of
breaking up habits, an uneasiness that grows the more as we
become older and is deepened into agony if the habit is tinged
with our status in life, if it has become a sort of measure of
our respectability. Thus a good housekeeper falls into the habits
of doing things which were originally a mark of her ability,
which she holds as sacred and values above her health and energy.
There are people who fiercely resent a new way of doing things;
they have woven their most minor habits into their ego feeling
and thus make a personal issue of innovations. These are the
upholders of the established; they hate change as such; they are
efficient but not progressive. In its pathological form this type
becomes the "health fiends" who never vary in their diet or in
their clothing, who arise at a certain time, take their "plunge"
regardless, take their exercise and their breakfasts alike as a
health measure without real enjoyment, etc., who grow weary if
they stay up half an hour or so beyond their ordinary bedtime;
they are the individuals who fall into health cults, become
vegetarians, raw food exponents, etc.
Opposed to the group that falls into habits very readily is the
group that finds it difficult to acquire habitual ways of working
and living. All of us seek change and variety, as well as
stability. Some cannot easily form habits because they are
quickly bored by the habitual. These restless folk are the
failures or the great successes, according to their intelligence
and good fortune. There is a low-grade intelligence type, without
purpose and energy, and there is a high-grade intelligence type,
seeking the ideal, restless under imperfection and restraint,
disdaining the commonplace and the habits that go with it. Is
their disdain of habit-forming and customs the result of their
unconventional ways, or do their unconventional ways result
because they cannot easily form habits? It is very probable that
the true wanderer and Bohemian finds it difficult, at least in
youth, to form habits, and that the pseudo-Bohemian is merely an
imitation.
Habit is so intimately a part of all traits and abilities that we
would be anticipating several chapters of this book did we go
into all the habit types. Social conditions, desire, fatigue,
monotony, purpose, intelligence, inhibition, all enter into habit
and habit formation. Youth experiments with habit; old age clings
to it. Efficiency is the result of good habits but originality is
the reward of some who discard habits. A nation forms habits
which seem to be part of its nature, until emigration to another
land shows the falsity of this belief. So with individuals: a man
feels he must eat or drink so much, gratify his sex appetite so
often, sleep so many hours, exercise this or that amount, seek
his entertainment in this or that fashion,--until something
happens to make the habit impossible and he finds that what he
thought a deeply rooted mode of living was a superficial routine.
Though good habits may lead to success they may also bar the way
to the pleasures of experience; that is their danger. A man who
finds that he must do this or that in such a way had better
beware; he is getting old, no matter what his age.[1] For we grow
older as we lose mobility,--in joints, muscles, skin and our ways
of doing, feeling and thinking! It is a transitory stage of the
final immobility of Death.
[1] Says the talkative Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: "There is
one mark of age that strikes me more than any of the physical
ones; I mean the formation of Habits. An old man who shrinks into
himself falls into ways that become as positive and as much
beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed
by clock work."
We have not considered the pathological habits, such as
alcoholism, excessive smoking and eating, perverse sex habits.
The latter, the perverse sex habits, will be studied when
discussing the sex feelings and purposes in their entirety.
Alcoholism is not yet a dead issue in this country though those
who are sincere in wishing their fellows well hope it soon will
be. It stands, however, as a sort of paradigm of bad habit-
forming and presents a problem in treatment that is typical of
such habits.
Not all persons have a liability to the alcoholic habit. For most
people lack of real desire or pleasure prevented alcoholism. The
majority of those who drank little or not at all were not in the
least tempted by the drug. "Will power" rarely had anything to do
with their abstinence and the complacency with which they held
themselves up as an example to the drunken had all the flavor of
Phariseeism. To some the taste is not pleasing, to others the
immediate effects are so terrifying as automatically to shut off
excess. Many people become dizzy or nauseated almost at once and
even lose the power of locomotion or speech.
In many countries and during many centuries most of those who
became alcoholic were such largely through the social setting
given to alcohol. Because of the psychological effects of this
drug in removing restraint, inhibition and formality, in its
various forms it became the symbol of good-fellowship; and
because it has an apparent stimulation and heat-producing effect
there grew up the notion that it aided hard labor and helped
resist hardship. As the symbol of good-fellowship it grew into a
tradition of the most binding kind, so that no good time, no
coming together was complete without it, and its power is
celebrated in picturesque songs and picturesque sayings the world
over. Hospitality, tolerance, good humor, kindliness and the
pleasant breaking down of the barriers between man and man, and
also between man and woman, all these lured generation after
generation into the alcoholic habit.
There are relatively normal types of the heavy drinker,--the
socially minded and the hard manual worker. But there is a large
group of those who find in alcohol a relief from the burden of
their moods, who find in its real effect, the release from
inhibitions, a reason for drinking beyond the reach of reason. Do
you feel that the endless monotony of your existence can no
longer be borne,--drink deep and you color your life to suit
yourself. Do disappointment and despair gnaw at your love of life
so that nothing seems worth while,--some bottled "essence of
sunshine" will give new, fresh value to existence. Are you a
victim of strange, uncaused fluctuations of mood so that
periodically you descend to a bottomless pit of melancholy,
--well, then, why suffer, when over the bar a man will furnish
you a release from agony? And so men of certain types of
temperament, or with unhappy experiences, form the alcoholic
habit because it gives them surcease from pain; it deals out to
them, temporarily, a new world with happier mood, lessened
tension and greater success.
Seeking relief[1] from distressing thoughts or moods is perhaps
one of the main causes of the narcotic habit. The feeling of
inferiority, one of the most painful of mental conditions, is
responsible for the use not only of alcohol but also of other
drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, morphine, etc. One of the most
typical cases of this I have known is of a young man of
twenty-five, a tall fellow with a very unattractive face who had
this feeling of inferiority almost to the point of agony,
especially in the presence of young women, but also in any
situation where he would be noticed. He was fast becoming a
hermit when he discovered that a few drinks completely removed
this feeling. From that time on he became a steady drinker, with
now and then a short period when he would try to stop drinking,
only to resume when he found himself obsessed again by the
dreaded inferiority complex.
[1] This is the main theme of De Quincey's "Confessions of an
Opium Eater."
Similarly a shameful position, such as that of the prostitute or
the chronic criminal, is "relieved" by alcohol and drugs, so that
the majority of these types of unfortunates are either drunkards
or "dopes." Too often have reformers reversed the relationship,
believing that alcohol caused prostitution and crime. Of course
that relationship exists, but more often, in my experience, the
alcohol is used to keep up the "ego" feeling, without which few
can bear life.
Curiously enough, one of the sex perversions, masturbation, has
in a few cases a similar genesis. I have known patients who, when
under the influence of depression, or humiliated in some way or
other, found a compensating pleasure in the act. Here we come to
a cardinal truth in the understanding of ourselves and our
fellows and one we shall pursue in detail later,--that face to
face with mental pain, men seek relief or pleasure or both by
alcohol, drugs, sensual pleasures of all kinds, and that the
secret explanation of all such habits is that they offer
compensation for some pain and are turned to at such times. What
one man seeks in work, another man seeks in religion, another
finds in self-flagellation, and still others seek in alcohol,
morphine, sexual excesses, etc.
With the increasing excitement and tension of our times there is
a constant search for relief, and here is the origin of much of
the smoking. Most men find in the deliberate puff, in the slow
inhalation and in the prolonged exhalation with the formation of
the white cloud of smoke, a shifting of consciousness from the
major businesses of their mind, from a constant tension to a
minor business not requiring concentration and thereby breaking
up in a pleasurable, rhythmic fashion the sense of effort. When
one is alone the fatigue and even the pain of one's thinking is
relieved by shifting the attention to the smoking. Keeping one's
attention at a high and constant pitch is apt to produce a
restless fatigue and this is often offset to the smoker by his
habit. Excessive smoking may cause "nervousness" but as a matter
of fact it is more often a means by which the excessively nervous
try to relieve themselves. Of course it is not good therapeutics
under such conditions, but I believe that in moderation smoking
does no harm and is an innocent pleasure.
Some of the pathological motor habits, such as the tics, often
have a curious background. The most common tics are snuffing,
blinking, shaking of the head, facial contortions of one kind or
another. These arise usually under exciting conditions or in the
excitable, sometimes in the acutely self-conscious. Frequently
they represent a motor outlet for this excitement; they are the
motor analogues of crying, shouting, laughing, etc. (Indeed, a
common habit is the one so frequently heard,--a little laugh when
there is no feeling of merriment and no occasion for it.) Motor
activity discharges tension and is pleasurable and these tics
furnish a momentary pleasure; they relieve a feeling that some of
the victims compare to an itch and the habit thus is based on a
seeking of relief, even though that relief is obtained in a way
that distresses the more settled purposes of the individual.
In the establishment of good habits, those desirable from the
point of view of the important issues of life, training is of
course essential. But in the training of children, certain things
must be kept in mind: the usefulness, the practical value must be
presented to the child's mind in a way he can understand, or else
various ways of energizing him to help in the formation of the
habit must be used--praise and blame, reward and punishment.
Further, these habits are not to be held holy; cleanliness and
method are desirable acquisitions but not so desirable as a
feeling of freedom to play and experiment with life and things.
If the child is constantly worried lest he get too dirty, or
fears to play in his room because he may disorder it, he is
forming the good habits of cleanliness and method but also the
worse one of worry.
In the breaking of a bad habit, its root in desire and difficulty
must be discovered. Often enough a man does not face the source
of his trouble, preferring not to. I am not at all sure that it
is best in all cases for a man to know his own weakness; in fact,
I feel convinced to the contrary in some cases. But in the
majority of difficulties, self-revelation is salutary and makes
an intelligent coping with the situation possible. Here is the
value of the good friend, the respected pastor, the wise doctor.
The human being will always need a confessor and a confidante,
and he who is struggling with a habit is in utmost need of such
help.
Shall the struggler with a bad habit break it with its thralldom?
Shall he say to his chains, "From this time, nevermore!" To some
men it is given to win the victory this way, to rise to the
heights of a stubborn resolution and to be free. But not to many
is this possible. To others there is a long history of repeated
effort and repeated failures and then--one day there comes a
feeling of power, perhaps through a great love, a great cause, a
sermon heard, a chance sentence, or a bitter experience, and
then, like a religious conversion, the tracks of the old habit
are obliterated, never to be used again.
I have in mind two men, both heavy drinkers but differing in
everything else. One was a philosopher who saw the world in that
dreadful, clear white light of which Jack London[1] spoke, that
light which leaves no cozy, pleasant obscurities, in which Truth,
the naked, is horrible to look at, when life seems too unreal,
when purposes seem most futile. At such times he would get drunk
and be happy for the time being, and afterwards find himself
bitterly repentant, though even that was a pleasure compared to
the hollow world in which his sober self dwelt. Then one day,
when all his friends had given him up as hopeless, as destined
for disaster, he read a book. "The Varieties of Religious
Experience," by William James, came to him as a clear light comes
to a man lost in the darkness; he saw himself as a "sick soul,"
obsessed with the idea that he saw life relentlessly and clearly.
There came to him the conviction that he had been arrogant, a
conceited ass, bent on ruin, "a sickly soul," he said. Out of
that realization grew resolutions that needed no vowing or
pledging, for as simply as a man turns from one road to another
he turned from his habit into healthy-minded work.
[1] Jack London's "John Barleycorn."
The other was an essentially healthy-minded man but he loved
joviality, freedom and good fellowship. Without ever knowing how
he came to it, he found himself a confirmed drinker, holding an
inferior place, passed by men of lesser caliber. He struggled
fitfully but always slipped when the next "good fellow" slapped
him on the back and invited him to have a drink. One day he
stepped out of a barroom with a group of his cronies, and though
he walked straight there was a reckless, happy feeling in him
that pushed him on to his folly. A young lady standing on a
street corner waiting for a car caught his eye. Signaling to his
companions, he walked up to her, put his arms around her and
kissed her. The girl stood as if petrified, then she pushed him
off and looked him up and down deliberately with cold scorn in
her eyes. Then she took off her glove and slapped him across the
face with it, as if disdaining to use her hand. With that she
walked away.
The man was a gentleman, and he stood there stricken. The laugh
of his companions aroused him. He saw them as if they were
himself, with a horror and disgust that made him suddenly run
away from them.
"From that moment I never again had the slightest desire for
drink. The slap sobered me for good."
While these conversions occur now and then there are certain
practical points in the breaking of a habit that need attention
in each case.
In the first place it is best in the majority of instances to
avoid the particular stimuli and associations that set off the
habit. The stimulus is a kind of trigger; pull it and the habit
can hardly be checked. Whatever the situation is that acts as the
temptation, avoid it. Not for nothing do men pray, "Lead us not
into temptation." The will needs no such exercise and rarely
stands up well against such strain. This may mean a removal for
the time being from the source of temptation, a flying away to
gain strength.
Further, a substitution of habit, of purpose, is necessary. Some
line of activities must be selected to fill in the vacuum. A
hobby is needed, a devotion to some larger purpose, whether it be
in work or social activity. "Nature abhors a vacuum"; boredom
must be avoided, for that is a pain, awakening desire. The
gymnasium, golf, sports of all kinds are substitute pleasures of
great value.
Third, harness a friend, a superior or a respected equal to the
yoke with you. Pull double harness; let him lend his strength to
yours. Throw away pride; confess and receive new energy from his
sympathy and wisdom. If you are lucky enough to have such a
friend, or some wise counselor, thank God for him. For here is
where the true friend finds his highest value.
In the analysis of any character the question of the kind of
habits formed demands attention. Since almost all traits become
matters of habit, such an inquiry would sooner or later lead to a
catalogue of qualities. What is here pertinent is this,--that one
might inquire into the kind of habits that are easily formed by
the individual and the kind that are not. Habits fall into groups
such as these:
1. Relating to care of the body: cleanliness, diet, exercise,
bowel function, sleep. Here we learn about personal tidiness or
the reverse, foppery, dandyism, gluttony, asceticism, etc.
2. Relating to method, efficiency, neatness in work: some people
find it almost impossible to become methodical or neat; others
become obsessed by these qualities to the exclusion of mobility.
3. Relating to the pursuit of pleasure: type of pleasure sought,
time given to it, hobbies.
4. Relating to special habits: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex
perversions.
5. Relating to study and advancement: love of books, attendance
at lectures.
Especially in the study of children is some such scheme
essential, for then one gets a definite idea of their defects and
takes definite efforts to make habitual the desired practice, or
else one sees the special trend, and, if it is good, fosters it.
This, of course, is the long and short of character development.