 There has long been a tendency among moralists to decry habit, perhaps because their attention has been directed more frequently toward bad habits than good ones, or they may have been more interested in destroying bad habits than in creating good ones. The popular idea of the preponderance of evil habits has also come, in part at least, from the undue magnitude which evil has been allowed to assume in the human mind, and from the consequent belief that habit turns more largely toward evil than toward good. This may be a relic of the " religious " idea formerly so carefully cultivated by a considerable class of teachers of morality, and therefore widely believed, that man is totally depraved and as "prone to do evil as the sparks to fly upward." Centuries ago Ovid wrote:-- " Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." This statement has the disadvantage of being negative in character, thereby suggesting those discordant thoughts which arise from doubts about successfully overcoming an increasing evil; but there is another and far more desirable view of this subject which has the great advantage of being correct as well as encouraging. Habit is the result of the natural tendency of the mind to persist in doing those things which it has many times been set to do. A new action is often accomplished slowly and with difficulty, but repetition results in greater facility, and it may be continued until at last it is performed without conscious effort or attention and without the exercise of any volition beyond the choice to begin. This is the origin of a majority, some say of all those actions which are looked upon as reflex or automatic and which seem to occur independently of any mental action whatever; and in this way any action repeatedly performed may finally become reflex or automatic. This being the case, the door is open whereby a man can control not only his conscious thinking, but by the control and creation of habit may also create and control that thinking of which he is not conscious. The action of the piano player is an excellent illustration of the way habit works for us. So is the incident of that musician who was stricken with epilepsy in the midst of his orchestral performance, but who continued to play accurately to the end. He had established the habit by his own long-continued efforts. It takes the musician a long time to set up this habit, and he considers it well worth the effort; but the end sought in the control of discordant thinking is vastly more valuable than the musical accomplishment, however desirable that may be. Habit works with absolute impartiality; for good with the same facility and effectiveness that it does for evil; for right thinking just as powerfully as for wrong thinking; and the increasing momentum and power of a good action repeated is just as great as that of a bad one. One may easily control the initial idea either to emphasize and repeat it or to avoid it. If a person persistently does that, the tendency, whatever it may be, whether inherited or otherwise acquired, and however firmly entrenched, can be modified or destroyed. By constant repetition the habit of avoiding discordant thinking may be established just as firmly as any other, and with no more effort, for habit, good or bad, is only action oft repeated. If one refuses to allow discordant thoughts to continue, stopping them every time he is conscious of them, the habit will finally be so confirmed that whenever the objectionable thought is presented, the mind will of itself automatically refuse to entertain it; and this, too, without any conscious attention from the person, just as the musician presses the keys of his instrument without the least recognition of the thinking which produces the motion. By habit the mind will persist in not doing whatever it has been trained not to do with the same readiness and ease which it manifests in doing the things it has been trained to do. Thus, this habit may be so cultivated that when any suggestions of discordant thinking arise they will "stop themselves." To establish any habit the action of the mind only needs to be given the right direction by continuous repetition, but it is all-important that the obtruding thought should be banished every time and on the instant that it appears. Man should understand this fact, be encouraged by it, and take advantage of it. An immense proportion of our good actions are habitual, and that is as it should be. Professor James says: " The fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices." We should establish the habit of good, useful, and virtuous actions as soon as possible by setting up correct habits of thinking. When Ovid's couplet is reversed it is as true as when it is read in the way he wrote it; and in its modified form it has the advantages of being just as accurate as in its original form and also of giving vastly more encouragement to those who are striving to establish better mental conditions for themselves: " Good habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." |
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