The ANIMAL functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinction from the ORGANIC, tend, in the process of deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of movement.

Every man's HEART (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose BRAINS, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart itself.

Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic.

It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circumstances.

But habit, you see, is an action in present circumstances from past motives.