part activities. Our own view is that they are of the con- ditioned reflex type and are therefore acquired. The whole level should receive a far more extended study since the peda- gogical aspect for parent and teacher is most important. To dwell for any length of time upon it here is out of place. But it is believed that the child is often made or broken at just this stage. One needs only to call attention to the mass of objects that gets tied up with the fear responses, or the way the eighty-day-old infant learns to control its attendants by crying and giving way to rage. We recall these statements made in other connections in order to emphasize the point here that habits of the type we shall now consider are not the earliest to develop. The Nature of Habit. --Any definite mode of acting, either explicit or implicit in character, not belonging to man's hereditary equipment, must be looked upon as a habit. It is an individually acquired or learned act. We have already pointed out that from the moment of birth the infant when not sleeping is moving almost ceaselessly the arms, hands, legs, eyes, head, and indeed the whole body. Stimulate him in any way and these movements become more frequent and increase in amplitude. Under the influence of intra-organic stimulation as seen in the hyperactivity of the smooth-muscle contractions in hunger and thirst, and especially in the hypersecretion of the ductless glands in rage, fear and other emotional activity, these movements become much more numerous. In pain, likewise, the number of move- ments is increased. It can be maintained from our experimental work on habit that the autonomic system furnishes the restless seeking or avoiding movements of the body as a whole which lead the organism to display the instinctive repertoire out of which habits are composed. The question as to whether the ex- teroceptive sense organs (eyes, ears and nose) ever furnish this initial drive in the absence of autonomic activity is not so easily answered. It is maintained by psychologists generally that the moving, the flashing of bright objects, the sounding of noises, and in general the application of distance receptor stimuli, can increase the number and amplitude of these initial movements. It must be remembered, though, that such stimuli arouse the -270- |