TEXT 2

We are subject (01) to the law of habit, in consequence of the fact that we have bodies. The plasticity of the living matter of our nervous system, in short, is the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it (02) more and more easily and, finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any (03) consciousness at all. Our nervous systems have grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds.

Habit is thus a second nature as it regards (04) its importance in adult life; for (05) the acquired habits of our training have by that time inhibited or strangled most of the natural impulsive tendencies which were originally there. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions.

(Habit or Education, William James, 1971.)

The expression "hardly any” (03) means