HABIT--THE SERVANT,--THE MASTER
Habit, if wisely and skilfully formed, becomes truly a second
nature.--BACON.
Habit, with its iron sinews,
Clasps and leads us day by day.
LAMARTINE.
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to
gnaw and stifle it.--HAZLITT.
You can not, in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will
to be true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity.--F. W.
ROBERTSON.
It is a beautiful provision in the mental and moral arrangement of our
nature, that that which is performed as a duty may by frequent
repetition, become a habit; and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive
to others, may hang around our neck like a wreath of flowers.--PAXTON
HOOD.
"When shall I begin to train my child?" asked a young mother of a
learned physician.
"How old is the child?" inquired the doctor.
"Two years, sir."
"Then you have lost just two years," replied he, gravely.
"You must begin with his grandmother," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, when
asked a similar question.
"At the mouth of the Mississippi," says Beecher, "how impossible would
it be to stay its waters, and to separate from each other the drops
from the various streams that have poured in on either side,--of the
Red River, the Arkansas, the Ohio, and the Missouri,--or to sift, grain
by grain the particles of sand that have been washed from the
Alleghany, or the Rocky Mountains; yet how much more impossible would
it be when character is the river, and habits are the side-streams!"
"We sow an act, we reap a habit; we sow a habit, we reap a character."
While correct habits depend largely on self-discipline, and often on
self-denial, bad habits, like weeds, spring up, unaided and untrained,
to choke the plants of virtue and as with Canada thistles, allowed to
go to seed in a fair meadow, we may have "one day's seeding, ten years'
weeding."
We seldom see much change in people after they get to be twenty-five or
thirty years of age, except in going further in the way they have
started; but it is a great comfort to think that, when one is young, it
is almost as easy to acquire a good habit as a bad one, and that it is
possible to be hardened in goodness as well as in evil.
Take good care of the first twenty years of your life, and you may hope
that the last twenty will take good care of you.
A writer on the history of Staffordshire tells of an idiot who, living
near a town clock, and always amusing himself by counting the hour of
the day whenever the clock struck, continued to strike and count the
hour correctly without its aid, when at one time it happened to be
injured by an accident.
Dr. Johnson had acquired the habit of touching every post he passed in
the street; and, if he missed one, he was uneasy, irritable, and
nervous till he went back and touched the neglected post.
"Even thought is but a habit."
Heredity is a man's habit transmitted to his offspring.
A special study of hereditary drunkenness has been made by Professor
Pellman of Bonn University, Germany. He thus traced the careers of
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in all parts of the
present German Empire, until he was able to present tabulated
biographies of the hundreds descended from some original drunkard.
Notable among the persons described by Professor Pellman is Frau Ada
Jurke, who was born in 1740, and was a drunkard, a thief, and a tramp
for the last forty years of her life, which ended in 1800. Her
descendants numbered 834, of whom 709 were traced in local records from
youth to death. One hundred and six of the 709 were born out of
wedlock. There were 144 beggars, and 62 more who lived from charity.
Of the women, 181 led disreputable lives. There were in the family 76
convicts, 7 of whom were sentenced for murder. In a period of some
seventy-five years, this one family rolled up a bill of costs in
almshouses, prisons, and correctional institutions amounting to at
least 5,000,000 marks, or about $1,250,000.
Isaac Watts had a habit of rhyming. His father grew weary of it, and
set out to punish him, which made the boy cry out:--
"Pray, father, on me mercy take,
And I will no more verses make."
A minister had a bad habit of exaggeration, which seriously impaired
his usefulness. His brethren came to expostulate. With extreme
humiliation over this fault as they set it forth, he said, "Brethren, I
have long mourned over this fault, and I have shed _barrels of tears_
because of it." They gave him up as incorrigible.
Men carelessly or playfully get into habits of speech or act which
become so natural that they speak or act as they do not intend, to
their discomfiture. Professor Phelps told of some Andover students,
who, for sport, interchanged the initial consonants of adjacent words.
"But," said he, "retribution overtook them. On a certain morning, when
one of them was leading the devotions, he prayed the Lord to 'have
mercy on us, feak and weeble sinners.'" The habit had come to possess
him.
Many speakers have undesirable habits of utterance or gesture. Some
are continually applying the hand to some part of the face, the chin,
the whiskers; some give the nose a peck with thumb and forefinger;
others have the habit characterized as,--
"Washing the hands with invisible soap
In a bowl of invisible water."
"We are continually denying that we have habits which we have been
practising all our lives," says Beecher. "Here is a man who has lived
forty or fifty years; and a chance shot sentence or word lances him,
and reveals to him a trait which he has always possessed, but which,
until now, he had not the remotest idea that he possessed. For forty
or fifty years he has been fooling himself about a matter as plain as
the nose on his face."
Had the angels been consulted, whether to create man, with this
principle introduced, that, _if a man did a thing once, if would be
easier the second time, and at length would be done without effort_,
they would have said, "Create!"
Remember that habit is an arrangement, a principle of human nature,
which we must use to increase the efficiency and ease of our work in
life.
"Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence
a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the course of
nature in the child, or in the adult, as the most atrocious crimes are
to any of us."
Out of hundreds of replies from successful men as to the probable cause
of failure, "bad habits" was in almost every one.
How easy it is to be nobody; it is the simplest thing in the world to
drift down the stream, into bad company, into the saloon; just a little
beer, just a little gambling, just a little bad company, just a little
killing of time, and the work is done.
New Orleans is from five to fifteen feet below high water in the
Mississippi River. The only protection to the city from the river is
the levee. In May, 1883, a small break was observed in the levee, and
the water was running through. A few bags of sand or loads of dirt
would have stopped the water at first; but it was neglected for a few
hours, and the current became so strong that all efforts to stop it
were fruitless. A reward of five hundred thousand dollars was offered
to any man who would stop it; but it was too late--it could not be done.
Beware of "small sins" and "white lies."
A man of experience says: "There are four good habits,--punctuality,
accuracy, steadiness, and dispatch. Without the first, time is wasted;
without the second, mistakes the most hurtful to our own credit and
interest, and those of others, may be committed; without the third,
nothing can be well done; and without the fourth, opportunities of
great advantage are lost, which it is impossible to recall."
Abraham Lincoln gained his clear precision of statement of propositions
by practise, and Wendell Phillips his wonderful English diction by
always thinking and conversing in excellent style.
"Family customs exercise a vast influence over the world. Children go
forth from the parent-nest, spreading the habits they have imbibed over
every phase of society. These can easily be traced to their sources."
"To be sure, this is only a trifle in itself; but, then, the manner in
which I do every trifling thing is of very great consequence, because
it is just in these little things that I am forming my business habits.
I must see to it that I do not fail here, even if this is only a small
task."
"A physical habit is like a tree grown crooked. You can not go to the
orchard, and take hold of a tree grown thus, and straighten it, and
say, 'Now keep straight!' and have it obey you. What can you do? You
can drive down a stake, and bind the tree to it, bending it back a
little, and scarifying the bark on one side. And if, after that, you
bend it back a little more every month, keeping it taut through the
season, and from season to season, at length you will succeed in making
it permanently straight. You can straighten it, but you can not do it
immediately; you must take one or two years for it."
Sir George Staunton visited a man in India who had committed murder;
and in order not only to save his life, but what was of much greater
consequence to him, his caste, he had submitted to a terrible
penalty,--to sleep for seven years on a bed, the entire top of which
was studded with iron points, as sharp as they could be without
penetrating the flesh. Sir George saw him during the fifth year of his
sentence. His skin then was like the hide of a rhinoceros; and he
could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and he said that at the
end of the seven years he thought he should use the same bed from
choice. What a vivid parable of a sinful life! Sin, at first a bed of
thorns, after a time becomes comfortable through the deadening of moral
sensibility.
When the suspension bridge over Niagara River was to be erected, the
question was, how to get the cable over. With a favoring wind a kite
was elevated, which alighted on the opposite shores. To its
insignificant string a cord was attached, which was drawn over, then a
rope, then a larger one, then a cable; finally the great bridge was
completed, connecting the United States with Canada.
First across the gulf we cast
Kite-borne threads till lines are passed,
And habit builds the bridge at last.
"Launch your bark on the Niagara River," said John B. Gough; "it is
bright, smooth, and beautiful, Down the stream you glide on your
pleasure excursion. Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, 'Young
men, ahoy!' 'What is it?'
"'The rapids are below you.' 'Ha! ha! we have heard of the rapids, but
we are not such fools as to get there. If we go too fast, then we
shall up with the helm, and steer to the shore. Then on, boys, don't
be alarmed--there is no danger.'
"'Young men, ahoy there!' 'What is it?' 'The rapids are below you!'
'Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff. What care we for the future? No man
ever saw it. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. We will
enjoy life while we may, will catch pleasure as it flies. There's time
enough to steer out of danger.'
"'Young men, ahoy!' 'What is it?' 'Beware! Beware! The rapids are
below you!'
"Now you see the water foaming all around. See how fast you pass that
point! Up with the helm! Now turn! Pull hard! Quick, quick! Pull
for your lives! Pull till the blood starts from the nostrils, and the
veins stand like whip-cords upon the brow! Set the mast in the socket!
hoist the sail--ah! ah! it is too late! Shrieking, cursing, howling,
blaspheming, over you go.
"Thousands go over the rapids every year, through the power of habit,
crying all the while, 'When I find out that it is injuring me, I will
give it up!'"
A community is often surprised and shocked at some crime. The man was
seen on the street yesterday, or in his store, but he showed no
indication that he would commit such crime to-day. Yet the crime
committed to-day is but a regular and natural sequence of what the man
did yesterday and the day before. It was but a result of the fearful
momentum of all his past habits.
A painter once wanted a picture of innocence, and drew from life the
likeness of a child at prayer. The little suppliant was kneeling by
his mother. The palms of his hands were reverently pressed together,
and his mild blue eyes were upturned with the expression of devotion
and peace. The portrait was much prized by the painter, who hung it up
on his wall, and called it "Innocence." Years passed away, and the
artist became an old man. Still the picture hung there. He had often
thought of painting a counterpart,--the picture of guilt,--but had not
found the opportunity. At last he effected his purpose by paying a
visit to a neighboring jail. On the damp floor of his cell lay a
wretched culprit heavily ironed. Wasted was his body, and hollow his
eyes; vice was visible in his face. The painter succeeded admirably;
and the portraits were hung side by side for "Innocence" and "Guilt."
The two originals of the pictures were discovered to be one and the
same person,--first, in the innocence of childhood! second, in the
degradation of guilt and sin and evil habits.
Will-power can be so educated that it will focus the thought upon the
bright side of things, upon objects which lift and elevate. Habits of
contentment and goodness may be formed the same as any others.
Walking upon the quarter-deck of a vessel, though at first intolerably
confining, becomes by custom so agreeable to a sailor that on shore he
often hems himself within the same bounds. Lord Kames tells of a man
who, having relinquished the sea for a country life, reared an
artificial mount, with a level summit, resembling a quarter-deck not
only in shape, but in size, where he generally walked. When Franklin
was superintending the erection of some forts on the frontier, as a
defense against the Indians, he slept at night in a blanket on a hard
floor; and, on his first return to civilized life, he could hardly
sleep in a bed. Captain Ross and his crew, having been accustomed,
during their polar wanderings, to lie on the frozen snow or a bare
rock, afterwards found the accommodations of a whaler too luxurious for
them, and the captain exchanged his hammock for a chair.
Two sailors, who had been drinking, took a boat off to their ship.
They rowed but made no progress; and presently each began to accuse the
other of not working hard enough. Lustily they plied the oars, but
after another hour's work still found themselves no farther advanced.
By this time they had become tolerably sober; and one of them, looking
over the side, said to the other, "Why, Tom, we haven't pulled the
anchor up yet." And thus it is with those who are anchored to
something of which they are not conscious, perhaps, but which impedes
their efforts, even though they do their very best.
"A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever
depends on the chances or the passions of an hour!" exclaims Ruskin.
"A youth thoughtless, when his every act is a foundation-stone of
future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be
thoughtless in any after years, rather than now,--though, indeed, there
is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless,--his deathbed.
No thinking should ever be left to be done there."
Sir James Paget tells us that a practised musician can play on the
piano at the rate of twenty-four notes a second. For each note a nerve
current must be transmitted from the brain to the fingers, and from the
fingers to the brain. Each note requires three movements of a finger,
the bending down and raising up, and at least one lateral, making no
less than seventy-two motions in a second, each requiring a distinct
effort of the will, and directed unerringly with a certain speed, and a
certain force, to a certain place.
Some can do this easily, and be at the same time busily employed in
intelligent conversation. Thus, by obeying the law of habit until
repetition has formed a second nature, we are able to pass the
technique of life almost wholly over to the nerve centers, leaving our
minds free to act or enjoy.
All through our lives the brain is constantly educating different parts
of the body to form habits which will work automatically from reflex
action, and thus is delegated to the nervous system a large part of
life's duties. This is nature's wonderful economy to release the brain
from the drudgery of individual acts, and leave it free to command all
its forces for higher service.
Man's life-work is a masterpiece or a botch, according as each little
habit has been perfectly or carelessly formed.
It is said that if you invite one of the devil's children to your home
the whole family will follow. So one bad habit seems to have a
relationship with all the others. For instance, the one habit of
negligence, slovenliness, makes it easier to form others equally bad,
until the entire character is honeycombed by the invasion of a family
of bad habits.
A man is often shocked when he suddenly discovers that he is considered
a liar. He never dreamed of forming such a habit; but the little
misrepresentations to gain some temporary end, had, before he was aware
of it, made a beaten track in the nerve and brain tissue, until lying
has become almost a physical necessity. He thinks he can easily
overcome this habit, but he will not. He is bound to it with cords of
steel; and only by painful, watchful, and careful repetition of the
exact truth, with a special effort of the will-power at each act, can
he form a counter trunk-line in the nerve and brain tissue. Society is
often shocked by the criminal act of a man who has always been
considered upright and true. But, if they could examine the habit-map
in his nervous mechanism and brain, they would find the beginnings of a
path leading directly to his deed, in the tiny repetitions of what he
regarded as trivial acts. All expert and technical education is built
upon the theory that these trunk-lines of habit become more and more
sensitive to their accustomed stimuli, and respond more and more
readily.
We are apt to overlook the physical basis of habit. Every repetition
of an act makes us more likely to perform that act, and discovers in
our wonderful mechanism a tendency to perpetual repetition, whose
facility increases in exact proportion to the repetition. Finally the
original act becomes voluntary from a natural reaction.
It is cruel to teach the vicious that they can, by mere force of
will-power, turn "about face," and go in the other direction, without
explaining to them the scientific process of character-building,
through habit-formation. What we do to-day is practically what we did
yesterday; and, in spite of resolutions, unless carried out in this
scientific way, we shall repeat to-morrow what we have done to-day.
How unfortunate that the science of habit-forming is not known by
mothers, and taught in our schools, colleges, and universities! It is
a science compared with which other departments of education sink into
insignificance. The converted man is not always told that the great
battle is yet before him; that he must persistently, painfully,
prayerfully, and with all the will-power he possesses, break up the old
habits, and lay counter lines which will lead to the temple of virtue.
He is not told that, in spite of all his efforts, in some unguarded
moment, some old switch may be left open, some old desire may flash
along the line, and that, possibly before he is aware of it, he may
find himself yielding to the old temptation which he had supposed to be
conquered forever.
An old soldier was walking home with a beefsteak in one hand and a
basket of eggs in the other, when some one yelled, "Halt! Attention!"
Instantly the veteran came to a stand; and, as his arms took the
position of "attention," eggs and meat went tumbling into the street,
the accustomed nerves responding involuntarily to the old stimulus.
Paul evidently understood the force of habit. "I find, then," he
declares, "the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. For
I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see a different
law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me
into captivity, under the law of sin, which is in my members. O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death!" He referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face
to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its
stench and dissolution.
"I would give a world, if I had it," said an unfortunate wretch, "to be
a true man; yet in twenty-four hours I may be overcome and disgraced
with a shilling's worth of sin."
"How shall I a habit break?"
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.
Thread by thread the strands we twist,
Till they bind us, neck and wrist;
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine, ere free we stand;
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.