AN ENQUIEY INTO THE FORMATION OP HABIT IN MAN. 161 



craving has been created wliicli is very strong, very maddening, 

 and very -violent, wliicli is sometliing over and above tlie original 

 liabit formed. Supposing, therefore, you have the power to undo 

 the habit, you should also have the power to undo the ci'aving 

 which has grown out of the habit : this is a veiy interesting 

 question which is partly physiological aud partly ethical. The 

 truth is that habit -may be a great blessing or a great curse. 

 Bondage, from a moral point of view, is habit, and it is the essence 

 of Christianity to undo bondage; but how does it do it? By 

 the expulsive power of new affection. It is not so much by 

 playing on the cravings as by teaching and implanting a new 

 craving, so to say, in human nature, which the psalmist put into 

 words when he said, "create within me a new heart: " and after 

 all, the wish is the thing that plays on the will, and the will acts 

 npon it, and decides whether the wish shall be accomplished or 

 not. When the new wish comes and the new moral desire begins 

 to tell, then there is a counteraciing force which is more effective 

 than a mere dealing in detail with a low habit— in fact the higher 

 overcomes the lower. I think these are che chief points to which 

 I desired to reefer. 



Mr. J. E. Jack. — It always appears to me to he a contradiction of 

 terms to speak of habits formed within us. The tendencies are 

 inside, but they must be indulged in, and given in to, to grow into 

 habits. We have certain tendencies — we indulge those tendencies 

 and give into them, and at last they liave us, and they become habits. 

 As to the point whether bad habits can be overcome, to which 

 Canon Girdlestone refei-rcd, I have one instance in my mind 

 which exactly meets the case just mentioned. Man}' years ago 

 I knew a man who was, perhaps, the greatest slave to drink that 

 it was possible to find ; he had arrived at that state that he could 

 not lift his hand to his mouth, and he would get the barmaid, or 

 anybody else, to pour the brandy down his throat. He was acted 

 on by moral influence, and he made his wife shut him in his room, 

 and went through, I suppose, the most awful mental process that 

 he could go through, and he overcame the propensity. I knew 

 him sixteen years ago and he is now reformed, and there is not a 

 more sober and upright man in London at the present day : so 

 that it is possible to overcome a bad habit such as that. It 

 seems to me that the esteemed author has rather overlooked 

 the moral force necessary to ovcicome habit. Speaking oi training 



