The will is the final arbiter of choice. It holds the balance of power in all mental operations. Its strength determines whether or not the body can be compelled to carry out the orders of the mind. The man with the strong will has the body under the control of his own mind. The man with a weak will may have a mind controlled by the appetites and passions of the body; while one with a diseased will may find himself partially or wholly under the control of another mind. The will has knowledge of and also includes all mental operations.

The will represents the combined spiritual, mental, and nervous forces brought to bear upon mind and body to direct them in the channels of choice and conscientious conviction.

The will may be said to hear the voice of conscience and to receive the insinuations of evil. It is the clearing-house of the soul in the struggle between mind and matter. The will represents the supreme conclusions and the final effort of the mind, and it should be remembered that merely wishing is not willing. The will is the battle-ground of character formation. The will represents to the mind what the sum total does to a column of figures. It is the masterbuilder of character and the architect of eternal destiny.

Man is not a mere machine, not even an intelligent machine. Machines can perform only the work for which they are constructed, they are not responsible. Man is in the highest sense responsible for his acts and habits; he has a will and possesses the power of choice. The majority of animals are quite dependent upon their instincts and on the stimuli which reach their brains from the sensory nerves, but man is able, in measure, to direct himself according to the choosing of his own will. While reason may be the highest act of the mind itself, practical experience goes to prove that reason, in fact the entire mind, is ever subservient to that mighty sovereign of the personality the will.

We may rent our minds for a consideration, we may let

out our intellects for hire, but no man ever leases his will to another. The will is inseparable from the personality. Reason is simply the attorney-general of the mind, appearing before the supreme court of the will. How frequently we see men who persistently hold on to certain opinions which are contrary to all reason. They will so to think, and, you may be sure, such persons will see to it that their servile reasoning powers furnish them with abundant, and, to themselves, satisfactory reasons for their positions.

No child is responsible for the thoughts which enter the mind, but all are responsible for the thoughts which are allowed to remain in the mind, for the will has complete and full jurisdiction over the entire intellect. The will can command the brain to think as it may direct, just as the mind possesses the power to direct the spinal cord to execute the physical movements which the brain may order. All of the mental powers are coördinate and cooperative, while the will stands out as the ranking officer of the whole intellect, wielding the combined powers of direction, decision and discipline.

14. Habit The Connection Between Mind and Body. We have now completed the review of the mechanism of character development the mind and nervous system of the child, and have reached that place in the systematic study of our subject where we are brought face to face with habit, and habit, we should remember, is the vestibule of character. Habits are the actual units, the bricks as it were, out of which every individual is forced to build his character structure. Our discussion thus far has been concerned with the methods and manner, with the procedure and mechanism, of the formation of habits; but now we have to deal with those thoughts which have been so repeatedly indulged that they have resulted in the actions which, having been so repeatedly executed, are now crystallized into habits-and character is the sum total of all these different and individual habit-items which enter into and go to make up our life experience.

By frequent repetition, physical acts result in the formation of habits, and habits constitute our mode of life. They represent the kind of thinking we have done; they stand for the thoughts which have ripened into actions; and these actions have been repeated until they have become automatic, reflex, unconscious, and sometimes uncontrollable. In a certain sense, habit may be regarded as physical memory. When conscious acts are performed thousands of times they become unconscious. In this way we are able to use, as it were, only the interest on our nerve energy and not the principal.

And so, again, we see how the mind can influence the body. Perverted thinking, wicked acting, may in time so pervert the nervous system and bring disease upon the brain, as to render the higher intelligence well-nigh helpless in the work of coping with intemperate habits and vicious passions. And so, when habits of pain, of fear, of suffering, of vice, or of disease, are once formed, it is exceedingly difficult to break the binding fetters forged by the longcontinued and daily repetition of these physical impressions and sensations.

15. Character and Conscience. The character is the real individual. It is the grand sum of sensations, percepts, concepts, ideas, memory, imagination, discrimination, judgment, reason, affirmation, willing and doing. It is the finished material picture of the invisible mental painter. The character is the combination of our physical habits and our mental operations. It determines the temperament, the morality, and the reliability of the individual. Our character is shown by our honesty, our spirituality, our self-control, our speech and our affections.

Character formation represents the grand and sublime purpose of life, and character formation is determined by our every thought, word and action.

The formation of character is influenced not only by the process of thinking carried on within the mind, and its resultant physical acts, and the habits thereby formed, but

also by the spiritual powers the higher moral influences to which the mind of man is subject, in contradistinction to the mind of the animal.

Man has a conscience. The conscience cannot be described as a separate mental power. It is the spiritual or moral guide to conduct and thought, having for its basis our hereditary and acquired mental attitudes and moral standards. It is the spiritual voice, speaking to the will. The conscience is man's moral instinct. It imparts divine dignity to man; through it the divine will is revealed, and it forever distinguishes man from the animal.

The conscience is ever subject to education, and therefore it must never be looked upon as an infallible and unerring guide to conduct. The heathen is just as conscientious in praying to an idol as the Christian is in worshiping a personal God. The devout Hindoo mother is just as conscientious in throwing her innocent babe into the mouth of the crocodile as is the Christian missionary in his efforts to save her benighted soul.

The character is influenced in its formation not only by the heed we pay to conscience, but also by the insinuations of evil, commonly known as temptation; and these unfavorable influences represent our acquired, hereditary and suggested tendencies to depart from the way of right as recognized by the mind and dictated by the conscience.

And so we must recognize that man is a spiritual being as well as an intelligent animal. The primitive man is always religious; he universally worships something. Absolute irreligion is only the product of artificial training and miseducation. The spirit which operates upon the mind of man constitutes the divine source of our higher emotions and affections. Judgment, ofttimes spontaneously, determines the right for the mind; and conscience prompts the will to order the execution of judgment's decrees. Man strives to attain his ideal in spiritual or religious life and gradually approaches it. The more closely the relationship between his soul and God is established, the higher his

religious idea; hence, prayer is one of the best agencies in character building. In fact, in the treatment of many nervous disorders, even the physician is coming to regard prayer as a powerful healing agency.

16. Difference Between Temperament and Character. Children are born into this world with temperamental tendencies pretty well settled, whereas the character is only faintly predetermined. Temperament is largely a matter of physiology as well as psychology. Temperament represents the inherited capital and the ancestral tendencies of the individual, whereas character represents the increase, the results, the harvest of the use which has been made of the pre-existent and basic hereditary temperamental tendencies.

Character is a thing which we literally build. The temperamental factors and hereditary tendencies, it is true, represent the building materials represent the mental, moral and physical factors which we are forced to utilize in building this more sublime character structure. Notwithstanding the fact that the laws of heredity more or less determine the nature of our crude building materials notwithstanding the fact that we are somewhat limited in our range of selection as regards the fundamental nature of our character structure notwithstanding all of these handicaps of both heredity and environment, there nevertheless remains a tremendous range of possibility within which the individual, aided by his parents at home and his teachers at school, may develop a more or less distinctive personality and build a character altogether unique and entirely different from that which would have resulted from the undisciplined and untaught development of his hereditary and temperamental tendencies.

In other words, the decisions of the pupil, the attitude of the parents, and the methods of the teachers, are all potential in modifying and building the character. Character is a thing which may actually be constructed, may actually be influenced even in directions opposite to that of the hereditary temperamental tendencies.