HABIT
HABIT in a child is at first like a spider’s web; if neglected, it be comes a thread of twine; next, a cord of rope; finally, a cable—then who can break it?
O, the tyranny, the despotism of a bad habit! Coleridge, one of the subtlest intellects and finest poets of his time, battled for twenty years before he could emancipate himself from his tyrant, opium. He went into voluntary imprisonment. He hired a man to watch him day and night, and keep him by force from tasting the pernicious drug. He formed resolution after resolution. Yet, during all the best years of his life, he wasted his substance and his health, neglected his family, and lived degraded and accursed, because he had not resolution to abstain. He would lay plans to cheat the very man whom he paid to keep the drug from him, and bribe the jailor to whom he had voluntarily surrendered himself.
Terrible, terrible is the despotism of a bad habit. The case of Coleridge is an extreme one, of course. But there are many, whose eyes these lines will meet, who are as truly the slaves of a perverted appetite as he. Their despot may be opium, tobacco, drink or worse; but they are so completely under the dominion of their master, that nothing short of a moral war of independence, which should task all their own strength, and all they could borrow from others, would suffice to deliver them.
Few people form habits of wrong-doing deliberately or wilfully; they glide into them by degrees and almost unconsciously, and before they are aware of danger, the habits are confirmed and require resolute and persistent effort to effect a change. “Resist beginning,” was a maxim of the ancients, and should be preserved as a landmark in our day.
It was only the other day that a man fell asleep in his boat on the Niagara River. During his slumber the boat broke loose from her moorings, and he woke to find himself shooting down the rapids directly toward the cataract. In vain he shrieked for help, in vain he tried to row against the current; he drifted on, till his light craft upset, when he was borne rapidly to the brink of the abyss, and leaping up with a wild cry, went over and disappeared forever.
In the great battle of Gibraltar, when the united fleets of France and Spain attacked the impregnable fortress, one of the gigantic floating batteries broke from her anchorage and began to drift directly into the hottest of the British fire. The thousand men who formed the crew of the unwieldy mass, vainly strove to arrest its progress or divert it from its path. Every minute it drifted nearer to the English guns, every minute some new part took fire from the red-hot shot, every minute another score of its hapless defenders were swept like chaff from its decks. The most superhuman efforts failed to prevent its drifting with its human freight to inevitable death.
A ship was wrecked at sea. The passengers and crew took refuge on a raft, the boats having been stove in the attempt to launch them. For days and weeks these unfortunates drifted about without oar or sail on the hot, broken tropical ocean. At last their provisions failed, and then their water. Still they drifted about, vainly looking for a sail, or hoping for a sight of land. The time had now come when that fearful alternative became inevitable—death from starvation or feeding on human flesh—and they were just beginning to cast lots for a victim when a vessel was seen on the distant horizon. They abandoned their terrible design; the stranger would approach. The ship came toward them. She drew nearer and nearer. They strove to attract her attention by shouts and by raising their clothing; but the indolent look-out saw them not. They shouted louder and louder, still they were not seen. At last the vessel tacked. With frantic terror they rise in one body, shouting and waving their garments. It was in vain. The unconscious ship stood steadily away. Night drew on, and as the darkness fell the raft drifted and drifted in the other direction till the last trace of the vessel was lost forever.
So it is in life. The intemperate man who thinks he at least will never die a drunkard, whatever his neighbor may do, only wakes to find himself drifting down the cataract and all hope gone. The sensualist, who lives merely for his own gratification, drifts into an emasculated old age to be tortured with passions he can not gratify, and perish by merciless, agonizing diseases. The undisciplined, who never learned to control themselves, who are spendthrifts, or passionate, or indolent, or visionary, soon make shipwreck of themselves, and drift about the sea of life, the prey of every wind and current, vainly shrieking for help, till at last they drift away into darkness and death.
Take care that you are not drifting. See that you have fast hold of the helm. The breakers of life forever roar under the lee, and adverse gales continually blow on the shore. Are you watching how she heads? Do you keep a firm gripe of the wheel? If you give way but for one moment you may drift hopelessly into the boiling vortex. Young men, take care! It rests with yourselves alone under God, whether you reach port triumphantly or drift to ruin.
Be not slow in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat, he is the bravest soldier who lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads, fear disheartens; he that would kill hydra, had better strike off one neck than five heads; fell the tree, and the branches are soon cut off.
Evil habits must be conquered, or they will conquer us and destroy our peace and happiness.
Vicious habits are so great a stain upon human nature, said Cicero, and so odious in themselves, that every person actuated by right reason would avoid them, though he was sure they would always be concealed both from God and man, and had no future punishment en tailed upon them.
Vicious habits, when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistance on the first attack. At each successive encounter this resistance grows fainter and fainter, until finally it ceases altogether and the victory is achieved.
Habit is man’s best friend or worst enemy; it can exalt him to the highest pinnacle of virtue, honor and happiness, or sink him to the lowest depths of vice, shame and misery.
We may form habits of honesty, or knavery; truth or, falsehood; of industry, or idleness; frugality, or extravagance; of patience, or impatience; self-denial, or self-indulgence; of kindness, cruelty, politeness, rudeness, prudence, perseverance, circumspection. In short there is not a virtue, nor a vice; not an act of body, nor of mind, to which we may not be chained down by this despotic power.
It is a great point for young men to begin well; for it is in the beginning of life that that system of conduct is adapted, which soon assumes the force of habit, Begin well, and the habit of doing well will become quite as easy as the habit of doing badly. Pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent, and habit will render it the most delightful. Well begun is half ended, says the proverb; and a good beginning is half the battle. Many promising young men have irretrievably injured themselves by a first false step at the commencement of life; while others, of much less promising talents, have succeeded simply by beginning well, and going onward. The good practical beginning is, to a certain extent, a pledge, a promise, and an assurance, of the ultimate prosperous issue. There is many a poor creature, now crawling through life, miserable himself and the cause of sorrow to others, who might have lifted up his head and prospered, if, instead of merely satisfying himself with resolutions of well-doing, he had actually gone to work and made a good practical beginning.
Man, it has been said, is a bundle of habits; and habit is second nature. Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of repetition in act and thought, that he said, “All is habit in man kind, even virtue itself.” Butler, in his “Analogy,” impresses the importance of careful self-discipline, and firm resistance to temptation, as tending to make virtue habitual, so that at length it may be come more easy to be good than to give way to sin. “As habits be longing to the body,” he says, “are produced by external acts, so habits of the mind are produced by the execution of inward practical purposes, i. e., carrying them into act, or acting upon them,—the prince of obedience, veracity, justice, and charity.” Make sobriety a habit and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will become revolting to every principle of conduct which regulates the life of the individual. Hence the necessity for the greatest care and watchfulness against the inroad of any evil habit; for the character is always weakest at that point at which it has once given way; and it is long before a principle restored can become so firm as one that has never been moved. It is a fine remark of a Russian writer that “Habits are a necklace of pearls: untie the knot, and the whole unthreads.”
Wherever formed, habit acts involuntarily, and without effort; and it is only when you oppose it, that you find how powerful it has be come. What is done once and again, soon gives facility and proneness. The habit at first may seem to have no more strength than a spider’s web; but once formed, it binds us as with a chain of iron. The small events of life, taken singly, may seem exceedingly unimportant, like snow that falls silently, flake by flake; yet accumulated, these snow-flakes form the avalanche.
Self-respect, self-help, application, industry, integrity,—all are of the nature of habits, not beliefs. Principles, in fact, are but the names which we assign to habits; for the principles are words, but the habits are the things themselves: benefactors, or tyrants, according as they are good or evil. It thus happens that as we grow older, a portion of our free activity and individuality becomes suspended in habit; our actions become of the nature of fate; and we are bound by the chains which we have woven around ourselves.
It is indeed scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of training the young to virtuous habits. In them they are the easiest formed, and when formed they last for life; like letters cut on .the bark of a tree, they grow and widen with age. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The beginning holds within it the end; the first start on the road of life determines the direction and the destination of the journey. As habit strengthens with age, and character becomes formed, any turning into a new path becomes more and more difficult. Hence, it is often harder to unlearn than to learn; and for this reason the Grecian flute-player was justified who charged double fees to those pupils who had been taught by an inferior master. To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth. Try and reform a habitually indolent, or improvident, or drunken person, and in a large majority of cases you will fail. For the habit in each case has wound itself iii and through the life until it has become an integral part of it, and can not be uprooted. Hence the wisest habit of all is the habit of care in the formation of good habits.
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking on the bright side of things, and also of looking on the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so exercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather than their opposites. In this way the habit of happy thought may be made to spring up like any other habit. And to bring up men or women with a genial nature of this sort, a good temper, and a happy frame of mind, is perhaps of even more importance, in many cases, than to perfect them in much knowledge and many accomplishments.
An instance exhibiting the force of habit is related of a counselor, renowned for the art of pleading, who had a trick of rubbing his spectacle case while addressing a jury. A foolish attorney who had confided a brief to him, thought this action indecorous, and likely to impair the effect of the pathetic appeals which the nature of the suit admitted. Accordingly, he watched for an opportunity, and stole away the spectacle case. For the first time in his life the counselor’s tongue faltered—his mind missed the bodily track with which it had long associated its operations; he became confused, embarrassed—he stammered, blundered and boggled—lost all the threads of his brief and was about to sit down, self-defeated, when the conscience-stricken attorney restored the spectacle case. Straightway, with the first touch of the familiar talisman, the mind recovered its self-possession, the memory its clearness, the tongue its fluency; and as, again and again the lawyer fondly rubbed the spectacle case, argument after argument flew forth like the birds from a conjurer’s box. And the jury, to whom a few moments before, the case seemed hopeless, were stormed into unanimous conviction of its justice.
Such is the force of habit. Such the sympathy between mental and bodily associations. Every magician needs his wand; and perhaps every man of genius has—his spectacle case.
Every one knows the story of the tallow chandler, who, having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business and taken a house in the country, not far from the city, that he might enjoy himself, after a few months trial of the holiday life, requested permission of his successor to come into town, and assist him on melting days. We have heard of one who kept a retail spirit shop, and having, in like manner, retired from trade, used to enjoy himself by having one puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints into another. We have heard, also, of a butcher in a small country town, who, some little time after he had left off business, informed his old customers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week, just for his amusement.