as been accustomed.
Reflection may weigh the relative persuasions of various
impulses; it cannot ignore them. We may think in order to
attain our desires, and may, through reflection, learn to
change them; we cannot abolish them. Whether we are
curious about our neighbors' business or about the movements
of the stars and the possible reactions of a strange
chemical element, depends on our previous training and the
extent to which inquiry itself has become a fixed and
persistent habit. But in any case we are curious. Whether we
fight in street brawls or in campaigns against tuberculosis,
we are still, as it were, born fighters.

Similarly, in the case of habit, we may upon reflection discover
that our habits of walking, writing, or speech are bad;
that we ought not to smoke, or drink, or waste time. We
may come, through reflection, to realize with the utmost
clarity the advantages to ourselves of acquiring the habits of
going to bed early, saving money, keeping our papers in order,
and persisting at work amid distractions. But the bad habits
and the good are already fixed in our nervous system, and in
physiology also possession is nine tenths of the law. We may
_intend_ to change, but by taking thought alone we cannot add
a cubit to our stature. Reflection can do no more than point
the way we should go. For unless the wrong actions are
systematically and repeatedly refrained from, and the proper
ones made habitual, thinking remains merely an impotent
summary of what can be done. Conduct is governed, it must
be repeated, by the satisfactions action can bring us, and
unless actions are made habitual they will not be performed
with satisfaction.

HOW INSTINCTS AND HABITS IMPAIR THE PROCESSES OF REFLECTION.
It is as important as it is paradoxical that thinking is impaired
in its efficiency by the instincts and habits in whose service it
arises, and whose conflicts and maladjustments it helps to
resolve. The situations of conflict or perplexity which provoke
thinking are determined by the particular tendencies
which, by nature or training, are brought into play in any
given situation. If we are committed by tradition or habitual
allegiance to a protective tariff, we will be concerned in our
thinking with details, what articles need protection and how
much do they need; the ultimate desirability of a protective
tariff will not be a problem remotely occurring to us. If we
are by training committed to capital punishment,