Habit forces Nature into New Channels

The extraordinary power of habit in forcing nature into new channels hardly requires illustration; we have only to see a small boy at a circus riding two barebacked ponies with a foot on the back of each, or a pantomime fairy dancing on air, or a clown behaving like an indiarubber ball, or any of the thousand feats of skill and dexterity which we pay our shillings to see – mental feats as well as bodily, though, happily, these are the rarer – to be convinced that exactly anything may be accomplished by training, that is, the cultivation of persistent habits.  And the power of habit is not seen in human beings alone.  The cat goes in search of her dinner always at the same time and to the same place – that is, if it is usual to feed her in one spot.  Indeed, the habit of place is so much to the cat, that she will often rather die of famine than forsake the house to which she is accustomed.  As for the dog, he is still more a ‘bundle of habits’ than his master.  Scatter the crumbs for the sparrows at nine o’clock every morning, and at nine o’clock they will come for their breakfast, crumbs or no crumbs.  Darwin inclines to think that the terror and avoidance shown towards man by the wild birds and lesser animals is simply a matter of transmitted habit; he tells us how he landed upon certain of the Pacific islands where the birds had never seen man before, and they lighted upon him and flew about him with utter fearlessness[1].  To come nearer home what evidence of the mastery of habit is more sad and more overwhelming than the habits of the drunkard, for instance, persisted in, in spite of reason, conscience, purpose, religion, every motive which should influence a thinking being?