107 
but experience has shown that the relation to the Jisiorj of man- 
true-always survives all the eccentricities of social 
and individual life. The whole race further secures by habit 
a permanence of moral sentiment. The phenomenal cannot 
ultimately change the true-always. 
91. Not that we should overlook, that habit is strong for evil 
as well as good : that is, if men go on in wrong-doing they 
injure their own better nature. If a departure from Habit may 
good in action takes place, there follows a deteriora- be evil as weii 
tion of character, or even a destruction of it ; and as good * 
then to the self-ruined individual the connection with the true- 
always would be well-nigh obliterated, and “ right and wrong 
be mere matters of opinion” indeed. But this 
does not refute the broad facts of human nature Yet this hin- 
. . . aers not the 
on which its science must stand. Of course, m conclusion as 
looking among the details of the whole history of import. ethlcal 
free agency, we must not wonder if we meet with 
departures from its best nature. But we judge of that 
nature itself from its best attained perfection. 
In Ethics, as in Science or Art, we properly take the best 
idea* — the most disinterested Justice attained by humanity, 
the most fearless Truthfulness, the severest Purity, the sweetest 
Benignity, the noblest Generosity ; let us seek for these in 
the moral history of our race, and we shall best find (far 
above the region of isolated opinion) that Moral Nature 
which is the reflection of the image of the Supreme, and the 
perceptible ground of the Responsibility of the finite agent. 
92. It is important to bear in mind at this point, that there 
is an accelerated ratio in the formation of character in the finite 
agent. And thus it is impossible to over-estimate the value 
of the earlier stages of a moral career. Habits may, 
however, grow, so as to injure our voluntary good- gc “ e d d 0 e' a ^° t f 
ness, for a long time before extinguishing it. Re- at^eaboi^h 
sponsibility, even when enfeebled, will remain, and 
in some degree perhaps to the very last. Question after 
question for his own practical decision will still inexorably 
present itself to the most deteriorated moral agent, though 
every new decision, if wrong, leaves him less free to virtue. 
But while he who advances in evil finds each new act is a 
new chain fettering and crippling* his moral agency, so that 
there needs little foresight to predict his coming ruin ; yet the 
man who is growing in goodness becomes also more and more 
confirmed in it. As he becomes habituated to good, evil 
actually becomes more difficult to him, and his consciousness 
and love of the Supreme Good, and his relation to the always- 
true more intense. 
