teachers, who practice them
continuously reason them out, nor from continuous instinctive
promptings. They are striking testimony to the influence
of habit. As a recent English writer puts it:

The population of London would be starved in a week if the flywheel
of habit were removed, if no signalman or clerk or policeman
ever did anything which was not suggested by a first-hand impulse,
or if no one were more honest or punctual or industrious than he was
led to be by his conscious love, on that particular day, for his master
or for his work, or by his religion, or by a conviction of danger from
the criminal law.[1]

[Footnote 1: Graham Wallas: _Great Society_, p. 74.]

From etiquette and social distinction, from formalities of
conversation and correspondence, of greeting and farewell, of
condolence and congratulation to the most important "customs
of the country," with respect to marriage, property, and
the like, ways of acting are maintained by the mechanism of
habit rather than by arbitrary law or equally arbitrary
instinctive caprice.

DISSERVICEABLE HABITS IN THE INDIVIDUAL. Habitual behavior
which can become so completely controlling in the lives of so
many people is not without its dangers. The nervous system
is originally neutral, and can be involved on the side either of
good or evil. A human born with a plastic brain and nervous
system must acquire habits, but that he will acquire good habits
(that is, habits serviceable to his own happiness and to
that of his fellows) is not guaranteed by nature. Habits are
indeed more notorious than famous, and examples are more
frequently chosen from evil ones than from good. Promptness
in the performance of one's professional or domestic duties,
care in speech, in dress and in demeanor, are, once they
are acquired, permanent assets. But if these fail to be
developed, dishonesty or superficiality, slovenliness in dress and
speech, and surliness in manner, may and do become equally
habitual. The significance of this has been eloquently stated
at the close of James's famous discussion:

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no
worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually
fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but
realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits,
they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and nev