. If we think of a habit simply as
a change wrought in the organism, ignoring the fact that this change
consists in ability to effect subsequent changes in the environment, we
shall be led to think of "adjustment" as a conformity to environment as
wax conforms to the seal which impresses it. The environment is thought
of as something fixed, providing in its fixity the end and standard
of changes taking place in the organism; adjustment is just fitting
ourselves to this fixity of external conditions. 2 Habit as
habituation is indeed something relatively passive; we get used to our
surroundings--to our clothing, our shoes, and gloves; to the atmosphere
as long as it is fairly equable; to our daily associates, etc.
Conformity to the environment, a change wrought in the organism without
reference to ability to modify surroundings, is a marked trait of such
habituations. Aside from the fact that we are not entitled to carry
over the traits of such adjustments (which might well be called
accommodations, to mark them off from active adjustments) into habits of
active use of our surroundings, two features of habituations are worth
notice. In the first place, we get used to things by first using them.

Consider getting used to a strange city. At first, there is excessive
stimulation and excessive and ill-adapted response. Gradually certain
stimuli are selected because of their relevancy, and others are
degraded. We can say either that we do not respond to them any longer,
or more truly that we have effected a persistent response to them--an
equilibrium of adjustment. This means, in the second place, that this
enduring adjustment supplies the background upon which are made specific
adjustments, as occasion arises. We are never interested in changing
the whole environment; there is much that we take for granted and accept
just as it already is. Upon this background our activities focus at
certain points in an endeavor to introduce needed changes. Habituation
is thus our adjustment to an environment which at the time we are not
concerned with modifying, and which supplies a leverage to our active
habits. Adaptation, in fine, is quite as much adaptation of the
environment to our own activities as of our activities to the
environment. A savage tribe manages to live on a desert plain. It adapts
itself. But its adaptation involves a maximum of accepting, tolerating,
putting up with things as they are, a maximum of passive acquiescence,