HABIT MAY ENSLAVE 117 



may be a vague apprehension of this deteriora- 

 tion which has rendered the British generally 

 averse from military service. There are critics 

 of our public schools who maintain that the 

 discipline which they enforce, admirably calcu- 

 lated as it is for the training of efficient soldiers 

 and administrators, cramps the lively activity that 

 is needed for success in professions or callings 

 which are less sequestered from the stressful 

 competition of the struggle for life. Habit affects 

 our ideas as well as our behaviour. It increases 

 the effect of particular impressions, memories, and 

 beliefs. Our devotion to games grows as we play 

 them ; our opinions on such subjects as religion, 

 morality, and politics are hardened into prejudices 

 which argument is powerless to assail. These 

 prejudices are commonly miscalled " ideals." 

 To compromise a point in a political or social 

 dispute, may thus be stigmatized as the " aban- 

 donment of an ideal," and is rarely possible to 

 those who have not outgrown the leading-strings 

 of habit. 



The obsession of a mental habit may spread 

 from an individual to a people which then becomes 

 overpowered by a fixed idea that may launch it 

 into a useless and unjustifiable war, or into such 

 comprehensive philanthropic resolutions as the 

 abolition of slavery. The crusades resulted from a 

 fixed idea which pervaded Europe during two cen- 

 turies. A fixed idea has the effect of a habit in 

 reinforcing the instinct which generates it, and the 

 Press, by encouraging its growth, may bring to a 

 bloody arbitrament such rivalry in progress as now 

 breeds suspicion between England and Germany. 



The tyranny of fixed ideas is strengthened if 

 the reasoning impulse is completely satisfied by 

 the vision of an accepted cause for every happen- 

 ing of life if no blanks are left to be filled by 



