Human Physiology. 231 



bring them under habitual control, and when a passion is not 

 indulged it soon ceases to act. Men can become habitually 

 good-natured. We have but to assume the natural language 

 or manners of some virtues to come in a little while to possess 

 them. We say rightly that men are habitually honest, truthful, 

 and religious. We are instructed to acquire a habit of prayer- 

 fulness. We are told to make acts of faith, hope, and charity, 

 and these acts become habitual. The importance of forming 

 habits of temperance, self-restraint, patience, and the domestic 

 manly and womanly virtues in ourselves, and, by our influence, 

 in others, can scarcely be over-rated. Habits of chastity, of 

 continence, of keeping perfect control of all passions liable to 

 disorderly manifestations, are necessary to the peace of families 

 and society. Education should consist very largely in the 

 training or discipline which favours the formation of such 

 habits. If common soldiers, recruited from the most disorderly 

 members of the lower ranks of society, can be brought 

 into habits of order, obedience, courage, and even heroism, 

 surely everything is possible to a right system of training 

 applied to the best materials of human society. 



And why should we doubt that a perfect analogy runs through 

 all the faculties of the mind, and all the organs of voluntary 

 actions in the body. If what is true of a muscle, is true of an 

 intellectual faculty or its brain-organ, music or number, for 

 example, why should we stop there ? Why does not the same 

 law apply to all our emotions, and the highest acts of which we 

 are capable. Why may not love, devotion, conscience be 

 strengthened by exercise, and by habit become a second 

 nature? What is moral and religious training but the strength- 

 ening of our highest faculties by exercise, and the formation of 

 good habits ? 



If this principle be really universal in its application, then 

 we have the key of human progress, human perfectibility, all 

 reformation in the range of human possibilities in our hand. 



