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, and a minimum of active control,
of subjection to use. A civilized people enters upon the scene.
It also adapts itself. It introduces irrigation; it searches the
world for plants and animals that will flourish under such
conditions; it improves, by careful selection, those which are
growing there. As a consequence, the wilderness blossoms as a
rose. The savage is merely habituated; the civilized man has
habits which transform the environment.
The significance of habit is not exhausted, however, in its
executive and motor phase. It means formation of intellectual
and emotional disposition as well as an increase in ease,
economy, and efficiency of action. Any habit marks an
inclination -- an active preference and choice for the conditions
involved in its exercise. A habit does not wait, Micawber-like,
for a stimulus to turn up so that it may get busy; it actively
seeks for occasions to pass into full operation. If its
expression is unduly blocked, inclination shows itself in
uneasiness and intense craving. A habit also marks an
intellectual disposition.
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