not so much because they feel that their way is best, but because it is easier than
to change. Hence the great mass of us settle down on the plane of mediocrity,
and become "old fogy." We learn to do things passably well, cease to think about
improving our ways of doing them, and so fall into a rut. Only the few go on.
They make use of habit as the rest do, but they also continue to attend at critical
points of action, and so make habit an ally in place of accepting it as a tyrant.
4. HABIT-FORMING A PART OF EDUCATION
It follows from the importance of habit in our lives that no small part of
education should be concerned with the development of serviceable habits. Says
James, "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 never to be
undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar."
Any youth who is forming a large number of useful habits is receiving no mean
education, no matter if his knowledge of books may be limited; on the other
hand, no one who is forming a large number of bad habits is being well
educated, no matter how brilliant his knowledge may be.
Youth the Time for Habit-forming.—Childhood and youth is the great time for
habit-forming. Then the brain is plastic and easily molded, and it retains its
impressions more indelibly; later it is hard to modify, and the impressions made
are less permanent. It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks; nor would he
remember them if you could teach them to him, nor be able to perform them well
even if he could remember them. The young child will, within the first few
weeks of its life, form habits of sleeping and feeding. It may in a few days be led
into the habit of sleeping in the dark, or requiring a light; of going to sleep lying
quietly, or of insisting upon being rocked; of getting hungry by the clock, or of
wanting its food at all times when it finds nothing else to do, and so on. It is
wholly outside the power of the mother or the nurse to determine whether the
child shall form habits, but largely within their power to say what habits shall be
formed, since they control his acts.
As the child grows older, the range of his habits increases; and by the time he
has reached his middle teens, the greater number of his personal habits are
formed. It is very doubtful whether a boy who has not formed habits of
punctuality before the age of fifteen will ever be entirely trustworthy in matters
requiring precision in this line. The girl who has not, before this age, formed