To repeat briefly;—we remember best our last few performances of any given kind, and our present performance is most likely to resemble one or other of these; we only remember our earlier performances by way of residuum; nevertheless, at times, some older feature is liable to reappear.

We take our steps in the same order on each successive occasion, and are for the most part incapable of changing that order.

The introduction of slightly new elements into our manner is attended with benefit; the new can be fused with the old, and the monotony of our action is relieved. But if the new element is too foreign, we cannot fuse the old and new—nature seeming equally to hate too wide a deviation from our ordinary practice, and no deviation at all. Or, in plain English—if any one gives us a new idea which is not too far ahead of us, such an idea is often of great service to us, and may give new life to our work—in fact, we soon go back, unless we more or less frequently come into contact with new ideas, and are capable of understanding and making use of them; if, on the other hand, they are too new, and too little led up to, so that we find them too strange and hard to be able to understand them and adopt them, then they put us out, with every degree of completeness—from simply causing us to fail in this or that particular part, to rendering us incapable of even trying to do our work at all, from pure despair of succeeding.