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