INSTINCT AND HABIT _VERSUS_ REFLECTION. In the two types of behavior already discussed, man is, as it were, "pushed from behind." In the case of instinct he performs an action simply because he _must_ perform it. Willy-nilly he withdraws his hand from fire, eats when hungry, and sleeps when tired. In the case of habits, once they are acquired, he is also largely dominated by circumstances beyond his own control. The bottle is to the confirmed drunkard almost an irresistible command to drink, the alarm clock to one accustomed to it an equally imperative and not-to-be-disregarded order to arise. The story of the old veteran who was carrying home his dinner and who dropped his hands to his side and his dinner to the gutter when a practical joker called "Attention"; the pathetic plight of the superannuated business man who is totally at a loss away from his familiar duties, are often quoted illustrations of how completely habit may determine a man's actions. But while in a large portion of our daily duties we are thus at the beck and call of the instincts which are our inheritance and the habits which we have acquired, we may also _control_ our actions. Instead of performing actions as immediate and automatic responses to accustomed stimuli, we may determine our actions, single or consecutive, in the light of absent and future results. To act thus is to act reflectively, and to act reflectively is the only escape from random acts prompted by instinct and routine ones prompted by habit. To act reflectively is to delay response to an instinctive or habitual stimulus until the various possibilities of action and the results associated with each have been considered. An action performed instinctively or habitually is automatic; it is performed not on the basis of what will be the result, but simply as an immediate response to a present stimulus. But an act (or a series of acts) reflectively performed is performed in the light of the results that are prophetically associated with them. In the case of instinct and habit, the individual almost literally does not know what he is about. In reflective activity he does know, and the more thorough the reflective process, the more thorough and precise is his knowledge. He performs actions _because_ they will achieve certain results, and he is conscious of that causal connection, both before the action is performed when he perceives the results imaginatively, and after it is performed when he sees them in fact.