Habit bears a most momentous part in the formation and growth of character, whether for evil or for good. It is in the easy and rapid formation of habit that lies the imminent peril of single acts of vicious indulgence. The first act is performed with the determination that it shall be the last of its kind. But of all examples one's own is that which he is most prone to follow, and of all bad examples one's own is the most dangerous. The precedent once established, there is the strongest temptation to repeat it, still with a conscious power of self-control, and with the resolution to limit the degree and to arrest the course of indulgence, so as to evade the ultimate disgrace and ruin to which it tends. But before the pre-determined limit is reached, the indulgence has become a habit; its suspension is painful; its continuance or renewal seems essential to comfortable existence; and even in those ultimate stages when its very pleasure has lapsed into satiety, and then into wretchedness, its discontinuance threatens still greater wretchedness, because the craving is even more intense when the enjoyment has ceased.
The beneficent agency of habit no less deserves emphatic notice. Its office in practical morality is analogous to that of labor-saving inventions in the various departments of industry. A machine by which ten men can do the work that has been done by thirty, disengages the twenty for new modes of productive labor, and thus augments the products of industry and the comfort of the community. A good [pg 086] habit is a labor-saving instrument. The cultivating of any specific virtue to such a degree that it shall become an inseparable and enduring element of the character demands, at the outset, vigilance, self-discipline, and, not infrequently, strenuous effort. But when the exercise of that virtue has become habitual, and therefore natural, easy, and essential to one's conscious well-being, it ceases to task the energies; it no longer requires constant watchfulness; its occasions are met spontaneously by the appropriate dispositions and acts. The powers which have been employed in its culture are thus set free for the acquisition of yet other virtues, and the formation of other good habits. Herein lies the secret of progressive goodness, of an ever nearer approach to a perfect standard of character. The primal virtues are first made habits of the unceasing consciousness and of the daily life, and the moral power no longer needed for these is then employed in the cultivation of the finer traits of superior excellence,—the shaping of the delicate lines, roundings, and proportions, which constitute "the beauty of holiness," the symmetry and grace of character that win not only abounding respect and confidence, but universal admiration and love.
What has been said of habit, is true not only as to outward acts, but equally as to wonted directions and currents of thought, study, reflection, and reverie. It is mainly through successive stages of habit that the mind grows in its power of application, research, and invention. It is thus that the spirit of devotion [pg 087] is trained to ever clearer realization of sacred truth and a more fervent love and piety. It is thus that minds of good native capacity lose their apprehensive faculties and their working power; and thus, also, that moral corruption often, no doubt, takes place before the evil desires cherished within find the opportunity of actualizing themselves in a depraved life.
Chapter VIII.
Virtues, And The Virtues.
The term virtue is employed in various senses, which, though they cover a wide range, are yet very closely allied to one another, and to the initial conception in which they all have birth. Its primitive signification, as its structure[6] indicates, is manliness. Now what preëminently distinguishes, not so much the human race from the lower animals, as the full-grown and strong man from the feebler members of his own race, is the power of resolute, strenuous, persevering conflict and resistance. It is the part of a man worthy of the name to maintain his own position, to hold his ground against all invaders, to show a firm front against all hostile force, and to prefer death to conquest. All this is implied in the Greek and Roman idea of virtue, and is included in the Latin virtus, when it is used with reference to military transactions, so that its earliest meaning was, simply, [pg 089] military prowess. But with the growth of ethical philosophy, and especially with the cultivation by the Stoics of the sterner and hardier traits of moral excellence, men learned that there was open to them a more perilous battle-ground, a severer conflict, and a more glorious victory, than in mere physical warfare,—that there was a higher type of manliness in self-conquest, in the resistance and subdual of appetite and passion, in the maintenance of integrity and purity under intense temptation and amidst vicious surroundings, than in the proudest achievements of military valour. Virtue thus came to mean, not moral goodness in itself considered, but goodness militant and triumphant.[7]
But words which have a complex signification always tend to slough off a part of their meaning; and, especially, words that denote a state or property, together with its mode of growth or of manifestation, are prone to drop the latter, even though it may have given them root and form. Thus the term virtue is [pg 090] often used to denote the qualities that constitute human excellence, without direct reference to the conflict with evil, whence it gets its name, and in which those qualities have their surest growth and most conspicuous manifestation. There is still, however, a tacit reference to temptation and conflict in our use of the term. Though we employ it to denote goodness that has stood no very severe test, we use it only where such a test may be regarded as possible. Though we call a man virtuous who has been shielded from all corrupt examples and influences, and has had no inducements to be otherwise than good, we do not apply the epithet to the little child who cannot by any possibility have been exposed to temptation. Nor yet would we apply it to the perfect purity and holiness of the Supreme Being, who “cannot be tempted with evil.”
Virtue then, in its more usual sense at the present time, denotes conduct in accordance with the right, or with the fitness of things, on the part of one who has the power to do otherwise. But in this sense there are few, if any, perfectly virtuous men. There are, perhaps, none who are equally sensitive to all that the right requires, and it is often the deficiencies of a character that give it its reputation for distinguished excellence in some one form of virtue, the vigilance, self-discipline, and effort which might have sustained the character in a well-balanced mediocrity being so concentrated upon some single department of duty as to excite high admiration and extended praise. There [pg 091] may be a deficient sensitiveness to some classes of obligations, while yet there is no willing or conscious violation of the right, and in such cases the character must be regarded as virtuous. But if in any one department of duty a person is consciously false to his sense of right, even though in all other respects he conforms to the right, he cannot be deemed virtuous, nor can there be any good ground for assurance that he may not, with sufficient inducement, violate the very obligations which he now holds in the most faithful regard. This is what is meant by that saying of St. James, “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all,”—not that he who commits a single offence through inadvertency or sudden temptation, is thus guilty; but he who willingly and deliberately violates the right as to matters in which he is the most strongly tempted to wrong and evil, shows an indifference to the right which will lead him to observe it only so long and so far as he finds it convenient and easy so to do.