Form or figure, which constitutes the fourth class of quality, is a mode of the quantity of a body, being merely the particular surface termination of its extension or volume. Considered as a mode of abstract or mathematical quantity, it belongs to the domain of mathematics. Considered in the concrete body, it is the physical, sensible form, shape, or figure, of the latter; and here it may be either natural or artificial, according as it results from the unimpeded action of natural forces or from these forces as manipulated and directed by intelligent agents. It is worthy of special note that while extension or volume is indicative of the material principle of corporeal substances, the figure or shape naturally assumed by this volume is determined by their formative principle, and is thus indicative of their specific nature. This [pg 292] is already noticeable in the inorganic world, where many of the chemically different substances assume each its own distinctive crystalline form. But it is particularly in the domains of botany and zoology that the natural external form of the living individual organism is recognized as one of the most important grounds of its classification and one of the surest tests of its specific nature.[330]
79. Habits and Dispositions.—Every created being is subject to change, capable of development or retrogression, endowed with a natural tendency towards some end which it can reach by a natural process of activity, and which constitutes for it, when attained, its full and final perfection ([66]). Through this process of change it acquires accidental modes of being which help it or hinder it, dispose it or indispose it, in the exercise of its natural activities, and therefore also in the concrete perfection of its nature as tending towards its natural end. Such an accidental mode of being is acquired by a series of transient actions and experiences, actiones et passiones: after these have passed away it remains, and not merely as a state or condition resulting from the changes wrought in the subject by these experiences, but as a disposition towards easier repetition of such experiences. Moreover, it may be not a mere transient disposition, but something stable and permanent, not easily removed or annulled, a dispositio difficile mobilis. And just as it is essentially indicative of past actions whereby it was acquired, so, too, the very raison d'être of its actuality is to dispose its subject for further and future changes, for operations and effects which are not yet actual but only potential in this subject. Such an accidental mode of being is what Aristotle called ἕξις, and the scholastics habitus. With Aristotle, they define habit as a more or less stable disposition whereby a subject is well or ill disposed in itself or in relation to other things: Habitus dicitur dispositio difficile mobilis secundum quam bene vel male disponitur subjectum aut secundum se aut in ordine ad aliud.[331]
The difference between a habit (ἕξις) and a simple disposition (διάθεσις) is that the former is by nature a more or less stable quality while the latter is unstable and transient. Moreover, the facilities acquired by repeated action of the organs or members of men or animals, and the particular “set” acquired by certain tools or instruments from continued use, are more properly called dispositions than habits: they are not habits in the strict sense, though they are often called habits in the ordinary and looser usage of common speech. A little reflection will show that the only proper subjects of natural habits in the strict sense are the spiritual faculties of an intelligent and free agent.
Since all natural habits are acquired by the past activities, and dispose for the future activities, of a being not absolutely perfect, but partly potential and partly actual, and subject to change, it follows that only finite beings can have habits. But, furthermore, beings that are not free, that have not control or dominion of their own actions, that have not freedom of choice, are determined by their nature, by a necessary law of their activity, to elicit the actions which they do actually elicit: such beings are by their nature determinata ad unumn; they are confined necessarily to the particular lines of action whereby they fulfil their rôle in the actual order of things. As Aristotle remarks, you may throw the same stone repeatedly in the same direction and with the same velocity: it will never acquire a habit of moving in that direction with that velocity.[332] The same is true of plants and animals; for a habit in the strict sense implies not merely a certain mutability in its subject; it implies, and consists in, a stable modification of some power or faculty which can have its activities directed indifferently in one or other of a variety of channels or lines: the power or faculty which is the proper subject of a habit must be a potentia dirigibilis vel determinabilis ad diversa. Hence merely material powers of action—such as the mechanical, physical and chemical forces of inorganic nature, or the organic powers of living bodies, whether vegetative or merely sentient,—since they are all of themselves, of their nature, determined to certain lines of action, and to these only,—such powers cannot become the subjects of habits, of stable dispositions towards one line of action rather than another. “The [pg 294] powers of material nature,” says St. Thomas, “do not elicit their operations by means of habits, for they are of themselves [already adequately] determined to their particular lines of action.”[333]
Only the spiritual faculties of free agents are, then, the proper seat of real habits. Only of free agents can we say strictly that “habit is second nature”. Only these can direct the operations of their intellect and will, and through these latter the operations of their sense faculties, both cognitive and appetitive, in a way conducive to their last end or in a way that deviates therefrom, by attaching their intellects to truth or to error, their wills to virtue or to vice, and thus forming in these faculties stable dispositions or habits.[334]
Is there any sense, then, in which we can speak of the sentient (cognitive and appetitive) and executive powers of man as the seat of habits? The activities of those faculties are under the control of intellect and will; the acts elicited by the former are commanded by the latter; they are acts that issue primarily from the latter faculties; and hence the dispositions that result from repetition of these acts and give a facility for further repetition of them—acts of talking, walking, singing, playing musical instruments, exercising any handicraft—are partly, though only secondarily, dispositions formed in these sentient faculties (the “trained” eye, the “trained” ear, the “discriminating” sense of taste, the “alert” sense of touch in the deaf, dumb, or blind), or in these executive powers, whereby the latter more promptly and easily obey the “command” of the higher faculties; but they are primarily and principally habits of these higher faculties themselves rendering the latter permanently “apt” to “command” and utilize the subordinate powers in the repetition of such acts.[335]
Unquestionably the bodily organs acquire by exercise a definite “set” which facilitates their further exercise. But this “set” is not something that they can use themselves; nor is it something that removes or lessens a natural indeterminateness or indifference of these powers; for they are not indifferent: they must act, at any instant, in the one way which their concrete nature in all its surroundings actually demands. They themselves are only instruments of the higher faculties; these alone have freedom of choice between lines of action; it is only the stable modifications which these acquire, which they themselves can use, and which dispose them by lessening their indeterminateness, that are properly called habits. There are, therefore, in the organic faculties of man dispositions which give facility of action. There are, moreover, organic dispositions which dispose the organism not for action but for its union with the formative principle or soul: habituales dispositiones materiae ad formam.[336] Aristotle gives as instances bodily health or beauty.[337] But these dispositiones materiales ad formam he does not call habits, any more than the organic dispositiones ad operationem just referred to: and for this reason, that although all these dispositions have a certain degree of stability in the organism—a stability which they derive, moreover, from the soul which is the formative principle that secures the continuity and individual identity of the organism,—yet they are not of themselves, of their own nature, stable; whereas the acquired dispositions of the spiritual faculties, intellect and will, rooted as they are in a subject that is spiritual and substantially immutable, are of their own nature stable and permanent. Nor are all dispositions of these latter faculties to be deemed habits, but only those which arise from acts which give them the special character of stability. Hence mere opinion in the intellectual order, as distinct from science, or a mere inclination [pg 296] resulting from a few isolated acts, as distinct from a virtue or a vice in the moral order, are not habits.[338] Habits, therefore, belong properly to the faculties of a spiritual substance; indirectly, however, they extend their influence to the lower or organic powers dependent on, and controlled by, the spiritual faculties.
To the various dispositions and facilities of action acquired by animals through “training,” “adaptation,” “acclimatization,” etc., we may apply what has been said in regard to the sense faculties and executive powers of the human body. Just as we may regard the internal sense faculties (memory, imagination, sense appetite) in man as in a secondary and subordinate way subjects of habits, in so far as these faculties act under the direction and control of human reason and will,[339] so also the organic dispositions induced in irrational animals by the direction and guidance of human reason may indeed be regarded as extensions or effects of the habits that dispose the rational human faculties, but not as themselves in the strict sense habits.[340]
If, then, habits belong properly to intellect and will, and if their function is to dispose or indispose the human agent for the attainment of the perfection in which his last end consists, we must naturally look to Psychology and Ethics for a detailed analysis of [pg 297] them. Here we must be content with a word on their origin, their effects, and their importance.
Habits are produced by acts. The act modifies the faculty. If, for instance, nothing remained in our cognitive faculties after each transient cognitive act had passed, memory would be inexplicable and knowledge impossible; nor could the repetition of any act ever become easier than its first performance. This something that remains is a habit, or the beginning of a habit A habit may be produced by a single act: the mind's first intuition of an axiom or principle produces a habit or habitual knowledge of that principle. But as a rule it requires a repetition of any act, and that for a long time at comparatively short intervals, to produce a habit of that act, a stable disposition whereby it can be readily repeated; and to strengthen and perfect the habit the acts must be formed with a growing degree of intensity and energy. Progress in virtue demands sustained and increasingly earnest efforts.