It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about “the old unscientific days”. The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency.

I have made a lot of progress, above all in speed, reflexes, and experience.

Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment.