the moment I think of a word, the actions needed for its utterance set
themselves in motion. With them I have only a negative concern.
Indeed, as we grow maturer of speech, collocations of words stick
naturally together and offer themselves to our service. When we
require a certain range of words from which to draw our means of
communication, there they stand ready. We have no need to rummage the
dimness of the past for them. Mechanically they are prepared for our
service.

Of course this does not imply that at one period we foolishly believed
consciousness to be an important guide, but subsequently becoming
wiser, discarded its aid. On the contrary, the mechanization of second
nature is simply a mode of extending the influence of consciousness
more widely. The conclusions of our early lectures were sound. The
more fully expressive conduct can be of a self-conscious personality,
so much the more will it deserve to be called good. But in order that
it may in any wide extent receive this impress of personal life, we
must summon to our aid agencies other than spiritual. The more we
mechanize conduct the better. That is what maturing ourselves means.
When we say that a man has acquired character, we mean that he has
consciously surveyed certain large tracts of life, and has decided
what in those regions it is best to do. There, at least, he will no
longer need to deliberate about action. As soon as a case from this
region presents itself, some electric button in his moral organism is
touched, and the whole mechanism runs off in the surest, swiftest,
easiest possible way. Thus his consciousness is set free to busy
itself with other affairs. For in this third stage we do not so much
abandon consciousness as direct it upon larger units; and this not
because smaller units do not deserve attention, but because they have
been already attended to. Once having decided what is our best mode of