In order to maintain his own equilibrium and the efficient working of the plough, it is highly probable that he will unduly tense muscles which are precisely those which should not be tensed, and relax those which should do the most work. The tension of the muscles of the arm will almost certainly be unnecessarily high, and the general use of the wrong muscles will tend to destroy the proper equilibrium rather than to maintain it. We thus see that the moment he steps into his new occupation (which he no doubt had congratulated himself would bring perfect health in its train), he immediately begins to cultivate new and harmful habits during his daily round.[19] He becomes a badly co-ordinated, imperfectly guided ploughman precisely as he was a badly co-ordinated and imperfectly guided clerk. When the principles of reasoned conscious control are adopted, the man leading a sedentary life will be able to take up the occupation of ploughman without any fear of cultivating harmful habits. Moreover, he will attain proficiency in ploughing in one-tenth part of the time that the subconsciously controlled man took to obtain a half-mastery of it. Let us see how he would set about it from the point of view of reasoned conscious guidance and control. Acting under the guiding principles of reasoned and conscious control he will consider first the “means whereby” he may achieve his object, rather than that object itself. He will take time to consider well the factors to be overcome. It will be obvious to any one who will take the trouble to watch another man at the plough, that a great deal of proper manipulation is necessary to keep the share embedded and a straight furrow. The manipulation requires firstly the maintenance of the ploughman’s equilibrium under very difficult circumstances. This consideration will make it clear to him that his body must remain comparatively steady and support the arms and legs as the trunk of a tree does its limbs, following as nearly perpendicularly as possible the line the furrow should take. It will be evident to him that the “give and take” of the joints of the arms and legs are the chief moving factors which should meet the different movements of the handles of the plough. His highly trained guiding sensations will not permit him to make more physical tension with any part of the muscular system than is absolutely necessary, and only the particular muscles best adapted for the control of his equilibrium and his plough will be called into special use. For instance, when the left handle of the plough is forced upwards and the right downwards by the plough being thrown into a position leaning towards the right, the ploughman’s left arm will bend at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, and the right straighten in order to maintain his equilibrium and general control without undue strain and interference with the proper position of the torso. Of course the left arm should exercise a downward pressure