§ 4. The Self and its Habits. The importance of habit is now universally admitted, but it is not so widely recognised that habits are of no positive value until they are organised in the moral self. If our mental and moral and physical habits have been formed at haphazard, our lives will be but one stage removed from the capricious life of impulse. There is no more futile life than that which is at the mercy of chance impulses, but as a close second comes the life which is given up to habits which have grown up in accordance with no principle and in subordination to no system. A life is not morally good simply because it is composed of habits. People who have given over large tracts of their lives to habit have not always been careful to scrutinise the kinds of habits that have been formed. The full moral worth of habitual action is realised only by those who have organised their habits. Habits are organised only when they are definitely directed to serve the comprehensive ends of the self whose habits they are. The habits of the good life are systematic. They all contribute to the well-being of the self. Our habits are of our own making, and it depends on us whether they will work together for the good of the whole self. All habits are the habits of a self: they make the self, and are made by it.
The ethical importance of habit has been admirably stated by Bain and by James, and we quote four of the maxims that were enunciated by them.[1]
(1) "The great thing in education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. ...
- ↑ Cf. Bain: The Emotions and the Will, ch. ix., §§1-9; and James: Principles, vol. i., pp. 122-125.
