HABIT. 127 



daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, 

 energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. 

 He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around 

 h^, and when his so^er fellow-mortals^ are winnowed like 

 chaff in the blasts 



The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the 

 most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be 

 endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than 

 the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually 

 fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the 

 young but realize how soon they will become mere walking 

 bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their con- 

 duct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own 

 fates, good or e'vil, and never to be undone. Every smallest 

 stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar, 

 The drunken Eip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses 

 himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, ' I won't count 

 this time ! ' Well ! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven 

 may not count it ; but it is being counted none the less. 

 Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are 

 counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against 

 him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do 

 is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this 

 has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become 

 permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we 

 become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in 

 the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate 

 acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety 

 about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may 

 be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working- 

 day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can 

 with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morn- 

 ing, to find himself one of the competent ones of his gen- 

 eration, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. 

 Silently, between all the details of his business, the poioer of 

 judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up 

 within him as a possession that will never pass away. 

 Young people should know this truth in advance. The 

 ignorance of it has probably engendered more discourage- 

 ment and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous 

 careers than all other causes put together. 



