<h3><span class="pb" id="Pg024"></span>II</h3>
<p>It is a significant fact that in order to appreciate
the peculiar place of habit in activity we have to betake
ourselves to bad habits, foolish idling, gambling,
addiction to liquor and drugs. When we think of such
habits, the union of habit with desire and with propulsive
power is forced upon us. When we think of
habits in terms of walking, playing a musical instrument,
typewriting, we are much given to thinking of
habits as technical abilities existing apart from our
likings and as lacking in urgent impulsion. We think
of them as passive tools waiting to be called into action
from without. A bad habit suggests an inherent tendency
to action and also a hold, command over us. It
makes us do things we are ashamed of, things which we
tell ourselves we prefer not to do. It overrides our
formal resolutions, our conscious decisions. When we
are honest with ourselves we acknowledge that a habit
has this power because it is so intimately a part of ourselves.
It has a hold upon us because we are the habit.</p>
<p>Our self-love, our refusal to face facts, combined
perhaps with a sense of a possible better although
unrealized self, leads us to eject the habit from the
thought of ourselves and conceive it as an evil power
which has somehow overcome us. We feed our conceit
by recalling that the habit was not deliberately formed;
we never intended to become idlers or gamblers or rouès.
<span class="pb" id="Pg025"></span>
And how can anything be deeply ourselves which developed
accidentally, without set intention? These
traits of a bad habit are precisely the things which are
most instructive about all habits and about ourselves.
They teach us that all habits are affections, that all
have projectile power, and that a predisposition
formed by a number of specific acts is an immensely
more intimate and fundamental part of ourselves than
are vague, general, conscious choices. All habits are
demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute
the self. In any intelligible sense of the word
will, they <em>are</em> will. They form our effective desires and
they furnish us with our working capacities. They
rule our thoughts, determining which shall appear and
be strong and which shall pass from light into
obscurity.</p>
<p>We may think of habits as means, waiting, like tools
in a box, to be used by conscious resolve. But they
are something more than that. They are active means,
means that project themselves, energetic and dominating
ways of acting. We need to distinguish between
materials, tools and means proper. Nails and boards
are not strictly speaking means of a box. They are
only materials for making it. Even the saw and hammer
are means only when they are employed in some
actual making. Otherwise they are tools, or potential
means. They are actual means only when brought in
conjunction with eye, arm and hand in some specific
operation. And eye, arm and hand are, correspondingly,
means proper only when they are in active operation.
<span class="pb" id="Pg026"></span>
And whenever they are in action they are cooperating
with external materials and energies. Without
support from beyond themselves the eye stares blankly
and the hand moves fumblingly. They are means only
when they enter into organization with things which
independently accomplish definite results. These organizations
are habits.</p>
<p>This fact cuts two ways. Except in a contingent
sense, with an "if," neither external materials nor bodily
and mental organs are in themselves means. They
have to be employed in coordinated conjunction with
one another to be actual means, or habits. This statement
may seem like the formulation in technical language
of a common-place. But belief in magic has
played a large part in human history. And the essence
of all hocus-pocus is the supposition that results
can be accomplished without the joint adaptation to
each other of human powers and physical conditions.
A desire for rain may induce men to wave willow
branches and to sprinkle water. The reaction is natural
and innocent. But men then go on to believe that
their act has immediate power to bring rain without
the cooperation of intermediate conditions of nature.
This is magic; while it may be natural or spontaneous,
it is not innocent. It obstructs intelligent study of
operative conditions and wastes human desire and effort
in futilities.</p>
<p>Belief in magic did not cease when the coarser forms
of superstitious practice ceased. The principle of
magic is found whenever it is hoped to get results
<span class="pb" id="Pg027"></span>
without intelligent control of means; and also when it
is supposed that means can exist and yet remain inert
and inoperative. In morals and politics such expectations
still prevail, and in so far the most important
phases of human action are still affected by magic. We
think that by feeling strongly enough about something,
by wishing hard enough, we can get a desirable result,
such as virtuous execution of a good resolve, or peace
among nations, or good will in industry. We slur over
the necessity of the cooperative action of objective
conditions, and the fact that this cooperation is assured
only by persistent and close study. Or, on the
other hand, we fancy we can get these results by
external machinery, by tools or potential means, without
a corresponding functioning of human desires and
capacities. Often times these two false and contradictory
beliefs are combined in the same person. The man
who feels that <em>his</em> virtues are his own personal accomplishments
is likely to be also the one who thinks that
by passing laws he can throw the fear of God into
others and make them virtuous by edict and prohibitory
mandate.</p>
<p>Recently a friend remarked to me that there was one
superstition current among even cultivated persons.
They suppose that if one is told what to do, if the
right <em>end</em> is pointed to them, all that is required in
order to bring about the right act is will or wish on
the part of the one who is to act. He used as an illustration
the matter of physical posture; the assumption
is that if a man is told to stand up straight, all that
<span class="pb" id="Pg028"></span>
is further needed is wish and effort on his part, and
the deed is done. He pointed out that this belief is on
a par with primitive magic in its neglect of attention
to the means which are involved in reaching an end.
And he went on to say that the prevalence of this belief,
starting with false notions about the control of
the body and extending to control of mind and character,
is the greatest bar to intelligent social progress.
It bars the way because it makes us neglect intelligent
inquiry to discover the means which will produce a
desired result, and intelligent invention to procure the
means. In short, it leaves out the importance of intelligently
controlled habit.</p>
<p>We may cite his illustration of the real nature of a
physical aim or order and its execution in its contrast
with the current false notion.<SPAN name="FNanchor_1_" id="FNanchor_1_" href="#Footnote_1_" title="I refer to Alexander, 'Man's Supreme Inheritance.'" class="fnanchor">[1]</SPAN> A man who has a bad
habitual posture tells himself, or is told, to stand up
straight. If he is interested and responds, he braces
himself, goes through certain movements, and it is assumed
that the desired result is substantially attained;
and that the position is retained at least as long as
the man keeps the idea or order in his mind. Consider
the assumptions which are here made. It is implied
that the means or effective conditions of the realization
of a purpose exist independently of established
habit and even that they may be set in motion in opposition
to habit. It is assumed that means are there,
so that the failure to stand erect is wholly a matter of
failure of purpose and desire. It needs paralysis or
<span class="pb" id="Pg029"></span>
a broken leg or some other equally gross phenomenon
to make us appreciate the importance of objective
conditions.</p>
<p>Now in fact a man who <em>can</em> stand properly does so,
and only a man who can, does. In the former case,
fiats of will are unnecessary, and in the latter useless.
A man who does not stand properly forms a habit of
standing improperly, a positive, forceful habit. The
common implication that his mistake is merely negative,
that he is simply failing to do the right thing, and
that the failure can be made good by an order of will
is absurd. One might as well suppose that the man
who is a slave of whiskey-drinking is merely one who
fails to drink water. Conditions have been formed for
producing a bad result, and the bad result will occur
as long as those conditions exist. They can no more
be dismissed by a direct effort of will than the conditions
which create drought can be dispelled by whistling
for wind. It is as reasonable to expect a fire to go out
when it is ordered to stop burning as to suppose that
a man can stand straight in consequence of a direct
action of thought and desire. The fire can be put out
only by changing objective conditions; it is the same
with rectification of bad posture.</p>
<p>Of course something happens when a man acts upon
his idea of standing straight. For a little while, he
stands differently, but only a different kind of badly.
He then takes the unaccustomed feeling which accompanies
his unusual stand as evidence that he is now
standing right. But there are many ways of standing
<span class="pb" id="Pg030"></span>
badly, and he has simply shifted his usual way to a
compensatory bad way at some opposite extreme.
When we realize this fact, we are likely to suppose that
it exists because control of the <em>body</em> is physical and
hence is external to mind and will. Transfer the command
inside character and mind, and it is fancied that
an idea of an end and the desire to realize it will take
immediate effect. After we get to the point of recognizing
that habits must intervene between wish and
execution in the case of bodily acts, we still cherish
the illusions that they can be dispensed with in the case
of mental and moral acts. Thus the net result is to
make us sharpen the distinction between non-moral and
moral activities, and to lead us to confine the latter
strictly within a private, immaterial realm. But in
fact, formation of ideas as well as their execution depends
upon habit. <em>If</em> we could form a correct idea
without a correct habit, then possibly we could carry
it out irrespective of habit. But a wish gets definite
form only in connection with an idea, and an idea gets
shape and consistency only when it has a habit back of
it. Only when a man can already perform an act of
standing straight does he know what it is like to have
a right posture and only then can he summon the
idea required for proper execution. The act must come
before the thought, and a habit before an ability to
evoke the thought at will. Ordinary psychology reverses
the actual state of affairs.</p>
<p>Ideas, thoughts of ends, are not spontaneously generated.
There is no immaculate conception of meanings
<span class="pb" id="Pg031"></span>
or purposes. Reason pure of all influence from
prior habit is a fiction. But pure sensations out of
which ideas can be framed apart from habit are equally
fictitious. The sensations and ideas which are the
"stuff" of thought and purpose are alike affected by
habits manifested in the acts which give rise to sensations
and meanings. The dependence of thought, or
the more intellectual factor in our conceptions, upon
prior experience is usually admitted. But those who
attack the notion of thought pure from the influence
of experience, usually identify experience with sensations
impressed upon an empty mind. They therefore
replace the theory of unmixed thoughts with that of
pure unmixed sensations as the stuff of all conceptions,
purposes and beliefs. But distinct and independent
sensory qualities, far from being original elements, are
the products of a highly skilled analysis which disposes
of immense technical scientific resources. To be able to
single out a definitive sensory element in any field is
evidence of a high degree of previous training, that is,
of well-formed habits. A moderate amount of observation
of a child will suffice to reveal that even such gross
discriminations as black, white, red, green, are the result
of some years of active dealings with things in the
course of which habits have been set up. It is not such
a simple matter to have a clear-cut sensation. The
latter is a sign of training, skill, habit.</p>
<p>Admission that the idea of, say, standing erect is
dependent upon sensory materials is, therefore equivalent
to recognition that it is dependent upon the
<span class="pb" id="Pg032"></span>
habitual attitudes which govern concrete sensory materials.
The medium of habit filters all the material
that reaches our perception and thought. The filter is
not, however, chemically pure. It is a reagent which
adds new qualities and rearranges what is received.
Our ideas truly depend upon experience, but so do our
sensations. And the experience upon which they both
depend is the operation of habits—originally of instincts.
Thus our purposes and commands regarding
action (whether physical or moral) come to us through
the refracting medium of bodily and moral habits. Inability
to think aright is sufficiently striking to have
caught the attention of moralists. But a false psychology
has led them to interpret it as due to a necessary
conflict of flesh and spirit, not as an indication
that our ideas are as dependent, to say the least, upon
our habits as are our acts upon our conscious thoughts
and purposes.</p>
<p>Only the man who can maintain a correct posture
has the stuff out of which to form that idea of standing
erect which can be the starting point of a right act.
Only the man whose habits are already good can know
what the good is. Immediate, seemingly instinctive,
feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior
is in reality the feeling of habits working below
direct consciousness. The psychology of illusions of
perception is full of illustrations of the distortion introduced
by habit into observation of objects. The
same fact accounts for the intuitive element in judgments
of action, an element which is valuable or the
<span class="pb" id="Pg033"></span>
reverse in accord with the quality of dominant habits.
For, as Aristotle remarked, the untutored moral perceptions
of a good man are usually trustworthy, those
of a bad character, not. (But he should have added
that the influence of social custom as well as personal
habit has to be taken into account in estimating who
is the good man and the good judge.)</p>
<p>What is true of the dependence of execution of an
idea upon habit is true, then, of the formation and
quality of the idea. Suppose that by a happy chance
a right concrete idea or purpose—concrete, not simply
correct in words—has been hit upon: What happens
when one with an incorrect habit tries to act in accord
with it? Clearly the idea can be carried into execution
only with a mechanism already there. If this is defective
or perverted, the best intention in the world will
yield bad results. In the case of no other engine does
one suppose that a defective machine will turn out good
goods simply because it is invited to. Everywhere else
we recognize that the design and structure of the agency
employed tell directly upon the work done. Given a
bad habit and the "will" or mental direction to get a
good result, and the actual happening is a reverse or
looking-glass manifestation of the usual fault—a compensatory
twist in the opposite direction. Refusal
to recognize this fact only leads to a separation of mind
from body, and to supposing that mental or "psychical"
mechanisms are different in kind from those of
bodily operations and independent of them. So deep
seated is this notion that even so "scientific" a theory
<span class="pb" id="Pg034"></span>
as modern psycho-analysis thinks that mental habits
can be straightened out by some kind of purely psychical
manipulation without reference to the distortions
of sensation and perception which are due to bad bodily
sets. The other side of the error is found in the notion
of "scientific" nerve physiologists that it is only necessary
to locate a particular diseased cell or local lesion,
independent of the whole complex of organic habits, in
order to rectify conduct.</p>
<p>Means are means; they are intermediates, middle
terms. To grasp this fact is to have done with the
ordinary dualism of means and ends. The "end" is
merely a series of acts viewed at a remote stage; and
a means is merely the series viewed at an earlier one.
The distinction of means and end arises in surveying
the <em>course</em> of a proposed <em>line</em> of action, a connected
series in time. The "end" is the last act thought of;
the means are the acts to be performed prior to it in
time. To <em>reach</em> an end we must take our mind off from
it and attend to the act which is next to be performed.
We must make that the end. The only exception to
this statement is in cases where customary habit determines
the course of the series. Then all that is
wanted is a cue to set it off. But when the proposed
end involves any deviation from usual action, or any
rectification of it—as in the case of standing straight—then
the main thing is to find some act which is different
from the usual one. The discovery and performance
of this unaccustomed act is the "end" to
which we must devote all attention. Otherwise we shall
<span class="pb" id="Pg035"></span>
simply do the old thing over again, no matter what is
our conscious command. The only way of accomplishing
this discovery is through a flank movement. We
must stop even thinking of standing up straight. To
think of it is fatal, for it commits us to the operation of
an established habit of standing wrong. We must find
an act within our power which is disconnected from any
thought about standing. We must start to do another
thing which on one side inhibits our falling into the
customary bad position and on the other side is the
beginning of a series of acts which may lead into the
correct posture.<SPAN name="FNanchor_2_" id="FNanchor_2_" href="#Footnote_2_" title="The technique of this process is stated in the book of Mr. Alexander already referred to, and the theoretical statement given is borrowed from Mr. Alexander's analysis." class="fnanchor">[2]</SPAN> The hard-drinker who keeps thinking
of not drinking is doing what he can to initiate the
acts which lead to drinking. He is starting with the
stimulus to his habit. To succeed he must find some
positive interest or line of action which will inhibit the
drinking series and which by instituting another course
of action will bring him to his desired end. In short,
the man's true aim is to discover some course of action,
having nothing to do with the habit of drink or standing
erect, which will take him where he wants to go.
The discovery of this other series is at once his means
and his end. Until one takes intermediate acts seriously
enough to treat them as ends, one wastes one's
time in any effort at change of habits. Of the intermediate
acts, the most important is the <em>next</em> one. The
first or earliest means is the most important <em>end</em> to
discover.</p>
<p><span class="pb" id="Pg036"></span>
Means and ends are two names for the same reality.
The terms denote not a division in reality but a distinction
in judgment. Without understanding this fact
we cannot understand the nature of habits nor can we
pass beyond the usual separation of the moral and
non-moral in conduct. "End" is a name for a series
of acts taken collectively—like the term army.
"Means" is a name for the same series taken distributively—like
this soldier, that officer. To think of the
end signifies to extend and enlarge our view of the act
to be performed. It means to look at the next act in
perspective, not permitting it to occupy the entire field
of vision. To bear the end in mind signifies that we
should not stop thinking about our <em>next</em> act until we
form some reasonably clear idea of the <em>course</em> of action
to which it commits us. To attain a remote end means
on the other hand to treat the end as a series of means.
To say that an end is remote or distant, to say in fact
that it is an end at all, is equivalent to saying that
obstacles intervene between us and it. If, however, it
remains a distant end, it becomes a <em>mere</em> end, that is a
dream. As soon as we have projected it, we must begin
to work backward in thought. We must change <em>what</em>
is to be done into a <em>how</em>, the means whereby. The
end thus re-appears as a series of "what nexts," and the
what next of chief importance is the one nearest the
present state of the one acting. Only as the end is
converted into means is it definitely conceived, or intellectually
defined, to say nothing of being executable.
Just as end, it is vague, cloudy, impressionistic. We
<span class="pb" id="Pg037"></span>
do not <em>know</em> what we are really after until a <em>course</em> of
action is mentally worked out. Aladdin with his lamp
could dispense with translating ends into means, but no
one else can do so.</p>
<p>Now the thing which is closest to us, the means
within our power, is a habit. Some habit impeded by
circumstances is the source of the projection of the end.
It is also the primary means in its realization. The
habit is propulsive and moves anyway toward some end,
or result, whether it is projected as an end-in-view or
not. The man who can walk does walk; the man who
can talk does converse—if only with himself. How is
this statement to be reconciled with the fact that we
are not always walking and talking; that our habits
seem so often to be latent, inoperative? Such inactivity
holds only of <em>overt</em>, visibly obvious operation. In
actuality each habit operates all the time of waking
life; though like a member of a crew taking his turn
at the wheel, its operation becomes the dominantly
characteristic trait of an act only occasionally or
rarely.</p>
<p>The habit of walking is expressed in what a man
sees when he keeps still, even in dreams. The recognition
of distances and directions of things from his
place at rest is the obvious proof of this statement.
The habit of locomotion is latent in the sense that it is
covered up, counteracted, by a habit of seeing which is
definitely at the fore. But counteraction is not suppression.
Locomotion is a potential energy, not in
any metaphysical sense, but in the physical sense in
<span class="pb" id="Pg038"></span>
which potential energy as well as kinetic has to be taken
account of in any scientific description. Everything
that a man who has the habit of locomotion does and
thinks he does and thinks differently on that account.
This fact is recognized in current psychology, but is
falsified into an association of sensations. Were it not
for the continued operation of all habits in every act,
no such thing as character could exist. There would
be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated
acts. Character is the interpenetration of habits. If
each habit existed in an insulated compartment and
operated without affecting or being affected by others,
character would not exist. That is, conduct would lack
unity being only a juxtaposition of disconnected reactions
to separated situations. But since environments
overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote
from one another contain like elements, a continuous
modification of habits by one another is constantly
going on. A man may give himself away in a look or
a gesture. Character can be read through the medium
of individual acts.</p>
<p>Of course interpenetration is never total. It is most
marked in what we call strong characters. Integration
is an achievement rather than a datum. A weak, unstable,
vacillating character is one in which different
habits alternate with one another rather than embody
one another. The strength, solidity of a habit is not
its own possession but is due to reinforcement by the
force of other habits which it absorbs into itself.
Routine specialization always works against interpenetration.
<span class="pb" id="Pg039"></span>
Men with "pigeon-hole" minds are not infrequent.
Their diverse standards and methods of
judgment for scientific, religious, political matters testify
to isolated compartmental habits of action. Character
that is unable to undergo successfully the strain
of thought and effort required to bring competing
tendencies into a unity, builds up barriers between
different systems of likes and dislikes. The emotional
stress incident to conflict is avoided not by readjustment
but by effort at confinement. Yet the exception
proves the rule. Such persons are successful in keeping
different ways of reacting apart from one another in
consciousness rather than in action. Their character
is marked by stigmata resulting from this division.</p>
<p>The mutual modification of habits by one another
enables us to define the nature of the moral situation.
It is not necessary nor advisable to be always considering
the interaction of habits with one another, that
is to say the effect of a particular habit upon character—which
is a name for the total interaction. Such
consideration distracts attention from the problem of
building up an effective habit. A man who is learning
French, or chess-playing or engineering has his hands
full with his particular occupation. He would be confused
and hampered by constant inquiry into its effect
upon character. He would resemble the centipede who
by trying to think of the movement of each leg in relation
to all the others was rendered unable to travel.
At any given time, certain habits must be taken for
granted as a matter of course. Their operation is not
<span class="pb" id="Pg040"></span>
a matter of moral judgment. They are treated as
technical, recreational, professional, hygienic or economic
or esthetic rather than moral. To lug in morals,
or ulterior effect on character at every point, is to
cultivate moral valetudinarianism or priggish posing.
Nevertheless any act, even that one which passes ordinarily
as trivial, may entail such consequences for habit
and character as upon occasion to require judgment
from the standpoint of the whole body of conduct. It
then comes under moral scrutiny. To know when to
leave acts without distinctive moral judgment and
when to subject them to it is itself a large factor in
morality. The serious matter is that this relative
pragmatic, or intellectual, distinction between the moral
and non-moral, has been solidified into a fixed and absolute
distinction, so that some acts are popularly regarded
as forever within and others forever without the
moral domain. From this fatal error recognition of the
relations of one habit to others preserves us. For it
makes us see that character is the name given to the
working interaction of habits, and that the cumulative
effect of insensible modifications worked by a particular
habit in the body of preferences may at any moment
require attention.</p>
<p>The word habit may seem twisted somewhat from
its customary use when employed as we have been using
it. But we need a word to express that kind of human
activity which is influenced by prior activity and in
that sense acquired; which contains within itself a certain
ordering or systematization of minor elements of
<span class="pb" id="Pg041"></span>
action; which is projective, dynamic in quality, ready
for overt manifestation; and which is operative in some
subdued subordinate form even when not obviously
dominating activity. Habit even in its ordinary usage
comes nearer to denoting these facts than any other
word. If the facts are recognized we may also use the
words attitude and disposition. But unless we have
first made clear to ourselves the facts which have been
set forth under the name of habit, these words are more
likely to be misleading than is the word habit. For the
latter conveys explicitly the sense of operativeness,
actuality. Attitude and, as ordinarily used, disposition
suggest something latent, potential, something which
requires a positive stimulus outside themselves to become
active. If we perceive that they denote positive
forms of action which are released merely through
removal of <ins class="corr" title="some-counteracting" id="Corr_041_">some counteracting</ins> "inhibitory" tendency,
and then become overt, we may employ them instead of
the word habit to denote subdued, non-patent forms of
the latter.</p>
<p>In this case, we must bear in mind that the word
disposition means predisposition, readiness to act
overtly in a specific fashion whenever opportunity is
presented, this opportunity consisting in removal of
the pressure due to the dominance of some overt habit;
and that attitude means some special case of a predisposition,
the disposition waiting as it were to spring
through an opened door. While it is admitted that the
word habit has been used in a somewhat broader sense
than is usual, we must protest against the tendency in
<span class="pb" id="Pg042"></span>
psychological literature to limit its meaning to repetition.
This usage is much less in accord with popular
usage than is the wider way in which we have used the
word. It assumes from the start the identity of habit
with routine. Repetition is in no sense the essence of
habit. Tendency to repeat acts is an incident of many
habits but not of all. A man with the habit of giving
way to anger may show his habit by a murderous attack
upon some one who has offended. His act is nonetheless
due to habit because it occurs only once in his life.
The essence of habit is an acquired predisposition to
<em>ways</em> or modes of response, not to particular acts except
as, under special conditions, these express a way
of behaving. Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility
to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections
and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of
specific acts. It means will.</p>
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