A second fundamental ability of living tissue, and of particular importance in character, is habit formation. Habit resides in the fact that once living tissue has been traversed by a stimulus and has responded by an act, three things result: 1. The pathway for that stimulus becomes more permeable; becomes, as it were, grooved or like a track laid across the living structure of the nervous system. 2. The responding element is more easily stirred into activity, responds with more vigor and with less effort. 3. Consciousness, at first invoked, recedes more and more, until the habit-action of whatever type tends to become automatic. There is in this last peculiarity a tendency for the habit to establish itself as independent of the personality, and if an injurious or undesired habit, to set up the worst of the conflicts of life,--a conflict between one's intention and an automaton in the shape of a powerfully entrenched habit. Habits are economical of thought and energy, generally speaking; that is their main recommendation. A dozen examples present themselves at once as illustrative: piano playing, with its intense concentration on each note, with consciousness attending to the action of each muscle, and then practice, habit formation, and the ease and power of execution with the mind free to wander off in the moods suggested by the music, or to busy itself with improvisations, flourishes and the artistic touches. Before true artistry can come, technique must be relegated to habit. So with typewriting, driving an automobile, etc. More fundamental than these, which are largely skill habits, are the organic habits. One of the triumphs of pediatrics depends upon the realization that the baby's welfare hangs on regular habits of feeding, that he is not to be fed except at stated intervals; as a result processes of digestion are set going in a regular, harmonious manner. In other words, these processes may be said to "get to know" what is expected of them and act accordingly. The mother's time is economized and the strain of nursing is lessened. In adults, regular hours of eating make it possible for the juices of digestion to be secreted as the food is ingested; in other words, an habitual adjustment takes place.