that indeed they have half forgot their natural office, and the use for which they were designed; the fellow, too, calls them his hands, and we may allow him to do so, for with them he cuts any thing, charges and discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, writes, and puts off his hat, combs his head, plays at cards and dice, and all this with as much dexterity as any other could do who had more and more proper limbs to assist him; and the money I gave him, he carried away in his foot, as we do in our hand. I have seen another, who, being yet a boy, flourished a two-handed sword, and (if I may so say) handled a halberd, with the mere motions and writhings of his neck and shoulders, for want of hands; tossed them into the air, and caught them again; darted a dagger; and cracked a whip, as well as any coachman in France."*

Every one, except Dr. Crotch, must remember the difficulty with which they first learned music. The correspondence between the note on the piano-forte and the note in the book was the first thing to be ascertained; then, that note is to be struck with a particular finger, with a particular degree of velocity; and if she should sing at the same time, all these are to be accompanied with certain inflections of the voice. The difficulty with which all this is done, the blunders which are made, and the slowness of the progress that is made at first, there can be no occasion I should describe, as there are so many here who must have felt it. At last, such is the astonishing facility acquired by habit, that there are many persons who will sit down to a glee which they have never seen before, play the bass with one hand, the treble with the other, and sing the third part; that is, read three different languages, and perform three different sets of actions at the same time: and this, with such little effort of faculty or of finger, that they shall have plenty of leisure to observe who comes in and goes out; who is dressed ill, who well; and to pursue the usual train of thought, which passes in our minds on such occasions: and though it be absolutely necessary that each musical note, and each key of the piano* Montaigne, vol. i. p. 133.

forte, must have been thought of by such a musician during the performance, they have passed through the mind with so much ease and rapidity, that it is impossible, or at least exceedingly difficult, to recall any of them. The reason of this astonishing facility, is partly to be explained by bodily, partly by mental causes. It proceeds from the strengthened association between the sign, and the thing signified: we read music with greater ease, and, the very instant we look at the note, and the musical line on which it is placed, know immediately to what part of the piano-forte the finger is to be carried. The other cause is merely a bodily cause: the actions of the fingers become associated together; and one finger having followed the other in a certain direction, follows it ever after with much more ease. To shake on the piano-forte is extremely difficult to beginners. However desirous any one may be of moving these two fingers rapidly, the muscles obey the decision of the will will with extreme difficulty; but when the respective motions of the two fingers are completely associated, so slight a determination of the will produces the desired effect, that it becomes difficult to recollect, the very moment after, that we have thought any thing about the matter. Just so in learning to walk, or in grown-up persons learning to skate; it requires a specific resolution to put one leg before another. A skater stands tottering and trembling in his slippery career; and when he has resolved which leg he will move the next, is obeyed by that leg in a very awkward, reluctant, and mutinous manner, the very leg which, when it has acquired a great number of associated strains and postures, is to gain its master deathless reputation as a flying Mercury, and render him the envy and glory of the Serpentine.

It is impossible not to perceive in this analysis, which I have gone through, of the nature of habit, that powerful effect which it must exercise upon human happiness, by connecting the future with the present, and exposing us to do again that which we have already done. If we wish to know who is the most degraded, and the most wretched, of human beings;-if it be any object

of curiosity in moral science, to gage the dimensions of wretchedness, and to see how deep the miseries of man can reach ;-if this be any object of curiosity, look for a man who has practiced a vice so long, that he curses it and clings to it; that he pursues it, because he feels a great law of his nature driving him on toward it; but, reaching it, knows that it will gnaw his heart, and tear his vitals, and make him roll himself in the dust with anguish. Say every thing for vice which you can say, magnify any pleasure as much as you please, but don't believe you can keep it; don't believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood, and for refreshing the faded nerve. Nero and Caligula, and all those who have had the vices and the riches of the world at their command, have never been able to do this. Yet you will not quit what you do not love; and you will linger on over the putrid fragments, and the nauseous carrion, after the blood, and the taste, and the sweetness are vanished away. But the wise toil, and the true glory of life, is, to turn all these provisions of nature-all these great laws of the mind-to good; and to seize hold of the power of habit, for fixing and securing virtue; for if the difficulties with which we begin, were always to continue, we might all cry out with Brutus,-"I have followed thee, O Virtue! as a real thing, and thou art but a name!" But the state which repays us, is that habitual virtue, which makes it as natural to a man to act right, as to breathe; which so incorporates goodness with the system, that pure thoughts are conceived without study, and just actions performed without effort: as it is the perfection of health, when every bodily organ acts without exciting attention; when the heart beats, and the lungs play, and the pulses flow, without reminding us that the mechanism of life is at work. So is it with the beauty of moral life! when man is just, and generous, and good, without knowing that he is practicing any virtue, or overcoming any difficulty: and the truly happy man, is he, who, at the close of a long life, has so changed his original nature, that he feels it an effort to do wrong; and a mere compliance with habit, to perform every great and sacred duty of life.

LECTURE XXVII.

ON HABIT-PART II.

BEFORE I proceed upon my present Lecture, I beg leave, in a very few words, to bring to your recollection the topics which I have dwelt upon in my last.

My first object was to show that habit was to action, what association is to thought; or, in other words, that it is associated action. I then divided habits into active, and passive those things which we are prone to do, because we have done them; and those things which we are prone to suffer, because we have suffered them. In those passive impressions, produced upon the mind through the body, I endeavored to show that the sensibility of the bodily organ was materially impaired by repetition, but that this rule was by no means to be extended to the affections; that it was not generally true that they were weakened by habit. I noticed the pain consequent upon the interruption of habit; the uniform increase of active habits; and lastly, the diminished attention of mind; which latter circumstance I attributed, partly to the strengthened association of ideas, partly to the improved association of actions. This was the substance of my last Lecture; and I now go on to make those additional observations on habit, which I had not then time to comprehend in the discussion.

It has very often been asked when a habit begins to exist. There must be a period in its formation, when custom can have little or no influence, and when we have nothing but a temporary and casual motive for the performance of the action. When is the action habitual? when not? What is the delicate and discriminating circumstance which decides you to call that mode

of acting a habit? Nothing, for instance, is more common than to see persons beating the ground with their feet in any moment of vacancy of mind; and it easily degenerates into a habit: the first or second time after it is done, it can not be called a habit; is it so the tenth time? or when can the habit be fairly said to have established itself? It does not, I confess, appear to me to be by any means very difficult to answer this question. An active habit for any thing may be said to be formed, when we feel either a difficulty in not doing it, or a pain from its not being done; and when the principal cause for this pain, or difficulty, is, that we have done the thing often before. For instance, to recur to the previous example, you tap the floor with your foot; some one, who happens to be nervous, or indisposed, requests you to abstain: you very readily comply; and in five minutes, when the prohibition is out of your mind, begin again; and so on, perhaps, for three or four times. The proneness to do the thing, and the difficulty of not doing it, are here clear indications that the connection between the beating of the foot, and the vacant goodhumored feeling of mind, is not in you merely casual and momentary, but that the one has the strongest disposition to produce the other; and the only cause that can be alledged why they should be connected, is, that they have been connected before. You see a person drinking out of a particular mug or tumbler:-put another in its place; if they both do equally well, of course there is no habit; but if the tumbler be missed, and the other complained of, it is clear that a habit is formed: there is a connection between the act of drinking, and the idea of that tumbler, which can not be separated without giving pain. Who could drink tea out of a wine-glass, or beer out of a tea-cup, or take up wine with a spoon? The displeasure that would ensue from separating the liquid and the particular kind of vessel in which it had been customarily conveyed, is a plain proof that the habit, in each particular case, is formed. In the same manner with passive habits. A passive habit may be said to be formed when the passive impression can not be separated without pain, or difficulty, from that which preceded it;