SECOND NATURE. 17 



deeply implanted it may be in the very form and 

 structure of our nervous system — the greater 

 is the necessity for constant watchfulness against 

 its insidious attacks, and the deeper the importance 

 of guarding against it by every means that lies in 

 our power. To form a bad habit is of all things 

 most dangerous when we find ourselves already 

 prone to the habit by very nature. By way of 

 compensation, however, we may reflect with pleas- 

 ure that every temptation resisted, every weakness 

 thwarted, every active exercise of self-control en- 

 sured, helps to build up a habit of resistance, and 

 makes victory over the evil more easy in future. 

 Exactly as by frequently writing the new address 

 of the friend who has moved we learn at last to 

 forget the old one, so by frequently and constantly 

 taking the better course of action we learn at last, 

 almost without an effort, to avoid the worse. The 

 right habit becomes, as it were, a second nature ; 

 as in the case of the most upright of modern phil- 

 osophers, about whom Sir Henry Taj'lor has acutely 

 observed that he hardly seemed to be even consci- 

 entious — it appeared as though he acted right 

 under all circumstances quite automatically and 

 without the possibility of doing otherwise. There 

 are people, indeed, descended from exceptionally 

 fine stocks on either side, of whom it has been well 

 said that they are almost born *' organically moral " : 

 the impulse to act right seems in their inherited 



