ABSTRACT
The justification for making habit analogous to the behavior of plants and the action of non-living matter is found in the fact already mentioned that habits are the result of changes in matter. Ethical habits are evidently quite as significant for efficiency as those that are physical. The lessening of fatigue in habitual occupations is quite evident in physical labor. The advantage of habit is the exactness of automatized movements, and its evolutionary explanation is the need of meeting emergencies in a definite manner. Having found a successful reaction, the act once performed becomes the line of least resistance. In both physical and mental activity change reduces to an alteration of habits; and habit is concerned with nervous impulses and with the activity of nerve-centres. The function of the nervous system is to co-ordinate and unifies movements so as to adapt them to the needs of the individual.
