forte, must have been thought of by such a musician during the performance, they have passed through the mind with so much ease and rapidity, that it is impossible, or at least exceedingly difficult, to recall any of them. The reason of this astonishing facility, is partly to be explained by bodily, partly by mental causes. It proceeds from the strengthened association between the sign, and the thing signified: we read music with greater ease, and, the very instant we look at the note, and the musical line on which it is placed, know immediately to what part of the piano-forte the finger is to be carried. The other cause is merely a bodily cause the actions of the fingers become associated together; and one finger having followed the other in a certain direction, follows it ever after with much more ease. To shake on the piano-forte is extremely difficult to beginners. However desirous any one may be of moving these two fingers rapidly, the muscles obey the decision of the will will with extreme difficulty; but when the respective motions of the two fingers are completely associated, so slight a determination of the will produces the desired effect, that it becomes difficult to recollect, the very moment after, that we have thought any thing about the matter. Just so in learning to walk, or in grown-up persons learning to skate; it requires a specific resolution to put one leg before another. A skater stands tottering and trembling in his slippery career; and when he has resolved which leg he will move the next, is obeyed by that leg in a very awkward, reluctant, and mutinous manner, the very leg which, when it has acquired a great number of associated strains and postures, is to gain its master deathless reputation as a flying Mercury, and render him the envy and glory of the Serpentine.

It is impossible not to perceive in this analysis, which I have gone through, of the nature of habit, that powerful effect which it must exercise upon human happiness, by connecting the future with the present, and exposing us to do again that which we have already done. If we wish to know who is the most degraded, and the most wretched, of human beings;-if it be any object

of curiosity in moral science, to gage the dimensions of wretchedness, and to see how deep the miseries of man can reach ;-if this be any object of curiosity, look for a man who has practiced a vice so long, that he curses it and clings to it; that he pursues it, because he feels a great law of his nature driving him on toward it; but, reaching it, knows that it will gnaw his heart, and tear his vitals, and make him roll himself in the dust with anguish. Say every thing for vice which you can say,-magnify any pleasure as much as you please, but don't believe you can keep it; don't believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood, and for refreshing the faded nerve. Nero and Caligula, and all those who have had the vices and the riches of the world at their command, have never been able to do this. Yet you will not quit what you do not love; and you will linger on over the putrid fragments, and the nauseous carrion, after the blood, and the taste, and the sweetness are vanished away. But the wise toil, and the true glory of life, is, to turn all these provisions of nature-all these great laws of the mind-to good; and to seize hold of the power of habit, for fixing and secur ing virtue; for if the difficulties with which we begin, were always to continue, we might all cry out with Brutus, "I have followed thee, O Virtue! as a real thing, and thou art but a name !" But the state which

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repays us, is that habitual virtue, which makes it as natural to a man to act right, as to breathe; which so incorporates goodness with the system, that pure thoughts are conceived without study, and just actions performed without effort as it is the perfection of health, when every bodily organ acts without exciting attention; when the heart beats, and the lungs play, and the pulses flow, without reminding us that the mechanism of life is at work. So is it with the beauty of moral life! when man is just, and generous, and good, without knowing that he is practicing any virtue, or overcoming any difficulty and the truly happy man, is he, who, at the close of a long life, has so changed his original nature, that he feels it an effort to do wrong; and a mere compliance with habit, to perform every great and sacred duty of life.

LECTURE XXVII.

ON HABIT.-PART II.

BEFORE I proceed upon my present Lecture, I beg leave, in a very few words, to bring to your recollection the topics which I have dwelt upon in my last.

My first object was to show that habit was to action, what association is to thought; or, in other words, that it is associated action. I then divided habits into active, and passive: those things which we are prone to do, because we have done them; and those things which we are prone to suffer, because we have suffered them. In those passive impressions, produced upon the mind through the body, I endeavored to show that the sensibility of the bodily organ was materially impaired by repetition, but that this rule was by no means to be extended to the affections; that it was not generally true that they were weakened by habit. I noticed the pain consequent upon the interruption of habit; the uniform increase of active habits; and lastly, the diminished attention of mind; which latter circumstance I attributed, partly to the strengthened association of ideas, partly to the improved association of actions. This was the substance of my last Lecture; and I now go on to make those additional observations on habit, which I had not then time to comprehend in the discussion.

It has very often been asked when a habit begins to exist. There must be a period in its formation, when custom can have little or no influence, and when we have nothing but a temporary and casual motive for the performance of the action. When is the action habitual? when not? What is the delicate and discriminating circumstance which decides you to call that mode

of acting a habit? Nothing, for instance, is more common than to see persons beating the ground with their feet in any moment of vacancy of mind; and it easily degenerates into a habit: the first or second time after it is done, it can not be called a habit; is it so the tenth time? or when can the habit be fairly said to have established itself? It does not, I confess, appear to me to be by any means very difficult to answer this question. An active habit for any thing may be said to be formed, when we feel either a difficulty in not doing it, or a pain from its not being done; and when the principal cause for this pain, or difficulty, is, that we have done the thing often before. For instance, to recur to the previous example, you tap the floor with your foot; some one, who happens to be nervous, or indisposed, requests you to abstain: you very readily comply; and in five minutes, when the prohibition is out of your mind, begin again; and so on, perhaps, for three or four times. The proneness to do the thing, and the difficulty of not doing it, are here clear indications that the connection between the beating of the foot, and the vacant goodhumored feeling of mind, is not in you merely casual and momentary, but that the one has the strongest disposition to produce the other; and the only cause that can be alledged why they should be connected, is, that they have been connected before. You see a person drinking out of a particular mug or tumbler:-put another in its place; if they both do equally well, of course there is no habit; but if the tumbler be missed, and the other complained of, it is clear that a habit is formed: there is a connection between the act of drinking, and the idea of that tumbler, which can not be separated without giving pain. Who could drink tea out of a wine-glass, or beer out of a tea-cup, or take up wine with a spoon? The displeasure that would ensue from separating the liquid and the particular kind of vessel in which it had been customarily conveyed, is a plain proof that the habit, in each particular case, is formed. In the same manner with passive habits. A passive habit may be said to be formed when the passive impression can not be separated without pain, or difficulty, from that which preceded it;

and when the principal cause of this pain or difficulty, is the mere circumstance of their having been connected. A man is habitually peevish,—that is, in his mind; the little crosses and accidents of life are not overlooked, but strongly associated with resentment: let him attempt to separate them,-let him endeavor to take a goodnatured and forgiving view of human life; it costs him the greatest efforts, exposes him to the most mortifying failures, and is only to be acquired, at last, by very magnanimous resolution. The fish is not dressed to his liking, or a turkey comes to table when he had set his affections upon a goose. You immediately perceive a great deal of ill-temper; and whatever reasons there may be for hiding it, or whatever efforts may be made to hide it, it is still very visible. You say this man is habitually peevish, from the great difficulty he finds in separating the accidents of life from the acute malevolent feelings with which he has connected them; and for which difficulty,—as it is felt in a much less degree by the average of men, no other reason can be given, than the previous indulgence of such sort of feelings. Every one might feel a little peevish at the accidents of life; and a slight difficulty might be universally experienced in attempting to check it; but the degree of that difficulty appears to be so much greater in such instances as I have mentioned, that we determine without scruple that they are to be referred to something more than the mere original tendency of nature; and that that something more, is habit.

The period of time in which a habit renews its action, or (if I may be allowed the expression) the orbit of a habit, is of very different dimensions. We may have a habit of shrugging up the shoulders every half-hour; or, of eating three eggs every morning; or, of dining at a club once a month; or, of going down to see a relation once a year but it is difficult to conceive any habit forming itself for a period greater than a year. I can easily conceive that a person who set off on every 1st of June, to pay a visit, might have the force of habit added to his other inducements, and go, partly because he loved the persons, partly because he had done it before;