HABIT A MODIFICATION OF BRAIN TISSUE.--But the nervous tissue is the
most sensitive and easily molded of all bodily tissues. In fact, it is
probable that the real _habit_ of our characteristic walk, gesture, or
speech resides in the brain, rather than in the muscles which it
controls. So delicate is the organization of the brain structure and so
unstable its molecules, that even the perfume of the flower, which
assails the nose of a child, the song of a bird, which strikes his ear,
or the fleeting dream, which lingers but for a second in his sleep, has
so modified his brain that it will never again be as if these things had
not been experienced. Every sensory current which runs in from the
outside world; every motor current which runs out to command a muscle;
every thought that we think, has so modified the nerve structure through
which it acts, that a tendency remains for a like act to be repeated.
Our brain and nervous system is daily being molded into fixed habits of
acting by our thoughts and deeds, and thus becomes the automatic
register of all we do.
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