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 hẹ, 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;

and when the principal cause of this pain or difficulty, is the mere circumstance of their having been connected. A man is habitually peevish,—that is, in his mind; the little crosses and accidents of life are not overlooked, but strongly associated with resentment: let him attempt to separate them,-let him endeavor to take a goodnatured and forgiving view of human life; it costs him the greatest efforts, exposes him to the most mortifying failures, and is only to be acquired, at last, by very magnanimous resolution. The fish is not dressed to his liking, or a turkey comes to table when he had set his affections upon a goose. You immediately perceive a great deal of ill-temper; and whatever reasons there may be for hiding it, or whatever efforts may be made to hide it, it is still very visible. You say this man is habitually peevish, from the great difficulty he finds in separating the accidents of life from the acute malevolent feelings with which he has connected them; and for which difficulty, as it is felt in a much less degree by the average of men,-no other reason can be given, than the previous indulgence of such sort of feelings. Every one might feel a little peevish at the accidents of life; and a slight difficulty might be universally experienced in attempting to check it; but the degree of that difficulty appears to be so much greater in such instances as I have mentioned, that we determine without scruple that they are to be referred to something more than the mere original tendency of nature; and that that something more, is habit.

The period of time in which a habit renews its action, or (if I may be allowed the expression) the orbit of a habit, is of very different dimensions. We may have a habit of shrugging up the shoulders every half-hour; or, of eating three eggs every morning; or, of dining at a club once a month; or, of going down to see a relation once a year: but it is difficult to conceive any habit forming itself for a period greater than a year. I can easily conceive that a person who set off on every 1st of June, to pay a visit, might have the force of habit added to his other inducements, and go, partly because he loved the persons, partly because he had done it before;

but is it easy to believe that there is a habit of doing any thing every other year? or, how very ridiculous it would sound for two persons to say, "We agreed a long time ago to dine together every Bissextile, or leap-year, and it is now grown into a perfect habit!" This limitation of habits to the period of a year,-which I by no means lay any great stress upon, but which has some degree of truth in it,-depends somewhat upon the revolution of names and appearances. To do any thing the first day of a month, or on one particular day every year, is to strengthen a habit by the recurrence of names or seasons; but if an action be performed every third or fourth year, the same name and the same appearances have occurred, without being connected with the same deed, and therefore the habit is impaired.

The strength of habit depends partly upon the length of its duration, partly upon the violence of the cause which gave it birth. Whoever had seen any person burned to death by accident, might probably acquire an habitual dread of fire, and would certainly acquire it very rapidly; because the deep impression of the origi nal cause would multiply the number and increase the strength of the associations. The famous Isaac Barrow, the mathematician and divine, had an habitual dislike of dogs, and it proceeded from the following cause :-He was a very early riser; and one morning, as he was walking in the garden of a friend's house, with whom he was staying, a fierce mastiff, that used to be chained all day, and let loose all night, for the security of the house, set upon him with the greatest fury. The doctor caught him by the throat, threw him, and lay upon him; and, while he kept him down, considered what he should do in that exigence. The account the Doctor gave of it to his friends was, that he had once a mind to have killed the dog; but he altered his resolution upon recollecting that it would be unjust, since the dog only did his duty, and he himself was to blame for rambling out so early. At length he called out so loud, that he was heard by some in the house, who came out and speedily separated the mastiff and the mathematician. However, it is added, that the adventure gave the doctor a strong ha