THE LAWS OF HABIT. 449 



path, before one can begin 'to make one's self over again.' He who 

 every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge 

 of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. 

 Without unbrolcen advance, there is no such thing as accumulation of 

 the ethical forces possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise 

 us and habituate us in it is the sovereign blessing of regular work.''' 1 * 



A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair : Seize the very 

 first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on 

 every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the 

 habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, 

 but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and 

 aspirations communicate the new " set " to the brain. As the author 

 last quoted remarks : " The actual presence of the practical opportunity 

 alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means 

 of which the moral will may multiply its strength, and raise itself 

 aloft. He who has no solid ground to press against, will never 

 get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making." No matter how full 

 a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's 

 sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every con- 

 crete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaf- 

 fected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverb- 

 ially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we 

 have laid down. A "character," as J. S. Mill, says, "is a completely 

 fashioned will " ; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an 

 aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way 

 upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only 

 becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupt- 

 ed frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain 

 "grows" to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling 

 evaporates without bearing practical fruit, is worse than a chance lost; 

 it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions 

 from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more con- 

 temptible type of human character than that of the nerveless senti- 

 mentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensi- 

 bility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rous- 

 seau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to follow 

 Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own 

 children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I 

 mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing 

 for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some 

 actual case, among the squalid " other particulars " of which that 

 same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All 

 Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this 

 world ; but woe to work-a-day him who can only recognize them 

 when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form ! The habit of 



* J. Bahnsen, "Beitrago zu Cbarakterologic," 1S67, vol. i, p. 209. 

 vol. xxx. — 29 



