n between. What do you
learn? Is it as easy for an old person to form a habit as it is for a
young person? Why?

7. If an old person has no old habits to interfere, can he form a new
habit as readily as can a young person?

8. Cite evidence from your own experience to prove that it is hard for
an old person to break up old habits and form new ones which interfere
with the old ones.

9. Do you find that you are becoming "set in your ways?"

10. What do we mean by saying that we are "plastic in early years"?

11. Have you planned your life work? Are you establishing the habits
that will be necessary in it?

12. Is it an advantage or a disadvantage to choose one's profession or
occupation early?

13. Attention often interferes with the performance of a habitual act.
Why is this?

14. If a man removes his vest in the daytime, he is almost sure to wind
his watch. On the other hand if he is up all night, he lets his watch
run down. Why?

15. Do you know of people who have radically changed their views late in
life?

16. Try to teach a dog or a cat a trick. What do you learn of importance
about habit-formation?

17. What branches taught in school involve the formation of habits that
are useful throughout life?

18. Make a list of the moral habits that should be formed in early
years.

19. Write an essay on _Habit and Life_.

20. Make a complete outline of the chapter.

REFERENCES FOR CLASS READING

COLVIN AND BAGLEY: _Human Behavior_, Chapters XI and XVII.

PILLSBURY: _Essentials of Psychology_, pp. 48-59; also Chapter XV.

PYLE: _The Outlines of Educational Psychology_, Chapters X, XI, and XII.

ROWE: _Habit Formation_, Chapters V-XIII.

TITCHENER: _A Beginner's Psychology_, p. 169, par. 37.

CHAPTER VII

MEMORY

=Perceptions and Ideas.= In a previous chapter, brief mention was made of
the difference between perceptions and ideas. This distinction must now
be enlarged upon and made clearer. Perceptions arise out of our sensory
life. We see things when these things are before our eyes. We hear
things when these things produce air vibrations which affect our ears.
We smell things when tiny particles from them come into contact with a
small patch of sensitive membrane in our noses. We taste substances when
these substances are in our mouths. Now, this seeing, hearing, smelling,
tasting, etc., is _perceiving_. We perceive a thing when the thing is
actually at the time affecting some one o