reiterated and accumulated thoughts and deeds. Knowing this, the wise man chooses to subject himself to good habits, for such service is joy, bliss, and freedom; while to become subject to bad habits is misery, wretchedness, slavery.
This law of habit is beneficent, for while it enables a man to bind himself to the chains of slavish practices, it enables him to become so fixed in good courses as to do them unconsciously, to instinctively do that which is right, without restraint or exertion, and in perfect happiness and freedom. Observing this automatism in life, men have denied the existence of will or freedom on man’s part. They speak of him as being “born” good or bad, and regard him as the helpless instrument of blind forces.
It is true that man is the instrument of mental forces,—or to be more accurate, he is those forces,—but they are not blind, and he can direct them, and redirect them into new channels. In a word, he can take him-
[ 23 ]
