It appears to be an involuntary principle of our nature that we should acquire a tendency to repeat whatever we do often. This disposition or tendency we call habit. It is the effect of custom influencing all we do ; according to the old adage, " Use is second nature." And this tendency to repeat an action until it becomes habitual increases with each repetition, like the revolution of a wheel moving down an incline.
1. Habit may be conceived to arise in this way. When, in the process of time — of the day, or the week, or the month, or the year — the point comes round at which we have been thinking of anything, or have done anything, by the law of the association of ideas we think of it again, or do it again. For instance, when day dawns we awake. We get out of bed because we have done so at that time before. At a later hour we take breakfast, and go away to business, for the same reason ; and so on through the day. When Sunday morning comes our thoughts turn to sacred things, and we make ready to go to the House of God, because we have always been accustomed to do that. As the New Year draws nigh our mind turns to friendliness, and we think of all the means by which we can let our friends know that we are thinking of them.
1 H. Macmillan, The Gate Beautiful, 108.
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Of course it may be by some other juncture of circumstances, and not by the revolution of time, that we are reminded of what has been done in the past ; but the cycles of time, the narrower and the wider, have a very great deal to do with the formation of habit. If we have done a thing only once before, when the point of time comes round again at which we did it there will be a tendency to recall it and to do it again ; but this tendency will of course be far stronger if we have done it often before. Frequency enters greatly into habit. The reason why, when Sunday morning comes, we think of church, is not because we have been there once, but because we have been there every Sunday of our lives. The more frequently anything has been done, the stronger is habit, and frequency acts on habit through something else. Frequency gives ease and swiftness to the doing of anything. We do easily and swiftly anything that we have done often. Even things which seemed impossible can not only be done, but be done with facility, if they have been done often.
2. Habits are the elements of character. The deeds we do ripen into habits, and these form the warp and woof of character. The single act does not make character. There is sometimes a protest in the soul against the act just done, and a purpose never to repeat it. The first smoke may make the youth sick, but it does not characterize him as a smoker. The first drink may make the head dizzy, but it does not entitle the drinker to be called a drunkard. It is the repetition of acts that forms habits ; and the habits of a man give him his character. It is a curious thing that the word " habit " means a garment that you can throw off when you please, and also a way of living that may be so bound up with you that you cannot change it. It seems as if it were meant in this twofold sense to convey the great truth that the sin which at first you can lay aside with ease like a loose coat may by frequent indulgence take such a firm hold of you as to become part of your very life — as much part of yourself as the spots on the leopard's skin — and you may find it impossible to wrench yourself free from it. The wise man says in the Book of Proverbs, " Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him."
^f When someone on one occasion repeated to Wellington the
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maxim that "Habit is second nature," his reply was "Second nature ! It is ten times nature " — a sentiment very likely to be in the mind of a disciplinarian who had spent all his life getting men to obey the word of command, and to face death in circumstances in which natural instinct would lead them to flee away.1
•ff The power of exercising the will promptly, in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and thereby resisting the impulses of the lower nature, is of essential importance in moral discipline, and absolutely necessary for the development of character in its best forms. To acquire the habit of well-doing, to resist evil pro- pensities, to fight against sensual desires, to overcome inborn selfishness, may require a long and persevering discipline; but when once the practice of duty is learnt, it becomes consolidated in habit, and thenceforward is comparatively easy.
The valiant good man is he who, by the resolute exercise of his freewill, has so disciplined himself as to have acquired the habit of virtue ; as the bad man is he who, by allowing his free- will to remain inactive, and giving the bridle to his desires and passions, has acquired the habit of vice, by which he becomes, at last, bound as by chains of iron.2