IMPORTANCE OF GOOD HABITS.
By Samuel Smiles
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 an act and thought, that he said, "All is habit in mankind, 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 become more easy to be good than to give way to sin. "As habits belonging 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 the act, or acting upon them—the principles of obedience, veracity, justice, and charity." And again, Lord Brougham says, when enforcing the immense importance of training and example in youth, "I trust everything under God to habit, on which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance—habit, which makes everything easy, and casts the difficulties upon the deviation from a wonted course." Thus, 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; unite 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 become. 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 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.—Samuel Smiles.