The beginnings of habits – Sunday, July 12, 1959
We have talked in recent weeks of self-control, of the fact that every man must sometime be trusted to himself, and of the influencing of others by the living example of our lives. And now, as to some further related thoughts on this general theme: Time passes with exceeding swiftness between the time when we are very young and free and flexible until the time when thoughts and habits and attitudes become somewhat firmly fixed.
And since fixed impressions, fixed standards, and the hardening of habits are so early in evidence, the beginnings of traits and tendencies are exceedingly significant: From John Locke we would here cite some sentences on this important subject: “Parents,” he said “being wisely ordain’d by nature to love their children, are very apt, . . . to cherish their faults too. They must not be cross’d, forsooth; they must be permitted to have their wills in all things; and they being in their infancies not capable of great vices, their parents think they may safe enough indulge their irregularities and make themselves sport with that pretty perverseness which they think well enough becomes that innocent age. But to a fond parent, that would not have his child corrected for a perverse trick, but excus’d it, saying it was a small matter, Solon very well replied, ‘Ave, but custom [the habit, the tendency is no small matter].’ For you must always remember, that children [become] … men earlier than is thought. . .” 1
The beginnings—the establishment of standards, of attitudes, of tendencies,
of habits which soon harden, of departure from principle—are always exceedingly important.
William James thus summarized the subject: “Nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literalness wiped out. . .. Could the young 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…. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves it’s never so little scar… We are . . . imitators and copiers of our past selves.”2
It is true that an isolated act or instance may seem a small matter at the moment, but it is no small matter, young or old, at any age, to let a false standard get started, or to let a wrong habit harden.
1 John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education
2 William James, The Laws of Habits
July 12, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,560