X. The Alteration of Habit

X

THE ALTERATION OF HABIT

HABIT being of such enormous importance, it is our urgent duty to seek the means of forming good habits and of breaking bad ones.

How does habit become possible? For the answer to that, one must turn to the strange and awe-compelling mass of gray and white matter boxed within the bones of the skull. The brain is composed of an immense number of separate and minute cells, called “neurons.” Each is connected potentially with a number of other neurons. The points of connection are called “synapses.” We may visualize the brain as a network of delicate piping or exquisitely slender tubes, each tube containing a number of valves leading to other tubes. The tubes are the neurons; the valves the synapses. When a stimulus comes from the outside world, it sends a mysterious current, which we may envisage as the current of some fluid, like water, through one of the tubes; this forces itself out of one of the valves into the particular tube leading from that valve; this tube in turn has a number of valves, and the current forces its way out of the one most easily opened, and so on, until the current emerges finally in the form of an action. In this picture I have represented as tubes nerves as well as neurons. The tubes which send incoming messages to the brain are called “sensory” nerves; those which carry out the orders of the brain are called “motor” nerves.

If the outward stimulus is an itch, the message is carried by an adjacent sensory nerve to the brain, passes through the tubes and vale, the neurons and synapses, and emerges through a motor nerve in the form of the action of scratching. Or, the itch is discovered by some nerve in the eye to be due to a scab, which it would be harmful to scratch. This nerve sets up a counter current; other valves are opened, and others kept closed, and the action of scratching does not follow. Certain valves, or synapses, are from birth predisposed to open with particular ease. The special paths which these make possible are called instincts. The infant feeds on its mother’s breast at birth. It has had no experience, no knowledge; it may not be able to see. Yet a particular sensation awakens a particular response. The instincts we have in common. In addition to these inherited paths which all have, there are paths open in the brain at birth which vary in different individuals. These we call innate characteristics.

Now while these paths of instinct and innate characteristics are often highly useful, they are sometimes exceedingly dangerous. They need to be supplemented by experience and knowledge, which dictate the opening of new or altered paths. When a path is once taken, it wears down the valves, the synapses, through which it passes. Those valves open so much the easier thereafter, and the taking of that path becomes so much easier the next time. On the next passage of the current those particular synapses open more easily still, until the time may come when they will form the only possible path, when it will be impossible for the well-worn valve to offer more resistance to the on-rushing current than the valve seldom or never opened.

Such is the physiologist’s explanation of habit, and it is at once a despair and a glorious promise. Forming a new habit is like forging for yourself a new path in the woods, through stubborn underbrush and prickly thorns, while all the while it is possible for you to take the well-worn, hard-trodden, pleasant path that already exists. But you can reflect that every time you travel through the new path you are going to tramp down more shrubbery and clear more entanglements from the way. Every time you take the path it is going to become easier.

And that is the cheerful side. When you first set about to abolish a bad habit and establish a good one, it is going to take all the effort, all the “will-power,” at your command. But habit begins soon to take the place of will-power; it will require less and less effort, less and less will-power, each time; the strain diminishes, until in time it disappears. For the practice of that particular virtue, will-power has become almost useless. Will-power is not needed all the time. It is called for only at the period of change.

But the period of change is all-important. It is better not to be too ambitious, and not to try to change too many habits at once. Yet as soon as you find one new method of response becoming automatic, you may turn to another. You will always find another. No matter how long you live nor how diligent you are, you will never exhaust the supply of new good habits that it is possible to form, nor the supply of old bad habits it is possible to break. And all the time you will be keeping alive the faculty of effort within you. Putting forth moral effort, or failing to is itself a habit.

All this comes under the head of what William James would call making our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy, which consists in making automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. James, building on the suggestions of Bain, has laid down several maxims of habit which it would be difficult to improve upon:

The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge; if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.

In this connection let me say a word about the effect of a change of environment upon a change of habit. In our ordinary life a certain routine is laid down for us from without, and this largely controls the routine developed from within. Our hours of business and the hours at which we take our meals, the time it takes to get from the office to the home and the method that must be taken, the very arrangement of furniture in our room, all help to engender and develop and petrify certain habits. But if a break should occur in this routine, if the hours or the nature of our business should be changed, if we should move from the city to the country, a vast number of our habits would be changed perforce. Such changes in environment should be welcomed when they occur; they should be recognized and seized upon as rare opportunities for the conscious formation of new useful habits and the breaking of old bad ones. The old habits were made possible because they were unconsciously suggested by associations in the old environment. But when we change, we can no longer do some of the old things absent-mindedly, because the old responses are not suggested, and often they do not fit. Reform in our habits of rising and retiring, in the hasty or leisurely eating of our meals, and many other daily custom that determines our life happiness, thus becomes more possible. But the trouble is that most of us, when such opportunities come, fail to appreciate them, and fall again unconsciously, without deliberate choice, into habits as bad as the habits we left.

Returning to the James-Bain maxims, the second is:

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.

A German writer has remarked: “He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run.”

This leads to James’s third maxim, which is:

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new “set” to the brain. No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may posses, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

And to impress his remarks, James gives a final example:

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 fibers 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.

Oh, the pathos of telling yourself, when each new temptation arises: “I will begin to reform the next time. I will yield this time, and this will be the last.” Oh, the tragedy of that excuse! Self-deception could not possibly be more complete. If you can only tell yourself, when temptations arises, not that this time will be the last, but that the last time was the last! If you can only repeat that to yourself, if you can force your attention to rivet on that fact, if you can only realize that the whole force of your will and moral effort must be summoned now and not at some vague time in the future, if you can burn into your mind that this battle, this inward struggle against temptation, is the only real and crucial one, if you can forget about the moral struggles won or lost in the past or that you expect to win in the future, and concentrate only upon the present battle, then truly you will be on the way to will-power. And it is the only way. Moral sentiments, fine ideals, excellent mottoes, splendid resolutions, are all mere preparation for the struggle. They are all very well in their place, but if they do not express themselves in action, and express themselves at the moment when temptation has come, they are worse than useless.

There was once a man whose wife, for curious reasons, was beaten by another man. This beating occurred regularly. The other man would break into the house, flog the wife unmercifully in front of the husband until she fell unconscious, and then leave. The other man was bigger than the husband, so the husband could not fight back. But the husband bought himself a revolver. It was a beautiful revolver, with an exquisite pearl handle, and its nickel finish glistened in the sun. The husband loaded it. The other man came again, beat the man’s wife until she screamed for mercy, and left her prostrate. “But where was the husband?” you ask. He was right on the scene. “Didn’t he use his revolver?” you persist. Well, the fact must be admitted that a very strange thing happened. When the other man came, the husband was so frightened that he dropped his revolver and ran. This happened again and again. It may be said to the husband’s credit, however, that every time the beating was over, and the other man had left, the husband always came back, picked up his revolver, petted it lovingly, polished it again, pointed it with magnificent determination at an imaginary object, and said, “Ah, wait till he comes next time.”

This is a parable. It is hardly necessary to point out that the other man symbolizes the man’s temptations and cravings and baser instincts, that the wife symbolizes his better self, that the revolver symbolizes his ideals, and the cartridges his sentiments and mottoes and resolutions. In the moment when they were needed, these cartridges did not “go off,” they did not explode, they were not effective, and the simple reason was that the man did not summon the effort to pull the trigger. You need ask yourself only one question about this parable, but your answer must be honest: “Does the husband symbolize Me?”