THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3522, 13 September 1921, Page 52

THE SKETCHER.

By

THE FLY-WHEEL OF GIV iLi SAT lON, IMPORTANCE OF HABIT.

RIGHT HON. LORD RIDDELL,

iu John o' London's Weekly. All hrbits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. To prove the force of habit, William James tells a story of a well-trained soldier who was walking across the barrack square with, I think it was, a pot of beer in his hand, when the sergeant as a joke called out “Attention ! ’ The sold ier dropped the beer and obeyed the word of command. This hardly seems credible. Nevertheless, the extent to which habit rules the world is not appreciated. It is true that from time immemorial the force of habit has been recognised and enshrined in popular proverbs, but, as with other well-known truths, familiarity breeds indifference. Few people take the trouble to examine the detail: anil to ascertain the extent to which habit affects our daily lives. There are many sorts of habit. The automatic kind, such as the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we hold ourselves, the way we speak, the way we smile or scowl, the way we eat our food, etc. These are partly hereditary and partly acquired by imitation, as in the case of dialects. But we know that most habits of this class can lie formed or changed by education. During the war we saw slouching, ungainly men of thirty turned by the drill-sergeant into smart soldiers. It has become a. truism to say that children should not be allowed to contract bad types of automatic habits. The substitution of a good for a. bad habit involves not only loss of time in life, but added nervous strain. The second class may be described as partly automatic. For example, writing, the dexterity of the carpenter or mechanic, or the remarkable power acquired by microseopists, referred to by Herbert : Spencer: “To move the object under the i microscope to the right, the fingers must | move to the left, and to move it up they I must move down.’ A more homely exj ample is the dexterity acquired by women j in putting hairpins into their hair in I front of a looking-glass. All the motions ; are, of course, reversed. If an inexperi- ! enced man tried the experiment he would probably stick the hairpin into his head. | The third class consists of Mental Habits ; | concentration or non-concentration ; tidiness or untidiness; observation or nonobservation ; and acquired mental aptitude for particular professions or businesses, j The fourth class comprises habits of ; life, usually called customs—such as the habit of various classes of the community or of the residents in particular districts to follow certain trades, often unfavourable or dangerous as compared with others, and also the custom which most people have of continuing to reside where their parents lived before them. Customs • of this class are valuable, as they help I to steady the world, but they have their | dangers. A community unduly shackled ! by custom makes no progress, and revoluj tions are often caused by the failure of i one class to recognise the necessity for j changes due to the aspirations of other j classes. Without custom civilisation I would fall to pieces, but too great rigidity ! leads to decay or upheaval. The same applies in commerce and industry. Continuity of policy is an asset, whereas slavish adherence to old methods frei quently leads to bankruptcy. One of the i most striking commentaries upon habit was provided by Arnold Bennett and , Edward Ivnoblock’s play. “Milestones,” i which should be performed regularly for ; a month every year to selected audiences : of politicians, commercial men, and trade union leaders. If we consider the extent to which habit governs our actions we can recognise the accuracy' of William James’s description when he calls it the enormous fly-wheel of civilisation. We should endeavour to make our nervous system our ally and not our enemy by cultivating , useful habits and passing over to the au’toj niatic side of the brain as many mental , operations as possible. The importance ! of habit arises from the fact that when ! the brain receives the signal A, the se- | quence B, 0. D. and so on follow without further conscious mental effort. That makes life easier and leaves more time and energy for thought and conscious action. But, like most things, even —Good Habits have their dangers. Habit leads to | rigidity. We all know the troublesome | old gentleman who is an intolerable I nuisance because he is so precise and re- ' gards any deviation from his routine a.s ’ a terrible grievance. 11 is pen must be ! in its place, so must his slippers; his j meals must be served to the minute, etc. ; Even good habits must lie kept in order ; the fly-wheel must not he allowed to drive the machine. This is the business of the driver —the mysterious enemy we call the “ego”—the sentient thinking' being within you that controls your destiny. The driver of the human machine must watch all parts of his engine, physical and mental. Habits have no eyes. They do not see the danger ahead. That is the driver’s duty. For example, the habit of concentration is valuable, but a man may overconcentrate on business or other matters. It is for the ego to see that balance is preserved. Even the habit of personal cleanliness may he overdone. A person may become so meticulous as to consider two baths and several washings a day essential. Here the ego should step in and exercise its judgment. 11 sh ould say, “You are making a fool of yourself. You are wasting your time. You are becoming luxurious and r>ernickctty. Look here. Mr Habit, you must cut down your appropriation of my daily time and

energy 7. You must limit your activities to. one bath and so many washings.” Circumstances and customs change, and we must be prepared to modify our habits accordingly.. But do not become an in - trospectionist—a mental valetudinarian—►always probing into your own mind and reviewing your habits. Observe other peoples habits and try and form a .judgment on them desirability or otherwise. Unconsciously that will lead you to do the right thing, or what you think is the right thing. It is a question of judgand observation, if you notice that a friend stoops, bites his nails, lack concentration, etc., that will lead you to an almost unconscious examination of your own habits and to ascertain whether you suffer from similar defects. But don’t run away with the idea that the same habits suit everyone. Take, for example, the arrangement of papers. Old Lord Halsbury was famed for the cleanness of his mind and for his power of setting forth complicated facts and arguments in lucid form. If, however, you saw him in the House of Lords, preparing to deliver judgment, the wayin which he stirred up his papers would remind you of a witch stirring up her cauldron. Aon would say to yourself, What a horrible muddle this old gentleman is going to make of things !” Not at all. He would at. once proceed to deliver, often without a note, a most lucid judgment expressed in beautiful language. On seeing this performance, a young man mignt well say', “Evidently the right way is_ to keep your papers in a muddle!” We all know that he would be wrong, and that tidiness leads to a tidy mind, and tidy’ thinking. He would overlook the face that Lord Halsbury was an exceptional man, and would forget that while scaffolding is necessary for the construction of an edifice it can be cast away , when the building is constructed. By dint of practice many great men have learned the art of doing their tidy- j mg in their minds. It is there they ! arrange the facts and arguments, oblivious of the conditions of the papers in which they' are expressed. But if you were to make inquiries you would probably find that in their early days they were methodical. The keeping o i papers usually involves physical trouble. Many' people, as they grow older, become more energetic mentally and less physically. They hate to be bothered with petty details, but their rmnds are so trained that they can observe and classify facts and arguments with very little difficulty. The most important thing in life is good judgment. The wise man forms right habits In the right way. But it must be confessed that there are many habits that are not quite gcod which are very pleasant. For example, smoking. Probably most people would be better if they did not smoke, but those addicted to this habit generally consider the resulting pleasure outweighs 1 the disadvantages. We ought not, how- ! ever to humbug ourselves about habits. I If we pursue a bad habit because we like it we ma<> just as well admit that it is bad, and the habit must he kept in check, so that if and when necessary the ego may seize and throttle it. Otherwise it may seize, and throttle the ego. Or, to return to William James’s metaphor, the fly-wheel may “bust” the machine. As Cicero says, it is a great thing to know our own vices. Three Maxims.— Quoting from Professor Bain, William James gives thx-ee maxims for acquiring a new habit or leaving off an old one. 1. W e must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided . an initiative as possible. He means that we must accumulate the best possible conditionl* to enable us to carry out the resolutions determined upon, * so as to make the new way- easy. For example, if we want to give up smoking, we must banish tobacco from the house. It may', however, be noted here that there ‘is another and more heroic method—viz., to withstand and to conquer temptation in a glaring form. \\ hen M. Clemenceau decided to abandon smoking in the interests of health he placed an open hox - of the best cigars he could get on the ! table in front of him, and left it there for a fortnight, making up his mind firmly that he would not touch a cigar. Bein';’ a man of strong will, he “won out,” as the Americans say, and has never smoked since. I do not advise this method for ordinary' people. Most of us would have found our fingers stealing towards the box. ; 2. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in j your life. Each lapse is like' letting fall ! a ball of string which one is carefully j winding up. A single slip undoes more : than many turns will wind again. i 3. Seize the first possible opportunity to ' act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting vou may experience in the direction of the habit you aspire to gain. The actual presence of the practical opportunity alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength and raise itself aloft. Gestures are no good. Actions are necessary'. THE FUTURE OF MESOPOTAMIA. The great need of Mesopotamia is population. This land is larger than the United Kingdom, and yet its people do not number as many as those in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Under the healthy' conditions which are now being secured no doubt the population' will increase at a greater rate, but the normal increase, apart from immigration, must me a slow matter. It is suggested that Jews might pour into this land as well as into Palestine. There are millions of Jews in south-eastern Europe who. if their emigrating tendency eastward is anything to go by, are looking for a home in Asia. At present Mesopotamia has only a hand- : ful of Jews, as against 30 times as many 1 Mohammedans. But the question is whether Isaac and Ishmael can dwell to- ! gether in unity or even in mutual tolera- ' lion, here where their father went forth,

not knowing whither he went. Some recent events in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, too. are not encouraging; but whatever its racial complexion, provided only that there is a continuance of good government, Mesopotamia will have a much mere conspicuous place on the map i n the year-book than it has had in the past. 'The Garden of Eden lias not been located, and probably never will be. Yet in this land a paradise is being regained—not a sort of Italian landscape garden, but the settlement of a community which is prosperous, peaceful, content, "which is making the most of the natural gifts and possibilities with which the land is endowed, and which is under an administration seeking only justice and giving equal rights to Arab. Jew, or Christian. And that is as much of Eden as one has a right to expect. One strange destiny awaits Mesopotamia. if a suggestion made in veryauthoritative quarters comes to fruition. This is, that Mesopotamia shall become the rendezvous of the aerial forces of the Empire. The air routes from our own country to the dominions and possessions in the East and in the Pacific are all to pass over the great plains of tire Tigris and the Euphrates. When Australia can be reached in eight days from London by aeroplane, Mesopotamia will be the intermediary station for this traffic. It is even suggested that the policing of the entire country should be left to the Royal Air Force, and most of the other garrisons withdrawn. Imagine what it will mean on these old plains to have aerodromes reared and the skies every’ now and then darkened with clouds of coming or. receding planes!—llknuy Cooper, in the Sunday at Home. WIRELESS A?ID WARFARE. NEW PHASE IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. The mere thought of a catastrophic visitation of a thousand or two wirelessly directed aeroplanes, each supplied with a large quantity' of explosives more deadly' even than any' employed during the great war, staggers the mind. This is what the sensational papers would flippantly' •dismiss as the “latest thing in frightfulness”—a headline which in posterdoin would be regarded as a “sure draw.” But there is great news these days, an echo of hope, a note of optimism. For ought that we know, despite the agonies of Armageddon, a new world is in the making, an age when mankind will sheathe the sword once and for ever; when tire tank, the bombing 'plane, the long-range gun, the hideous bullet-hose, together with all the remainder of earth’s present-day infernal machines, will, like the handpress, the Sedan chair, and the boneshaker, be scrapped once and for ever. King Science.—Whatever mankind may have hoped from the spirit of morality, already a new messenger is thundering at the postern of civilisation; King Science is this gentleman’s name. AVhat saith he? “I have a device more awful than any scythe at present in war’s accursed armoury. I can destroy townships, wipe out generations, trample on the labours and genius of a whole people; mine is a power more awful than the plague; a power compared to which the havoc of present-day' artillery is mere nothingness. During the war of the nations millions of mankind were shattered on Freedom’s altar, Legions Caesar never knew were touched by Death and named its own, but woe betide mankind when I set loose the latest of my horrors! Foch and Haig, Beatty and Jellicoe, Clauraud and Diaz, Pershing and Sims; aye, great men are they all, worthy of high honour, worthy of esteem, but not all of these together can compare with me 1 Terrible as your great men unquestionably are, they are but children unto me! I am not war, hideous as is that, I am Death itself.” Hopeful it sounds, does it not ? And yet in this speech of King Science there is hope in every' word! By means of directional wireless there is no saying to what degree of frightfulness war has now reached. When one contemplates that the personal element has largely been eliminated by this new invention, that crewless ’planes, war vessels, torpedoes themselves, can be directed without imperilling the lives of the assailants, one can readily realise the unspeakably awful thing war will soon have become. —What Might Happen.— The day is not far distant when our mighty London could be reduced to nothingness within only a few' hours, when, save for that proportion of the population accommodated in the tubes, no section of the inhabitants of the world's largest city could hope to escape the at tention of the raiders. What has taken long centuries to erect, a huddled and hideous mass of indescribable debris—think of it! Think of a fleet of ’planes, deluging the city with all the horrors of Hell’s arsenal, flying back to their base unscathed, only to return to the scene of their depredations with a fresh consignment of bombs, and at a speed hitherto undreamed of. Think not of vessels, but of whole fleets sent to the bottom of the sea by wirelesslydirected torpedoes. Think of thousands of lives destroyed within u space of a quarter of an hour, say ; millions of pounds sterling sent under in the same space, the labour of years, the toil and sweat of hundreds of thousands of skilled mechanics. Awful it sounds, does it not? And yet who, after carefully investigating the latest data from the laboratories, can affect to regard such assertions as the vapourings of a visionary. The wire-lessly-directed torpedo will ho able to hound an intended victim with a certainty that can only be described as fiendish, and the wirelessly-directed ’plane can afford once and forever to dismiss the dread of back-blast. The submersible battleship, the longrange gun, the ’plane-bearing submarine, think what all those would mean if war

were to remain a symbol not of man’s development, but Ills undevelopment. I hen, again, the rate at which Science advances nowadays increases at a speed far out of proportion, say, to what it did a hundred years ago. It need hardly be insisted that what .’-wienie achieved "from 1801 to 1811 was as nothing to what it achieved between the years 1901 and 1911. i he great war, again, made a call on one blanch of science unparalleled in the history of the world. During that period the tcienco of bloodshed developed at a speed terrible to contemplate. But, though man’s destructive genius became a by-word during the frenzied days of , Vrmageddon, think not that with the Armistice this “barbaric fine art” came to a sudden termination. Either for love of gold, or of research work pure and simple, experts have kept pegging away with an industry which, even during tiiese post-war days, has resulted in the disof new properties, the invention of explosives, compared to which the worst horrors of the war must (in some instances) now take cec-onditry place. Ten or fifteen years hence where will these discoveries have led'us? Marconi and Wireless.— tlie author of the present article has repeatedly spoken to Mr Marconi on the womans o[ wireless. The great inventor frankly admits his pride at the thousands oi lives which have been saved by his marvellous invention ; but, even so, the distinguished Italian fails to do himself justice. One of his characteristics is to shrink obstinately from anything in the shape of prophecy; of wireless he will speak readily enough, of the future of wireless seldom or never. But mankind may yet realise in Marconi the greatest benefactor it has yet known. With some great, men the world could have well afforded to dispense; little does it matter how few Napoleons we have. The Simpsons, Wilberforces, Pasteurs, Kelvins, Listers, belong to another category ; and to this category belongs the greatest telegraphist of his day. Why is Marconi so reticent as to the possibilities of his epochmaking invention? Is it that he sees as no one else does its colossal possibilities; a new star in the firmament of mankind’s hope ; a harbinger of peace in an age of perilous disquiet? Is it that he sees in the very fright-fulness of war —the horror of mathematical murder—the writing on the wall, which may spell the end of battle?—H. M. Forbes, in the Weekly Scotsman.