Before we go on to deal with heredity we should note the value for our own lives of our ability to establish habits at all, to inscribe records of action in our instruments of body and brain which shall be capable of an almost automatic repetition. That is the way in which intellectual and bodily skill makes progress. We build a stairway too for our minds and spirits as well as for our bodies, when we lay down step after step of habitual action, handing over to it the carrying-on of what at first we had to think out, and then by degrees learnt to do skilfully and well almost without thought at all. That is the stairway by which the pianist advances towards a perfect execution of his music and the skater mounts towards perfect execution of a figure which at first was beyond his power. Throughout our lives we are handing actions over to be conducted by our bodies and brains as effects of work done consciously before, to be acted over and over again and pass beyond the need of conscious intervention, and in the end to be carried on the better without that aid. A man skates, or plays his violin, or writes a poem, or rides a horse, or walks, or dances, all the better when and if he does not have to think about the appropriate movements of his hands or feet or legs, or the necessary letters of his words, to all of which he once had to give minute attention. Perceptive and creative consciousness is thus set free. His mind, in its originality of creation and perceiving, is enabled to pour itself into the instrumental habit it has laid down and infuse it with his spirit, his poetic, musical, or athletic spirit. He may endow his motor instrument with his graces now that it works without his conscious aid. * * * * *