Habit
When, in a vacant hour, we are indulging in reverie, and out of the magazine of memory the images of past experience are rising at their own sweet will, how arbitrary seems the succession of the thoughts that come into the mind! From century to century and from continent to continent the busy brain ranges with the speed of lightning. One moment the thinker may be in Norway, the
1 Although this chapter was not included in the course delivered in America, the first part of it especially, on the Association of Ideas, seems to be required, to link-up the preceding chapters with that on the Reason, which follows. In the second part, on Habit, the author is sensible of being more than usually indebted to Professor James, whose chapter on this subject is the most brilliant portion of a work which is throughout a wonderful melange of wit and wisdom — I mean “The Principles of Psychology,” in two volumes, in the American Science Series. Few are the preachers who can, as James does here, bring home the power of sin to paralyze the whole man or the consequent necessity for resisting its beginnings.
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next in Australia, the next in the Holy Land, the next in China.
Although, however, this succession of ideas appears to an untrained observer to be absolutely arbitrary, it is not so in reality. On the contrary, thought is linked to thought, and for even the most vrild leaps and wayward turns of fancy there is in every case a sufficient reason. It is one of the merits of the English school of Psychology to have detected this connexion among our ideas and investigated the laws by which it is regulated.^ Let us indicate some of these.
Things which have been observed by the mind in the same place are apt to recall one another. Thus, if I happen to think of a man whom I noticed in the street yesterday, I immediately think of another citizen, who chanced to be walking by his side. Likewise, things which have happened at the same time or in immediate succession are likely to recall one another. Thus, if the first of July last year were mentioned, your mind might be an
1 The first hints of the doctrine of the Association of Ideas go back, however, as far as Plato and Aristotle. But it was in Hume first that “association came to be recognised as the one principle of mental change and movement, somewhat as attraction was found to be in the domain of the physical “. Baldwin, “History of Psychology,” Vol. H, p. 7.
absolute blank, as you could remember nothing which had happened on that day; but, if it occurred to you that the first of July was the day when your annual holiday commenced and when you started for a fortnight’s tour on the Continent, immediately the events of the thirteen days which followed would pour through your mind in a stream, the one bringing the other in its train. Again, things which are like one another bring one another to mind. Thus, a portrait makes you think of the person whom it represents; a torrent of rain reminds you of the rainiest day you have ever experienced; and so on. Contrast acts in the same way as likeness; and so, indeed, does any relation between one object and another; as, for instance, that one is a part of the other. Thus, if York Minster be mentioned in your hearing, you see at once, in the mind’s eye, the Five Sisters, a window generally considered to be the loveliest part of that cathedral; or, if St. Paul’s be mentioned, you remember the Whispering Gallery — that is, a part of the whole — and so on. Kecur for a moment to the illustration with which this lecture began — when I said that, one moment, the mind may be in Norway, the next in Australia, the next in Palestine, the next in China. These leaps from continent to continent seem unaccountable; but, if you analyze your thinking, you will perceive that for each of them there is the simplest reason in the world. You were thinking of Norway, when naturally you recalled a friend, in whose company you visited that picturesque country but who is now in Australia; and so your thought flew away to the Southern Hemisphere. And thereupon you thought of the Southern Cross, because you had recently read a poem in which that constellation was described as the most prominent feature of the nightly heavens in that part of the globe. The name of the Cross sent your thought flying back over centuries to Calvary; and so you found yourself in Palestine. Finally Christ’s Cross made you think of the sufferings of Christians; and, accordingly, your thoughts flew to China, where the professors of Christianity were, not long ago, suffering martyrdom.
Thus, beneath phenomena apparently arbitrary there are fixed laws, and for even the slightest movement of the thinking mind there is a sufficient reason. The comprehensive term applied by philosophers to the laws by which thought thus produces thought is the Association of Ideas; and some have found in this the key to the whole miracle of thinking.^ Without at present going into that large question, I may say, that at all events it is the key to that feature of mental life to which attention is to be directed in this chapter.
Habit may be considered as arising in this way: when, in the revolution of time — that is, of the day, or the week, or the month, or the year — a point is reached at which we have done anything before, we, by the law of the association of ideas, think of it again and do it again. Thus, when day dawns, we awake and rise out of bed, because we have done so before; when a later hour strikes, we take breakfast and walk off to business; and so we act from hour to hour throughout the day. On the first day of the week, for a similar reason, our thoughts turn to sacred things, and we make ready to go to church. As the New Year comes round, our thoughts turn to friendliness, and we consider by what kindly turn we can inform those who are far away that they are borne in our remembrance. Of course some other juncture of circumstances, different
As early as Plato the laws of association due to resemblance and contiguity were formulated, and Aristotle added that of contrast. There is a disposition at present to reduce all these laws to one — that of succession.
from the revolution of time, may be that which recalls the past experience; but, on the whole, the cycles of time, narrower or wider, have an immense deal to do with the formation of habit.
If a thing has been done merely once at a certain time, there will be a tendency, when that point of time recurs, to think of the thing and to do it again; but this tendency is very much increased if it has been done often at the same time; and this frequency of repetition enters largely into the formation of habit. The reason why on Sunday morning we think instinctively of the house of prayer is not because we have been there once before, but because we have been going there regularly every Sunday of our lives. The more frequent the repetition the stronger the habit. Frequent repetition, further, confirms habit by producing facility in the doing of anything. Actions apparently the most impossible are able not only to be done, but to be performed with perfect ease, if only they are done often enough. Thus, a celebrated character tells that in a month he learned to keep up in the air four balls at once and to read a book whilst he was performing this feat. Multitudes of women can read whilst they are knitting, although at one time knitting was to everyone of them a slow and laborious process, demanding every particle of their attention. Everyone who has learned to play the piano remembers the difficulties of commencing — the pain in the wrists, the counting of the intervals, the touching of the keys with one finger — but practice produces the astonishing rapidity of the virtuoso. Practice can convert even disagreeable tasks into pleasures; and what has been done at first with groans and tears may become in the end a source of triumph.
It is not the mind alone that is involved in habit: even the body is brought into its service. The soldier is known by his gait, the scholar by his stoop, the merchant by his swing. Still more is habit woven into the very texture of those parts of the bodily structure which are unseen, such as the muscles and the nerves. Hence the advice given by a philosopher: ‘’ Make your nervous system your ally, instead of your enemy, in the battle of life “. The mind itself, however, is the great seat of habit; and, were it a substance capable of being seen, we should find that it was all worn into channels, some shallower and some deeper, according to the amount of repetition in our mental actions; and along these channels the energies of life pour themselves.
Man has been declared to be a bundle of habits; and this definition is not unfitting. As time goes on, life falls more and more into grooves, and there is many a man of middle age about whom it might be predicted, with almost infallible certainty, what he will be doing at every hour of the day and on every day of the year. When the maxim was repeated in the hearing of the Duke of Wellington, that habit is second nature, ‘’Second nature?” he exclaimed, ‘’habit is ten times nature”. Such was likely to be the sentiment of a disciplinarian, whose life was spent in training men to act at the word of command and to face the enemy and death, instead of obeying the instinct of nature by fleeing away. The discipline of home and of school is largely directed to the end of training the volatile spirits of the young to flow in certain fixed channels. Up to the age of ten, it is said, we are acquiring those habits which are called manners; between ten and twenty the habits which belong to personal character; and between twenty and thirty those which belong to professional character. After thirty a human being may be said to be formed, and thereafter it is difficult to alter him. Still, the formation of character never entirely ceases. In some cases, indeed, the pliancy of the formative period lasts to the very end of life.
If we have been in any degree mismade — and who has not? — we ought never to consider it too late to mend. The aspiring soul struggles after perfection; and how is this to be obtained but through the modification of habit? I have heard the venerable Principal Whyte, of Edinburgh, from the Moderator’s chair of the Church of which he is an ornament, preach to his brethren, with great persuasiveness and power, on the maxim, that it is never too late either to unlearn an evil habit or to learn a good one; and even the elderly men who were listening felt this to be one of the truest as well as most encouraging gospels they had ever listened to.
Habit, even if it be good, may be excessive: it may become hidebound and tyrannical. There is a Pharisaical adherence to opinions once formed and customs once adopted which is the greatest obstacle in the path of progress. Yet, on the whole, there is no more valuable possession than a few good habits.^ Such a possession means that not only is the mind pledged and
1 “In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, become flesh and instinct. To reform one’s maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life.” Amibl, “Journal,” I, 9- covenanted to what is good, but that even the muscles are suppled and the very bones bent to the same end. This is what a good home and a good education should impart. The child grown to youth should come out upon the world with a sweet and natural disposition, acquired from long practice, to do the right thing at the common junctures of life — to be courteous, punctual, truthful and obedient. This is what schoolboys of a superior class mean by “honour” and by “playing the game “; and such a bent in the right direction may for years be no bad substitute for principles and convictions. Those who have gone before have tried the alternatives and discovered which are the ways of wisdom, and the newcomer ought to be able so far to profit from their experience. No doubt he may, through inward perverseness, in spite of all that his elders can do, choose the path of folly; but his parents and teachers can at least communicate to him a bias towards the better part. Nothing could be more miserable than if at every moment of life we had to stop and deliberate, handling every weapon as if it had never been used before. In that case, life would be inexpressibly slow; we should always be merely screwing up the instrument and never playing the tune. But habit makes us experts in conduct; it saves our time and enables us to forge ahead.
What the good habits are which everyone should seek to acquire at an early stage, it would be difficult to say. Every adviser would give his own list; and even a very full list would easily be capable of extension. Still, there are some which the wise would be unanimous in recommending, and there may be advantages in specifying a few of these.
No habit is more essential to character than self-control. This is the power of getting oneself to do promptly and resolutely whatever one is aware one ought to do and to refuse to do what would offend conscience and honour. At first, this habit may be extremely difficult to acquire because of the volatility of one’s own spirits or a disposition to yield to the desires of others; but there is an enormous exhilaration in it. To be able to do what one knows one ought to do is moral strength; it breeds self-respect; and it is sure to command the respect of others.
Another habit of incalculable value is concentration of thought. This is the power of calling the mind in from other objects and fixing it for a long time on the point in hand. To all perhaps this is difficult at first, the mind, when one tries to confine it, leaping away to a hundred irrelevant subjects. But, if one only perseveres, it will at last obey; and then one is on the way to be a real thinker. The secrets and the joys of truth belong only to those who can think in this way.
There is no more desirable habit than that of really working when we are at work. I do not care what anyone’s work may be — whether of the brain or of the hand; whether well-paid or ill-paid — what I say is, do it for its own sake and for your own sake, as well as it can be done; do it so well that you can be proud of it. There is no happiness like that of daily work honestly and thoroughly done. Your employer may cheat you of your pay, but he cannot cheat you of this satisfaction. I never meet a young man — a young minister or a student, a tradesman or a mechanic — who is doing his work with all his heart but I feel as if I could embrace him.
This is the Gospel of Labour which, when preached by Carlyle a generation ago, put iron into the blood of the thoughtful members of the middle class and a stoical joy into their conflict with difficulties; and well would it be for the world if in our day there arose another apostle to bring home the same wholesome doctrine to a: wider audience and a lower stratum of society. We are hearing at present too much of wages and too little of work. They are not true prophets who preach to the multitude their right to wages, if they do not, in something like fair proportion, preach to them also the duty of work; for, while work for insufficient wages is a great curse, wages for insufficient work would be a greater. For the sake of the workers themselves there is at present no message more urgent than this; for it is only when men can take a pride in their labour and hold up their face to their own handiwork in view of the keenest inspection that they can be really independent and free.
One more good habit only let me mention — that of prayer. To work is to pray, many say at the present day; but I am not satisfied with this dictum. No man prizes genuine work more than I do; but we require prayer besides. And happy is he who, at a certain time or times of the day which experience has taught him to be the best for him, bends the knee and prays to his Maker. Happy, I say, is that man; for his heavenly Father, who seeth in secret, will reward him openly.
Evil habits may be contracted by merely failing to acquire good ones; for, like weeds, they grow spontaneously wherever the gi-ound is not cultivated and preoccupied with good seed. The man who does not work becomes a dissipated loafer. When anyone fails to acquire the habit of going to church on Sunday, he loses, as a rule, the spiritual instinct and has no taste for either Christian truth or Christian fellowship or Christian work; and on Sunday he becomes a prey to habits of slothfulness. Leisure-time is in many lives the Devil’s opportunity. This is because, when people have nothing in particular to do, and no way of spending the sacred day is obligatory, time is not only wasted, but modes of killing it are invented which are demoralising to the character and difficult, when once indulged in, to abandon. The tyranny of evil habit is proverbial. Habit is like a thread to begin with; but, as thread is twisted with thread, it grows to be a cable, which it is impossible to snap. At first it is like a twig which can be bent at pleasure; but by degrees it becomes like the stem of a tree, containing an evil twist, which it is hardly possible to undo. Nothing is more appalling than to observe how little even the strongest motives avail to overcome habit after it has reached a certain stage of maturity.
The rules for breaking off evil habits supplied by the moralists are such as the following: ‘’Launch yourself on the new course with as strong an initiative as possible “;” Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is rooted in your life “; ‘’ Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of habits you aspire to gain “; ‘’ Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day “. These rules are taken from James’ ‘’ Psychology “; and the author enforces them with the shrewdness of a man of the world and the earnestness of a teacher who, beneath the gaiety of his language, conceals a moral purpose.
I do not disparage such rules: on the contrary,
I should be happy to enforce them; for we must
work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling. But the rest of this Scriptural adage
is of equal value —” for it is God who worketh in
you both to will and to do for His good pleasure “.
The problem of Christianity might quite well be
stated in this form: Is there available for man,
when he is trying to uproot evil habit, a power
outside of himself, which, when his own resources
do not suffice may come to the rescue, not, ludeed, by suspending the action of his own powers, but by working through these and raising them to the potency required in every time of need? What answer to this question is given in the Scriptures it is unnecessary to say. But experience confirms Scripture — the experience of thousands who, having tried in vain to reform themselves, have found in the Gospel the power of God unto salvation — the experience of men in whom evil habit had grown to be so strong that it seemed as hopeless to overcome it as to reverse the course of Niagara, yet who by the grace of God were converted into humble and consistent saints. There is no sin, however inveterate, the power of which Christ is unable to break; publican and sinner, Pharisee and Sadducee experience in contact with Him deliverance from their besetting sins; for He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through Him.
The word “habit “originally means a garment; indeed, in French it is the word for dress; and in English we speak of ‘^ a. riding-habit” in this literal sense. Habits are the dress of the spirit, by which it is known for the very thing it is. And the Scripture compares the whole of the habits of an unregenerate man to an old and filthy garment, but the Christian character to clothing new and dignified. “Put off,” it says, “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” ^’ Put ye on,” it says elsewhere, in a still bolder figure of speech, ‘’ the Lord Jesus Christ” — that is, the perfect character of Christ, so that whoever looks upon anyone thus arrayed may immediately be compelled to think of Christ.
The phenomena connected with the association of ideas have been used to support a doctrine of determinism; the assumption being that one idea creates another, and that ideas form a continuum as little liable to interruption or creative change as are the facts of the physical world. But it must not be forgotten that an idea may have many associated ideas, one lying in one direction and another in another, and that in this there is scope for choice, by the mind itself, of the next step it will take. Besides, against the alleged assumption there is the consciousness of all that their habits might have been very different from what they are, and that character is a development for which everyone is responsible. From our point of view it certainly is not necessary to deny the tyranny of habit or to ignore the influence of the past on the making of the future.
Our deeds atill travel with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are.
But it is essential to keep open the access of the divine presence and power to human nature; because from that quarter there comes an immeasurable redemptive force. Habit may be so hardened that the individual may appear both to himself and others no more able to alter it than is the Ethopian to change his skin or the leopard its spots; but this is the very situation which gives to God’s grace its opportunity: ‘’ A new heart also will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the hard and stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh “. And it is the situation out of which springs the initiative of faith; because, the more desperate anyone’s sense is of his lost condition, the more absolutely will he cast himself upon the power which is able to lift him out of sin and misery.