the act through practice until a satisfactory degree of skill is obtained.
After the desired end is reached, attention to the process will cease, but
thereafter whenever the right stimulus is presented the act will be
repeated, and this will be done with much less effort than was first
employed; further repetitions of the act require less and less conscious
effort until at length it will be performed almost with the same sureness
and ease with which reflex or automatic movements take place. Any activity
whatsoever when reduced to this automatic stage is termed habit.
The importance of habit in the development of the child can scarcely be
over-estimated; in truth, it is the one great process which dominates
nine-tenths of all the activity of the individual throughout his entire
life. Habits ought to be our most helpful and reliable servants, but they
are too often enemies that bind us hand and foot and prevent the
realization of our highest possibilities.
Much of the training and education of the child consists, therefore, in
acquiring a series of useful habits and in inhibiting acts that might
result in habits that are undesirable. A child left to himself or
improperly reared will acquire all sorts of undesirable habits which may
have the effect of hampering his every movement and which may cause
eventually his disgrace and failure in life. Even the adult who fails to
practice the details of the various activities connected with his vocation
until they result in effective habits of work will usually fail, while the
man who has mastered the details of his occupation through reducing them to
a series of effective habits will surely succeed. Note the ease and
perfection with which the skilled workman performs his labor and compare
it with the slow, slovenly work of the unskilled laborer.
One important development of the future will be the employment of an expert
in each occupation whose business it will be to teach the workmen the most
efficient and economical way of doing his particular work. Even now in many
factories high-priced experts are secured whose duty it is to teach the
workmen how to eliminate all unnecessary movements in their work and how to
combine the right movements necessary to accomplish each task in the best
way and in the quickest time. In many instances, the output of the factory
has been increased from twenty-five to forty per cent, through this
sensible procedure.
Theoretically, good habits should be as easy to acquire as bad ones, but
practically this is not the case. Only a few bad habits are the result of
conscious choice and effort; for example, the acquiring of a liking for
tobacco and liquor, the taste of which for most children is disagreeable if
not nauseating at first, but this taste, through practice, often becomes an
uncontrollable craving. Most bad habits, however, come about unconsciously
and are the result of "just letting things happen." This, undoubtedly, is
what the proverb means which states, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks
are to fly upward."
Most good habits, on the other hand, are the result of conscious effort,
especially on the part of parents and teachers. A reason for this is that
the strongest instincts in children are those relating to self-preservation
and the gratification of personal desires, hence selfishness, greediness,
anger, and the fighting instinct are natural to the child, while
generosity, good manners, respect for the rights of others, and sympathy
require, in order to be properly developed, persistent effort and
education. Parents, therefore, must persevere in training up the child in
the way he should go if they would cultivate in him habits that bless his
whole life.
Imitation also plays a remarkable part in the formation of habits. The
child learns to walk, talk, use his hands in certain ways, and to eat,
sleep, and dress after the manner of his elders. He uses good language or
bad according to the examples heard; in fact, nearly everything a child
does is the result of copying after others. Whether his habits be good or
bad, efficient or slovenly, therefore, depends largely on the nature of the
examples he has to follow.
LESSON VIII
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How are habits formed?
2. Give examples to show that habit dominates most of the activities of
life.
3. Why are good habits more difficult to form than bad ones?
4. Illustrate the power of imitation in the formation of habits.
5. What is the relation of habit to training and education?
6. What is the relation of habit to the skilled workman?
7. In what way can the expert increase efficiency in every vocation and
profession?
8. How might much time be saved in the home and on the farm by the
acquirement of effective habits in work?
_Reference_: For further study of habit see "Phillip's Elementary
Psychology."
HABIT CONTINUED
_Right Habits Must Be Acquired Early; Wrong Habits Are Broken Only Through
Tremendous Effort_
Whatsoever the parent desires in his child in the nature of attainment or
skill, of character or ideal, if not foreign to the nature of the child,
may be realized through attention to habit. But the training in right
habits should be accomplished during the golden age of childhood when body
and soul are plastic and impressions are easily made. Too early the
character hardens like cement and thereafter becomes well nigh impossible
to change. Think how difficult it is for the adult, but how easy for the
child, to acquire skill in music, or facility in speaking a foreign
language. With respect to moral virtue and spiritual sentiment, whatsoever
good fruit you look for in the man usually appears as seed and flower in
the child.
Among the habits that should be impressed early, habits that are absolutely
essential to success in life, are the following:
1. Promptness and regularity.
2. Obedience to right and justice.
3. Truthfulness and honesty.
4. Thoroughness.
5. Industry or the habit of work.
6. Persistence.
7. Temperance.
8. Courtesy and respect for the rights of others.
Crowning these and transcending them in importance are the supreme
sentiments and ideals of life, which cannot properly be regarded as habits;
they are sympathy, love, faith, reverence for religious convictions, and
the ideal of freedom or liberty.
Society itself could not endure but for the stability which habits afford.
It is easy to denounce custom and tradition as obstacles to progress and
reform, but it should be remembered that they are the social habits which
society has acquired through registering the experience of the past, and
that while some of them, such as intemperance and sexual vice, are
destructive of society, others, like co-operation, and the ideal of
freedom, are absolutely essential to human progress.
An example by Oppenheim, in his "Mental Growth and Control," well
illustrates the power of habit. A wealthy woman in New York City became
interested in the crowded tenements of the east side; she believed that
constant sickness, unclean habits, and the vicious characters of the people
were due largely to overcrowding. She secured, therefore, some well
furnished cottages in the suburbs and offered them rent free until such
time as the occupants should become well established. Her surprise was
great when they refused to move into these comparatively luxurious
quarters; they seemed to prefer the dirt and disease, the sickness and vice
to which they were accustomed. "She did not know the force of habit; she
was totally ignorant of the hard and fast condition into which people grow.
She had never stopped to consider how necessary it is for the world at
large to have such repression. Without this control there could be no
peace, no safety, no steady growth in civilized society. The poor would
attack the rich, the lawless and violent would assail the peaceful, the
indolent would refuse to labor, the regularity and studied discipline of
well-ordered life would absolutely cease. In their place anarchy would
reign and each day would make confusion worse confounded. Imagine, if you
can, what animals would be if they lacked restraint of habit. Man's power
over them would cease instantly and their strength would be a terrible
engine of destruction. Men would be as much worse as human intelligence
exceeds brute intelligence. One is quite safe in declaring that habit is
the great flywheel that regulates society."
Desirable habits, therefore, together with all necessary reforms, must
come about slowly; they should be the result of conscious training and
education in all the factors that make for a higher civilization.
LESSON IX
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What are some habits essential to success?
2. When should training to fix these habits begin? Why?
3. Why do many parents fail to fix right habits in their children?
4. How may wrong habits be overcome and right habits established?
5. What does Solomon say in regard to training the child?
6. Give reasons why community habits are so hard to change? What is the
good side of this strength of habit?
7. What is the quickest and surest way to bring about desirable social
reforms?
MAXIMS ON HABIT
_Professor James Gives Four Maxims to Follow in Breaking from an Old Habit
or in Acquiring a New One_
"1. _Take care 'o launch yourself with as strong and decided initiative as
possible_. Reinforce the right motive with every favorable circumstance;
put yourself in a condition that will make the right act easy and the wrong
one difficult. Take a public pledge if the case allows; in short, envelop
your resolution with every aid possible.
"2. _Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely
rooted_. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of yarn that is
being wound; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind
again. It is necessary above all things never to lose a battle; every gain
on the wrong side undoes the effects of many conquests on the right.
"3. _Seize every opportunity to act in the direction of the desired habit,
and permit no emotional prompting in its behalf to escape you_. 'Hell is
paved with good intentions,' hence to have good desires, thoughts,
intentions without actually working them out weakens and destroys the moral
fibre. 'Character is a completely fashioned will,' says J.S. Mill, and a
will in this sense is an aggregate of tendencies which act in a firm,
prompt, and definite way in every emergency of life. When a resolve or a
fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing fruit in
action, it is worse than a chance lost, it is a positive hindrance to the
carrying out of future resolutions. Nothing is more contemptible than a
sentimental dreamer who is carried away with lofty thoughts and feeling but
who never does a manly, concrete deed. Positive harm is done through
cultivating the emotions and sentiments if no outlet is found for some
appropriate action.
"4. _Keep the faculty of effort alive by a little gratuitous exercise every
day_. That is, be heroic, do every day something for no other reason than
that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need comes,
it may find you nerved and trimmed to stand the test. The man who practices
self-denial in unnecessary things will stand like a tower when everything
rocks around him and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff
in a blast.
"The hell which theology once taught is no worse than the hell we make for
ourselves by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could
the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of
habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic
state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.
Every small stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.
The drunken Rip Van Winkle excuses each drink he takes by saying, 'I won't
count this time.' He may not count it, and a kind heaven may not count it,
but down among his nerve cells and in the muscle fibres, the molecules are
counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the
next temptation comes. Nothing we do in a strict, scientific sense is ever
wiped out; each thought and every deed is registered in the soul and helps
to compose that book out of which we will be judged on that great final day
when we are called upon to render an account of our stewardship."
Notwithstanding the difficulty, however, habits may be strengthened, or
abolished. The older they are the more difficult they will be to modify;
the chief factor involved is the amount of labor required to make the
change, the possibility of making it need never be questioned. Breaking the
habit of excessive use of drugs, tobacco, tea and coffee, or alcohol, will
occasion much discomfort, hardship, and even functional disturbance, but
these ills are only temporary, and the organism soon returns to its
original normal condition.
To break a well-established habit requires common sense, decision and
strength of purpose. "If you want to abolish a habit, you must grapple with
the matter as earnestly as you would with a physical enemy. You must go
into the encounter with all tenacity of determination, with all fierceness
of resolve, with a passion for success that may be called vindictive. No
human enemy can be as insidious, as persevering, as unrelenting as an
unfavorable habit. It never sleeps, it needs no rest, it has no tendency
toward vacillation and lack of purpose. It is like the parasite that grows
with the growth of the supporting body and like a parasite, it can best be
killed by violent separation and crushing.
"Every time we make an unsuccessful attempt, the final crushing is
indefinitely postponed, every time we put off the attempt, the desired
result fades farther and farther away. The habit persists and from time to
time the path becomes deeper and broader. In addition, during such a period
of weakness and indecision, you may be fostering another habit, that of
expecting defeat. From this lack of confidence and little faith in yourself
and destiny, you must by all means escape at any cost. There is nothing
more pathetic than the man who does not believe in himself. No one else
will believe in him. But he who has the enthusiasm of belief in himself
and never loses sight of his high purpose is the one who can perform
wonders."
LESSON X
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Discuss fully each of the maxims given by Professor James, illustrating
by experiences you have known.
2. What expression from Professor James is most impressive to you?
3. What hope is there for those enslaved by a bad habit? How can we best
help them?
4. What was Christ's way of dealing with such people?
5. What are the common habits that most trouble us? How can they be best
prevented or overcome?
HABITS OF INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD
_The First Physical Habits Acquired by the Child Are of Vast Importance and
Require Heroic Treatment on the Part of the Mother_
From the beginning both physical and mental habits will be acquired by the
child. At first, attention must be given chiefly to the regularity of
caring for the physical needs of the infant such as giving food at stated
intervals, and having a regular time for sleeping, bathing, and for being
dressed. It is astonishing how little trouble is caused by the infant when
it is trained in correct physical habits from the beginning, compared with
the babe that is treated in a spasmodic fashion--everything overdone
sometimes and nothing at all done at other times. In the former case the
little one is quiet and peaceful and sleeps, as it should, most of the
time, especially at night; in the latter case the child is fretful and
cross and requires the father to trudge it about at night much to his
discomfort and loss of temper.
Nature has given the infant a voice which is not only lusty but which is
apt to be used from the first with unnecessary liberality. It is the little
one's only means of responding to stimuli that cause discomfort; at first
the infant's cry is reflex and unconscious; but if every time it cries
something happens, a sort of dim consciousness is soon awakened and the
habit of crying for nothing or on the slightest provocation is soon
established, and thereafter the child will rule the household like a Czar.
If, on the other hand, the mother understands that the crying reflex is
largely unnecessary at the present time, since she has learned to
administer to the infant's every requirement with clock-like regularity,
she will, when assured that nothing ails the child, let it cry if it wants
to without giving it the least attention. One can scarcely believe how soon
the crying reflex will disappear under such treatment. If, on the other
hand, the child is taken up whenever it cries and walked and rocked and
fondled, it quickly learns that individuals were made solely to wait on it,
and the great instinct of selfishness is aroused which is likely to carry
in its wake a world of trouble and disappointment. Who has not heard a
crying child in an adjoining room stop suddenly to listen for the sake of
discovering whether or not the noises he heard are the regular movements of
a person coming to him or merely the irregular noises of the wind or of
moving furniture which do not concern him? Not only is the child plastic,
but too often a portion of the environment is also plastic and yielding and
usually to the lasting detriment of the child. The young mother who would
train her child to right habits must be heroic.
When the little one is old enough to sit up in his high chair at the table,
his conduct is not apt to be meek and good-mannered. He will snatch at
things and tip them over, plunge his fists into the gravy, and fill his
mouth with food, stuffing it in with both hands until he chokes. His mother
is usually ashamed and grieved at his barbarous conduct; but she need not
be, she should remember that good table manners are artificial, not
natural, and that they are by no means a racial acquirement. She must
resort, therefore, to necessary means to correct the child, even at times
to physical punishment, though she herself must leave the room to shed a
quiet tear over such seeming cruelty. Place the spoon in his hand and help
the child to make the necessary movements and punish him slightly if need
be whenever he departs too far from propriety, and it will be astonishing
how quickly the conventional habit of table manners will be acquired. The
kindest mother is the one who is brave enough to inflict some punishment
when this is the surest way to develop needed habits that are unnatural to
the child.
Soon the child learns to crawl; he does this because of the primal pleasure
he has in bodily movements and because he has reached satisfaction in
handling objects within his grasp; and since distant objects will not come
to him, he must go to them, and this he does as soon as he is able. If
objects would come to him whenever he desired, it is probable that he would
not learn to crawl for a long time. Sometimes exceedingly awkward modes of
crawling are acquired, which if noted and corrected when first attempted,
would save much labor and pains afterward.
So long as crawling answers all demands and gives full satisfaction, it
will be continued; but, usually because the child sees others walk, and
possibly also because he himself has the instinctive desire to walk,
crawling is no longer satisfactory. So he attempts to imitate the walking
of his elders and through the aid and encouragement received from them, he
accomplishes this marvelous feat--the greatest physical habit he will ever
require.
LESSON XI
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What are the first physical habits that the child should acquire?
2. What results from spasmodic training in these habits?
3. How should the crying reflex be treated?
4. How is selfishness early aroused? How can it be avoided?
5. Why should the young mother be heroic?
6. How may table manners, and other conventional habits be taught?
7. Why do the parents fail to implant right habits in their children?
The following will be found helpful for further studies on this subject:
"The Care of the Baby," by Holt; "The Care of the Child in Health," by
Oppenheim.
THE MEANING OF CONSCIOUSNESS
_Consciousness Is Expressed in Knowing, Feeling, and Willing, Each Phase of
Which Should Be Developed Fully and in Perfect Harmony_
As already remarked, the chief characteristic of the young child is
ceaseless activity. From the time he is able to walk, or even crawl, the
great instinct of curiosity is alive, and this at first is likely to lead
him into all sorts of places where he should not go and cause him to
investigate and even destroy some of the valued possessions of the
household. This is a critical period in the development of the child and
must be handled with rare judgment. Some knowledge of child psychology is
essential here to guide the parent.
About this time three types of mental activity will be noted in the child.
(1) _Feeling_ is one phase or type which expresses itself sometimes in
pleasure or pain and at other times in action or anger. The feeling phase
of consciousness gives color and tone to every act of life; it is the basis
of interest; without it, neither happiness nor sorrow could exist, nor
could there be faith or worship. When fully developed, it culminates in the
emotions and sentiments, the highest of which are friendship and sympathy,
love and duty, patriotism and reverence. The opposite of some of these is
anger, hate and jealousy. Feeling makes heaven or hell a possibility and
sometimes an actuality.
(2) The _knowing_ phase of mental activity is aware of the outside world as
well as of itself; it forms images of things and remembers; in its higher
aspects it judges and reasons. This phase of consciousness makes possible
invention and scientific achievement. By and through it, man overcomes his
environment and makes himself the master of the earth.
(3) The _volitional_ or _will_ phase of mental activity is first manifested
in the impulsive, spasmodic movements heretofore described. Later these
random movements are brought under control, then comes the ability to
select a desired stimulus from among several that are possible, and at
length the power to choose between two or more possible modes of action.
This highest form is termed voluntary action or will power. It is extremely
important to note that the will is not a separate power or faculty which
can be cultivated apart from other phases of consciousness. Many foolish
things have been written about the power of the will and its capacity
for infinite development; as a matter of fact, all three phases of
consciousness must be developed together. Every act of the mind of
necessity embraces all three phases, since it is impossible to know without
feeling or to experience feeling or knowing without activity. The will,
therefore, can never be quite so strong as the total consciousness; and
at every stage, it needs the feeling phase to give it motive and the
knowing phase to make it rational. Knowing, feeling, and willing,
therefore, are merely convenient terms that express the varying, changing
modes of consciousness, which at one time may be predominately feeling, at
another knowing, and again willing. The great fact to remember is that
consciousness develops as a unit, and the most highly trained mind is the
one in which each phase is developed not only to its maximum but at the
same time in perfect harmony with the other two as well as with the total
consciousness.
It is impossible to say which of the three phases develops first in the
infant, nor is it important to know; the significant fact is that all three
evolve together, and whenever activity is strong and well sustained, it is
evident that feeling and knowing also are well developed.