IX. The Omnipresence of Habit

IX

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF HABIT

THUS far I have spoken as if desires (and fears and aversions) were the sole determinants of action. We come now to something quite as important, if, indeed, it is not more important than these. While it is often determined by them, it sometimes determines them, and it often guides action with no relation to desires whatever. From the title of this chapter, the astute reader will have already surmised what I am talking about.

We may best approach the phenomenon of habit by going outside of the individual and his brain. Habit applies to the inanimate no less than to the animate world. Fold a napkin in a particular way and it is more easy to fold that way the next time. The creases in a sheet of wrapping paper become indelible. An automobile engine runs more smoothly after it has been “worked in,” and the friction edges word down. The very clothes on your back form habits; they fit you better after you have worn them for some time than when they are new; they drape more snugly to the form. The notorious difference in comfort between old and new shoes is possible because the old shoes have been worked into certain feet-conforming habits. A path across a field, be it ever so winding, becomes beaten more and more, becomes more distinct and unalterable. That is because it becomes more and more the path of least resistance. And the tendency of all bodies and forces, animate and inanimate, to follow the path of least resistance, is the secret of the formation of habit.

You assert that the field path is formed by human beings, creatures of habit, the beaten path and of ruts. I answer by the illustration of a river bed, which the water follows, though the bed twist and turn and wind. Originally it was formed by sheer accident, as the water, beginning as a spring on a hill or mountain top, bubbled up, made its way around this rock and over that, split here, joined there, washing away the gravel as it went, digging its bed deeper and deeper, more firm and more unchangeable, till at last it flowed in a full, deep, untroubled current. You have doubtless seen the bed of a spring or brook dried up at certain seasons of the year. The definition of a brook is a body of water; yet you know, though there is no water here, that this is indeed the brook, for this is the path the water will take when it flows again. The dried-up brook-bed represents what a habit is like in the brain when you are not acting upon it.

A more familiar comparison to those who live in the world created by man and not by nature is the groove in a phonograph record—silent in itself, but always ready to produce a tune, and always the same tune, when it is put on; that is to say, when the circumstances call if forth.

The omnipresence of habit is almost terrifying when one reflects upon it. From the minute a man shuts off his alarm clock on one morning, till the minute he shuts it off on the next morning, it controls him. It dictates and makes possible nine-tenths of his actions. And nine-tenths of the habits of most men are formed unconsciously. It is astounding that men should so leave this thing to chance, when it determines the very texture of their lives; yet the fact must be recorded.

A man gets up at eight because it is his habit to get up at eight, though he has set his alarm and his intentions to arise at half-past seven. If it is his habit in a vacant way to contemplate getting up for fifteen minutes before he actually does get up, that he will do every morning. When he actually gets up, habit dictates which sock shall go on first, whether shirt or trousers shall go on first, whether collar or shoes shall take precedence, which shoe shall be put on before the other, whether he begins buttoning his vest from the bottom or from the top.

At this very private stage of his toilet we shall leave him a moment for a digression. This digression is needed to point out that habit is not always evil. The same confusion of thought exists in regard to habit, and about being a “slave to habit,” that clusters around the word “Desire.” Most of the average man’s habits are not only good but indispensable. Habit may be formally defined as an aptitude or inclination for some action, acquired by frequent repetition, and showing itself in increased facility of performance or in decreased power of resistance. Less correctly but more practically, I should define habit as the doing of a thing without conscious attention and often without thought of the purpose of doing it. Most men cannot tell you how they dress, which shoe they put on first, or whether they button their vests from the top or bottom, until they first mentally rehearse the action or even until they actually do it.

As to the great blessings of habit, Dr. Maudsley says:

If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds—that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial; and he would, further more, be completely exhausted by his exertions. Think of the pains necessary to teach a child to stand of the many efforts which it must make, and of the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious of any effort.

Returning now to our typical man and his morning toilet, we follow him downstairs to his breakfast. Habit dictates what he eats, whether his breakfast is light or heavy, whether he takes a cereal or not, whether his fried eggs are turned or not. Habit has already dictated what time he usually arrives at breakfast; it must, therefore, inevitably dictate whether he shall bolt his breakfast or take it leisurely. Habit dictates whether he props his paper in front of him at breakfast or whether he waits until he boards his train. Habit dictates his table manners. Habit dictates his tone of voice to his wife. If he boards a train, habit dictates whether he shall get on the rear car or the second car from the front. Arrived at his office, habit dictates the manner in which he approaches his work, the way he handles interviews, his professional mannerisms, his tricks of gesture, his choice of words, his very manner of thinking and way of looking at things. Habit dictates the time he goes out to lunch, and the place to which he goes. Many a man with a special luncheon engagement at an inhabitable place has suddenly checked himself to remember it, after finding that his feet had mysteriously carried him right up to the very door of his customary restaurant!

Finally, when he has returned home and taken his dinner, habit dictates how he shall spend the evening. If he is in the habit of going out every night, he will feel restless and uncomfortable staying in. He will go out not for enjoyment, but because he knows not what else to do. He knows merely that the thought of staying home is intolerable. His so-called pleasures, far from spontaneous, fall into certain conventionalized and accepted activities, which may be called social habits, habits possessed by the community at large. They will differ between one country and another, between one town in the same country and another. Our man will find himself for a period going frequently out to play poker; then for another period he will find his most frequent diversion will be going to dances; for a while it will be going to the theatre or the “movies”; for another period it may be bowling; then it will be staying at home to read. Such habits change with seasons, by sheer accident, and in different periods of life. The evenings of some men are as much a burden to them as their business day. Their evening’s outing is as much a duty as earning their bread and cheese. As they dress to go out, they sigh. They are about to embark on one of the accredited methods of “having a good time”; it often does not occur to them to ask whether they are actually having it. They vaguely regard going out as a sort of necessity, like Fate. They are indeed slaves of habit.

But our man’s day is not ended. He returns home. Habit dictates the hour at which he retires, even though he has made a thousand resolutions, night after night, that he shall hereafter retire an hour earlier. In fact, the nightly resolution itself may be a habit. The resolution is usually made in the morning; for an outside influence (his employer or the relentless call of business) has pretty definitely fixed the hour at which he must arise. His manner of undressing is as definitely fixed as his manner of dressing. He puts out the light, opens the window and goes to bed. Habit dictates the position he assumes in bed, and perhaps how deeply he sleeps or fails to sleep. . .

We have pursued our typical man enough, and we leave him. There are worse than he. Absentminded persons, not accustomed to changing their dress to go out of an evening, and intending only to take off a few articles, have found themselves getting completely undressed, and proceeding to go to bed.

You who laugh irreverently at this, who boast that you are free from unthinking habit, and that you act only with thought, kindly make this experiment. Perhaps you carry your watch in your lower right-hand vest pocket, the chain across your vest, your keys or knife or ornament in the other pocket on the end of the chain. Reverse it; put your watch in your lower left-hand pocket. Now, without making any special effort either to forget or to remember that you have shifted your watch, wait until an unplanned occasion to use it arises, and see how many times you reach in your right-hand pocket for it and pull out the other end of the chain before finally a new habit is formed. Or put your watch in your upper pocket, and see how many times you reach for your lower pocket and think frantically for a moment that your watch is gone. Or shift your silver change from your trousers to your coat pocket, or from your right to your left, and see how many times the wrong hand dives into the wrong place!

Habit makes possible the acquisition of all skilled movement. The practice that makes perfect, the practice at swimming, tennis, skating, dancing, bowling, juggling, automobile driving and stunting with an airplane, is nothing more and nothing less than the formation of habit. I have learned to operate a typewriter by touch. As I write these words, I do not have to pick out the letters on the keyboard. I do not look at the keyboard. I do not even think of the letters. I think only of what I am going to say; I watch the words on the paper as they marvelously form; and my fingers, without attention from me, are mysteriously finding their way with lightning rapidity to the proper keys. Habit! And if I should start to think consciously of my fingers or the keys, I should begin to make mistakes and my speed would slow up.

If you are still not sufficiently impressed with the importance of habit, let me quote to you the words, not of a moralist given to sermonizing, but the dry scientific statement of fact by a psychologist, W.B. Pillsbury:

The useful man is for the greater part marked off from the useless and the vicious by the nature of his habits. Industry or indolence, good temper or bad temper, even virtue or vice, are in the last analysis largely matters of habit. One forms the habit of working at certain times of the day, and soon if one is not busy at that time one experiences a lively sense of discomfort. Or, on the contrary, one forms the habit of loafing all day. Work then becomes distasteful and indolent irresponsibility is established. Losing one’s temper is largely a habit, as is self control. Each time one is provoked by a trifle, it becomes the more difficult to look calmly at an unpleasant episode; while each time one remains calm under difficult circumstances, strength is gained for later difficulties. Similarly, whenever temptation is resisted, virtue gains a victory; when temptation is yielded to, new weaknesses develop. Frequent yielding makes resistance practically impossible. A bank president of established morals could no more step out and pick a pocket that was temptingly unprotected than he could fly. The habitual drunkard can no more resist the invitation to have a glass than he can resist the action of gravitation while falling freely through space. Frequent giving in has entirely destroyed his original freedom of choice.