and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.”  Man has discovered the value of such devices during the course of his long history, and has evolved customs accordingly.  When men decide to swear off smoking, they choose the opening of a new year when many other new things are being started; they make solemn promises to themselves, to each other, and finally to their friends.  Such customs are precautions which help to bolster up the determination at the time when extraordinary effort and determination are required.  In forming the habits incidental to college life, take pains from the start to surround yourself with as many aids as possible.  This will not constitute a confession of weakness.  It is only a wise and natural precaution which the whole experience of the race has justified.  The third maxim is, never permit an exception to occur.  Suppose you have a habit of saying “aint” which you wish to replace with a habit of saying “isn’t.”  If the habit is deeply rooted, you have worn a pathway in the brain to a considerable depth, represented in the accompanying diagram by the line A X B.

A
|
X
/ \
B   C

Let us suppose that you have already started the new habit, and have said the correct word ten times.  That means you have worn another pathway A X C to a considerable depth.  During all this time, however, the old pathway is still open and at the slightest provocation will attract the nervous current.  Your task is to deepen the new path so that the nervous current will flow into it instead of the old.  Now suppose you make an exception on some occasion and allow the nervous current to travel over the old path.  This unfortunate exception breaks down the bridge which you had constructed at X from A to C.  But this is not the only result.  The nervous current, as it revisits the old path, deepens it more than it was before, so the next time a similar situation arises, the current seeks the old path with much greater readiness than before, and vastly more effort is required to overcome it.  Some one has likened the effect of these exceptions to that produced when one drops a ball of string that is partially wound.  By a single slip, more is undone than can be accomplished in a dozen windings.

The fourth maxim is, seize every opportunity to act upon your resolution.  The reason for this will be understood better if you keep in mind the fact, stated before, that nervous currents once started, whether from a sense-organ or from a brain-center, always tend to seek egress in movement.  These outgoing nervous currents leave an imprint upon the modifiable nerve tissues as inevitably as do incoming impressions.  Therefore, if you wish your resolves to be firmly fixed, you should act upon them speedily and often.  “It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations