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Page 20
I beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter. Perhaps
you can help our rising generation of Americans toward the beginning of
a better set of personal ideals.[B]
[B] See the Address on the Gospel of Relaxation, later in
this volume.
* * * * *
To go back now to our general maxims, I may at last, as a fifth and
final practical maxim about habits, offer something like this: _Keep the
faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every
day._ That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do
every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so
that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not
unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is
like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does
him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But,
if the fire _does_ come, his having paid it will be his salvation from
ruin. So with the man who has 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 him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the
blast.
* * * * *
I have been accused, when talking of the subject of habit, of making old
habits appear so strong that the acquiring of new ones, and particularly
anything like a sudden reform or conversion, would be made impossible by
my doctrine. Of course, this would suffice to condemn the latter; for
sudden conversions, however infrequent they may be, unquestionably do
occur. But there is no incompatibility between the general laws I have
laid down and the most startling sudden alterations in the way of
character. New habits _can_ be launched, I have expressly said, on
condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements. Now life
abounds in these, and sometimes they are such critical and revolutionary
experiences that they change a man's whole scale of values and system of
ideas. In such cases, the old order of his habits will be ruptured; and,
if the new motives are lasting, new habits will be formed, and build up
in him a new or regenerate 'nature.'
All this kind of fact I fully allow. But the general laws of habit are
no wise altered thereby, and the physiological study of mental
conditions still remains on the whole 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 conduct while in the plastic state.
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.
Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little
scar. The drunken Rip 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 morning to find himself one of the
competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have
singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the
_power 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 discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking
on arduous careers than all other causes put together.
IX. THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS
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