How unconsciously many habitual actions are
performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will!
yet they may be modified by the will or reason. Habits easily become
associated with other habits, with certain periods of time and states of
the body. When once acquired, they often remain constant throughout life.
Several other points of resemblance between instincts and habits could be
pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one
action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a
song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back
to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a
caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a
caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of
construction, and put it into a hammock completed up only to the third
stage, the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth, fifth, and sixth
stages of construction. If, however, a caterpillar were taken out of a
hammock made up, for instance, to the third stage, and were put into one
finished up to the sixth stage, so that much of its work was already done
for it, far from deriving any benefit from this, it was much embarrassed,
and, in order to complete its hammock, seemed forced to start from the
third stage, where it had left off, and thus tried to complete the already
finished work.
Pages:
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397