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Chapter 32: HABIT

INTRODUCTION

THE familiar word “habit” has a tremendous range of meaning. Some of its meanings in technical discourse are so divergent from one another—as well as from the popular understanding of the term—that it is difficult to find a common thread of derivation whereby to pass from one meaning to another.

We can eliminate at once the use of the word to designate apparel, as when we speak of a “riding habit.” Yet even this sense contains a root of meaning which cannot be dismissed. Augustine points out that “the term ‘habit’ is derived from the verb ‘to have’” and Aristotle, considering the meanings of ‘to have,’ includes the sense in which a man may be said “to have a coat or tunic” along with the sense in which a man may be said to have a habit—“a piece of knowledge or a virtue.” Just as clothes are something a person has or possesses in a manner more or less fitting to the body, so habits in the psychological sense are qualities which a person has or possesses, and they too can be judged for their fitness.

This understanding of habit is conveyed in the ancient remark which has become a common expression—that “habit is second nature.” Habit is not original nature, but something added thereto as clothes are added to the body. But unlike clothes, which are added externally and merely by contact, habits as second nature are nature itself transformed or developed. In the words of an ancient poet, whom Aristotle quotes with approval, “‘habit’s but long practice, and this becomes men’s nature in the end.”

Not all, as we shall see, would grant that practice is essential to habit. Nevertheless the word “practice” suggests one notion that is common to all theories of acquired habit, namely, that habit is a retained effect—the result of something done or experienced. Within this common understanding, there are opposite views. According to one view, the acquisition of habits depends on activity. According to another, habits are modifications, passively, not actively, acquired.

The word “habit” is also used in a sense diametrically opposite to the meanings so far considered. It is the sense in which Aristotle, in the History of Animals, discusses the habits of animals, and differentiates species according to the differences in their habits. Here the word “habit” is used to signify not an acquired pattern of behavior, but an innate predisposition to act or react in a certain way. The difference between acquired habits and “the habits to which there is an innate tendency,” James tells us, is marked by the fact that the latter generally “are called instincts.”

The opposition between these two meanings of “habit” is clear. On the one hand, habits represent what, in the case of living things at least, is added by nurture to nature—the results of experience, training, or activity. On the other hand, habits which are identical with instincts belong to original nature itself—part of the native endowment of the animal. Is there any common thread of meaning in the notions of acquired and innate habit which may explain the use of the word in such opposite senses?

The familiar statement that a person does what he is in the habit of doing indicates that a habit is a tendency to a particular sort of behavior. Knowledge of a person’s habits enables us to predict what he is likely to do in any situation which elicits habitual conduct on his part. So, too, an animal’s behavior in a particular situation may be predicted from a knowledge of its instincts. Instinct and habit—or innate and acquired habits—seem to have this common character, that they are tendencies to behavior of a specific or determinate sort. They are definitely not random behavior. In the one case, the tendency is preformed, a part of the inherited nature of the organism. In the other, the tendency is somehow a product of experience and learning. In neither case does “habit” refer to mere capacity for action, unformed and indeterminate, nor does it refer to the action, but rather to the tendency to act.


THE MODIFIABILITY OF instincts by experience indicates another and more dynamic connection between innate and acquired habits. William James conceives innately determined behavior as if it were a plastic material out of which new patterns of conduct can be formed. The process of animal learning he thinks can be generally described as the replacement of instincts by habits. “Most instincts,” he writes, “are implanted for the sake of giving rise to habits, and this purpose once accomplished, the instincts themselves, as such, have no raison d’être in the psychical economy, and consequently fade away.”

Some years before the Russian physiologists Bechterev and Pavlov experimentally studied the conditioning of reflexes, James described animal learning in terms of the substitution of new for old responses to stimuli which had previously called forth an instinctive reaction, or in terms of the attachment of instinctive responses to new stimuli. “The actions we call instinctive,” James writes, “all conform to the general reflex type” and “are called forth by determinate sensory stimuli.” For example, a predatory animal, instinctively responsive to various perceptible signs of the whereabouts of its prey, may learn to hunt for its food in a particular locality, at a particular time, and in a particular way. Or, to take the example James gives, “if a child, in his first attempts to pat a dog, gets snapped at or bitten, so that the impulse of fear is strongly aroused, it may be that for years to come no dog will excite in him the impulse to fondle again.” Similarly, an animal which has no instinctive fear of man may acquire an habitual tendency to flee at man’s approach, as the result of experiences in which the appearance of man is associated with instinctively recognized signs of danger.

In the classification of animals, from Aristotle on, the instincts peculiar to each species have been used in their differentiation. In addition, the degree to which the instincts of an animal are either relatively inflexible at one extreme or easily modifiable at the other has been thought to indicate that animal’s rank in the scale of intelligence. The higher animals seem to have a greater capacity to form habits and to be capable, therefore, of modifying their instinctive patterns of behavior as the result of experience. In consequence, their behavior is both more adaptive and more variable than that of animals which always follow the lines of action laid down by instinct.

Species whose instincts are largely unmodifiable are at a disadvantage in a changing environment or in one to which they are not innately adapted. In the struggle for existence, Darwin observes, it is the organism that “varies ever so little, either in habits or structure” which “gains an advantage over some other inhabitant of the same country.” Though for the most part instincts seem to be directed toward the animal’s survival, intelligence, or the power of modifying instincts by learning, may sometimes be needed to save the animal from his own instincts.

If the lower animals are most dependent on their instincts and least able to modify them, that would seem to indicate a kind of opposition between instinct and intelligence. Darwin quotes Cuvier to the effect that “instinct and intelligence stand in an inverse ratio to each other,” but he himself does not wholly accept this view. He thinks that the behavior of beavers, for example, or of certain classes of insects, shows that “a high degree of intelligence is certainly compatible with complex instincts.” Yet he admits that “it is not improbable that there is a certain amount of interference between the development of free intelligence and of instinct.”

On this subject of instinct in relation to intelligence or reason, James seems to take a less equivocal position. According to him, “man possesses all the impulses that [animals] have, and a great many more besides.” After enumerating what he considers to be the instinctive tendencies of the human species, he concludes by saying that “no other mammal, not even the monkey, shows so large an array.” But since James also thinks that man has the keenest intelligence and may even be the only reasoning animal, he cannot believe that there is any “material antagonism between instinct and reason.” On the contrary, a high development of the faculties of memory, of associating ideas, and of making inferences implies not the absence of instinct, but the modifiability of instinct by experience and learning. “Though the animal richest in reason might be also the animal richest in instinctive impulses too,” James writes, “he would never seem the fatal automaton which a merely instinctive animal would be.”

The opposite position is taken by those who, like Cuvier, hold that the more adequate an animal’s instinctive equipment is for its survival, the less it needs free intelligence for adaptive purposes, and the less important is the role of learning and habit formation. Some writers, like Aquinas, go further than this and maintain that in the case of man, the power of reason as an instrument of learning and of solving life’s problems supplants instinct almost entirely, or needs to be supplemented by instinctive impulses of an extremely rudimentary sort—hardly more complex than simple reflexes.

What other animals do by instinct man does by reason. “Brute animals,” Aquinas writes, “do not act at the command of reason,” but “if they are left to themselves, such animals act from natural instinct.” Since in his opinion habits can be formed only by acts which involve reason as a factor, he does not think that, strictly speaking, habits are to be found in brutes. But, he adds, to the extent that man’s reason may influence brutes “by a sort of conditioning to do things in this or that way, so in this sense to a certain extent we can admit the existence of habits in brute animals.”


THE MODIFICATION of instincts in the course of individual life raises a question about their modifiability from generation to generation. The question has obvious significance for the theory of evolution.

It is thought by some that an animal’s instincts represent the past experience of the race. In a passage quoted by James, Herbert Spencer, for example, maintains that “reflex actions and instincts… result from the registration of experience continued for numberless generations.” Freud appears to hold much the same opinion. “All organic instincts are conservative,” he writes. They are “historically acquired, and are directed towards regressions, towards reinstatement of something earlier.” Indeed, he claims that the instincts of living things revert back beyond ancestral history to the inorganic. They go back to “an ancient starting point, which the living being left long ago.” They are an “imprint” left upon the development of the organism by “the evolution of our earth and its relation to the sun.”

James, on the other hand, claims that there is “perhaps not one single unequivocal item of positive proof” in favor of the view that “adaptive changes are inherited.” He thinks the variability of instincts from generation to generation must be accounted for by some other means than the inheritance of acquired characteristics, according to which the habits acquired by earlier generations gradually become, through hereditary transmission, the innate habits of later generations.

The question of their origin aside, what is the structure of instincts? In the chapter on EMOTION, where this matter is considered, instinctive behavior is described as having three components. It involves, first, an innate ability to recognize certain objects; second, an emotional reaction to them which includes an impulse to act in a certain way; and, third, the ability to execute that impulse without benefit of learning.

James covers two of these three points when he defines an instinct as “the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance”; and he touches on the remaining one when he declares that “instinctive reactions and emotional expressions shade imperceptibly into each other. Every object that excites an instinct,” he goes on to say, “excites an emotion as well,” but emotions “fall short of instincts in that the emotional reaction usually terminates in the subject’s own body, whilst the instinctive reaction is apt to go further and enter into practical relations with the exciting object.”

In the discussion of instincts from Aristotle to Freud, the emphasis on one or another of these components has varied from time to time. Medieval psychologists, if we take Aquinas as an example, seem to stress the cognitive aspect. He speaks of the sheep running away “when it sees the wolf, not because of its color or shape, but as a natural enemy.” The point which he thinks notable here is not the fact that the sheep runs away, but rather the fact that without any previous experience of wolves, the sheep recognizes the wolf as dangerous. “The sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned . . . not from deliberation, but from natural instinct.” This instinctive power of recognizing what is to the animal’s advantage or peril Aquinas calls “the estimative power” and assigns it, along with memory and imagination, to the sensitive faculty.

Later writers stress the emotional and conative aspects of instinct—feeling and impulse. James, for example, indicates this emphasis when he says that “every instinct is an impulse”; and Freud makes desire central rather than perception or action. An instinct, he says, may be described as a stimulus, but it would be more exact to speak of “a stimulus of instinctual origin” as a “need.” The instincts are the basic cravings or needs, and these instinctual needs are the primary unconscious determinants of behavior and thought.

What Freud calls “instinctual needs” seem to be the counterpart of what, in an earlier phase of the tradition, are called “natural desires.” These two notions are far from being strictly interchangeable, but they do have a certain similarity in their reference to desires which are not conscious or acquired through experience. This matter is further discussed in the chapter on DESIRE.


IF WE TURN NOW to the consideration of habit as something acquired by the individual, we find two major issues. The first of these has already been mentioned in connection with the conception of habit as a retained effect.

According to William James, the capacity for habit formation is a general property of nature, found in inanimate matter as well as in living things. “The moment one tries to define what habit is,” he writes, “one is led to the fundamental properties of matter.” He regards the laws of nature, for example, as “nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other. In the organic world, however, the habits are more variable than this.”

James attributes this universal capacity for habit formation to what he calls the “plasticity” of matter, which consists in “the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.” He cites as examples of habit formation in inorganic matter such things as the magnetizing of an iron bar, the setting of plaster, scratches on a polished surface or creases in a piece of cloth. The matter in each of these cases is not only plastic and yielding, but retentive through its inertia. “When the structure has yielded,” he writes, “the same inertia becomes the condition of its comparative permanence in the new form, and of the new habits the body then manifests.”

The habits of living things or of the human mind are to be regarded only as special cases of nature’s general plasticity and retentiveness. James does not fail to observe the difference between the magnetized bar, the scratched surface, or the creased cloth, and the habits of a trained animal or a skilled workman. The latter are acquired by activity—by practicing the same act repeatedly. Furthermore, they are not merely passive relics of a past impression, but are themselves tendencies to action. They erupt into action almost spontaneously when the occasion for performance arises.

It may be questioned whether the word “habit” should be used so broadly. Unlike James, most writers restrict its application to living things, and even there they limit habit formation to the sphere of learning. If the capacity to learn from experience is not a property of plant life, then plants cannot form habits. The same may be said of certain species of animals whose activity is entirely and inflexibly instinctive. Habits are possessed only by those organisms—animals or men—whose future conduct can be determined by their own past behavior. Aquinas, as we have seen, goes further than this, and limits habit formation in a strict sense to man alone.

This leads at once to the second issue. For those who believe that man is not specifically different from all other animals, man’s habits and his habit formation require no special distinction or analysis. They hold that human intelligence differs from animal intelligence only in degree, not in kind. No other factors, they think, are present in human learning than those which operate when animals somehow profit from experience or acquire new modes of behavior. In the great books there is to be found, however, a very special theory of habit which is part of the doctrine that man is specifically different from all other animals in that he alone is rational and has free will.

The issue about man’s nature is discussed in other chapters (ANIMAL, EVOLUTION, MAN, MIND). Here we must examine the consequences for the theory of habit of these opposing views. Do animals and men form habits in the same sense of that term? The use of the word is not at stake, for “habit” may be used in a different sense for the acquired dispositions of animals. Those who hold that brute animals and men do not have habits in the same sense acknowledge that men may have, in addition to their specifically human habits, the sort of modified instincts or conditioned reflexes which are typical of animal habit formation. Furthermore, it is recognized that human and animal habits are alike in certain respects. Both are acquired by activity and both are tendencies to activity of a determinate sort.

The question, therefore, is simply this: Does one conception of habit apply to men and animals, or does human nature require a special conception applicable to man alone? To clarify this issue, it is necessary to summarize the analysis of human habits which Aristotle and Aquinas develop more fully than other writers, even than those who share their view of the rationality and freedom of man.


THAT ARISTOTLE and Aquinas should be the authors of an elaborate theory of human habits becomes intelligible in terms of two facts.

In the first place, they consider habit in the context of moral theory. For them the virtues, moral or intellectual, are habits, and so necessarily are the opposite vices. Virtues are good habits, vices bad habits; hence, good or bad, human habits must be so formed and constituted that they can have the moral quality connoted by virtue or vice. Since virtue is praiseworthy and vice blameworthy only if their possessor is responsible, human habit is conceived as arising from freely chosen acts.

In the second place, their understanding of habit is affected by their psychological doctrine of faculties, and especially by their analysis of the powers and activities which they think belong peculiarly to man. This in turn gives a metaphysical meaning to habit, for they treat human powers and human acts as special cases of potentiality and actualization.

Aquinas bases much of his discussion of habit on Aristotle’s definition of it as “a disposition whereby that which is disposed is disposed well or ill, and this, either in regard to itself or in regard to another.” In calling a habit a disposition, Aristotle goes on to say that all “dispositions are not necessarily habits,” for while dispositions are unstable or ephemeral, habits “are permanent” or at least “difficult to alter.”

For a disposition to be a habit, certain other conditions must be present, according to Aquinas. “That which is disposed should be distinct from that to which it is disposed,” he writes, and hence “should be related to it as potentiality is to act.” If there is a being which lacks all potentiality, he points out, “we can find no room in such a thing for habit . . . as is clearly the case in God.”

It is also necessary that “that which is in a state of potentiality in regard to something else be capable of determination in several ways and to various things.” If there were a potentiality which could be actualized in one way and one way only, then such a power of operation could not be determined by habits. Some of man’s powers seem to be of this sort. His faculty of sensation, for example, functions perfectly when the sense organs have normally matured. A man does not learn to see colors or to hear tones, and so the simple use of his senses—apart from aesthetic perceptions and trained discriminations—does not lead to sensory habits. “The exterior apprehensive powers, as sight, hearing, and the like,” Aquinas maintains, “are not susceptive of habits but are ordained to their fixed acts, according to the disposition of their nature.”

In contrast, man’s faculty of thinking and knowing can be improved or perfected by activity and exercise. The words “improved” and “perfected” are misleading if they are thought to exclude bad habits, for a bad habit is no less a habit than a good one. The definition of habit, Aquinas points out, includes dispositions which “dispose the subject well or ill to its form or to its operation.” Hence when we say that a power of operation is “improved” or “perfected” by being exercised, we must mean only that after a number of particular acts, the individual has a more determinate capacity for definite operation than he had before.

A man may have at birth the mere capacity for knowing grammar or geometry, but after he has learned these subjects he has the habit of such knowledge. This, according to Aristotle and Aquinas, means that his original capacity has been rendered more determinate in its activity. It would be so even if he had learned errors, that is, even if the intellectual habits he had formed disposed his mind in a manner which would be called “ill” rather than “well.”

The difference between a man who has learned grammar and one who has not is a difference in their capacity for a certain intellectual performance, a difference resulting from the intellectual work which has been done by the man who has learned grammar. That difference is an intellectual habit. The man who has not learned grammar has the same undeveloped capacity for knowing grammar with which he was born. The man who has learned grammar has had his native capacity for grammatical knowledge developed. That developed capacity is a habit of knowledge or skill which manifests itself in the way in which he writes and speaks. But even when he is not actually exercising his grammatical skill, the fact that he has formed this particular habit means that he will be able, whenever the occasion arises, to do correctly with speed and facility what the man who does not have the habit cannot do readily or easily if he can do it at all.

It may be helpful to illustrate the same points by reference to a bodily habit, such as a gymnastic or athletic skill which, being an art, is a habit not of body alone, but of mind as well. If two men are born with normal bodies equally capable of certain muscular coordinations, they stand in the same relation to performing on the tennis court. Both are equally able to learn the game. But when one of them has learned to play, his acquired skill consists in the trained capacity for the required acts or motions. The other man may be able to perform all these acts or go through all these motions, but not with the same facility and grace, or as pleasantly, as the man whose mastery of the game lies in a habit formed by much practice in doing what is required. As the habit gradually grows, awkwardness is overcome, speed increases, and pleasure in performance replaces pain or difficulty.

Clearly, then, the habit exists even when it is not in operation. It may even develop during periods of inactivity. As William James remarks, there is a sense in which “we learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer” when we are not actually engaging in these sports. This would seem to be inconsistent with the general insight, common to all observers, that habits are strengthened by exercise and weakened or broken by disuse or by the performance of contrary acts. But James explains that his point, stated less paradoxically, means only that during periods of rest the effects of prior activity seem to consolidate and build up a habit.

The dynamism of habit formation and habitual activity is summarized, in the language of Aristotle and Aquinas, by the statement that “habit is a kind of medium between mere power and mere act.” On the one hand, a habit is like a power or capacity, for though it is an improvement on native ability, it is still only an ability to perform certain acts; it is not the actual performance of them. On the other hand, habit is like operation or activity, for it represents an actualization or development of capacity, even as a particular operation is an actualization of the power to act. That is why habit is sometimes called a second grade of potentiality (compared to natural capacity as first potentiality) and also “a first grade of actuality” (compared to operation as complete act).


ACCORDING TO THE theory of specifically human habits, habits are situated only in man’s powers of reason and will. Habits are formed in the other powers only to the extent that they are subject to direction by his reason and will. Specifically human habits can be formed only in that area of activity in which men are free to act or not to act; and, when they act, free to act this way or that. Habit, the product of freedom, is not thought of as abolishing freedom. However difficult it may be to exert a free choice against a strong habit, even the strongest habit is not conceived as unbreakable; and if it is breakable, it must permit action contrary to itself. Habitual behavior only seems to lack freedom because a man does habitually, without conscious attention to details, what he would be forced to do by conscious choice at every step if he lacked the habit.

In the theory under consideration habits are classified according to the faculty which they determine or perfect, on the ground that “every power which may be variously directed to act needs a habit whereby it is well disposed to its act.” Consequently there are intellectual habits, or habits of thinking and knowing; and appetitive habits, or habits of desire which involve the emotions and the will, and usually entail specific types of conduct. Within a single faculty, such as the intellect, habits are further differentiated by reference to their objects or to the end to which their characteristic operation is directed. For example, the habit of knowing which consists in a science like geometry and the habit of artistic performance such as skill in grammar both belong to the intellect, but they are distinct habits according to their objects or ends.

All of these distinctions have moral as well as psychological significance. They are used in formulating the criteria of good and bad habits which are more appropriately discussed in the chapter on VIRTUE AND VICE. But here one further psychological distinction deserves comment. Some of man’s acquired habits are regarded as natural in a special sense—not in the sense in which instincts are called “natural” or “innate” habits. The distinction is drawn from the supposition that certain habits develop in all men because, since human nature is the same for all, men will inevitably form these habits if they act at all. This word “natural” here applied to a habit simply means that it is common to all having the same nature.

For example, the understanding of the law of contradiction—that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time—and other simple axioms of theoretic knowledge are said to be possessed by the human mind as a matter of natural habit. If a man thinks at all he will come to know these truths. “It is owing to the very nature of the intellectual soul,” Aquinas writes, “that man, having once grasped what is a whole and what is a part, should at once perceive that every whole is larger than its part.”

The sense in which Aquinas says that “the understanding of first principles is called a natural habit” applies to the first principles of the practical reason as well as to the axioms of theoretic knowledge. Just as no man who makes theoretic judgments about the true and the false can be, in his opinion, without habitual knowledge of the principle of contradiction, so he thinks no man who makes practical judgments about good and evil can be without habitual knowledge of the natural moral law, the first principle of which is that the good is to be sought and evil avoided. “Since the precepts of the natural law are sometimes considered by reason actually,” Aquinas writes, “while sometimes they are in the reason only habitually, in this way the natural law may be called a habit.”

In a different phase of the tradition Hume regards it as an inevitable tendency of the human mind to interpret any repeated sequence of events in terms of cause and effect. If one thing has preceded another a certain number of times in our experience, we are likely to infer that if the first occurs, the second will follow. The principle which determines us “to form such a conclusion” is, Hume says, “Custom or Habit.” All our inferences from experience are “effects of custom, not of reasoning”; and since the habit of inferring a future connection between things which have been customarily conjoined in the past is, in his opinion, universally present in human nature, Hume refers to it as “a species of natural instinct which no reasoning or process of thought and understanding is able either to produce or prevent.”

Even Kant’s synthetic judgments a priori have a certain similarity to the thing called “natural habit.” They comprise judgments the mind will make because of its own nature or, in Kant’s terms, its transcendental structure. Though a priori, the judgment itself is not innate, for it arises only when actual experience provides its subject matter. So, too, the natural habit of first principles, of which Aquinas speaks, is not innate, but a result of experience.


THERE IS STILL ONE other traditional meaning of the phrase “natural habit.” It occurs in Christian theology. Habits are there distinguished according as they are acquired by man’s own efforts or are a gift of God’s grace, which adds to or elevates human nature. The former are natural, the latter supernatural.

In the sphere of supernatural habits the theologian makes a distinction between grace itself and the special habits which accompany grace. Aquinas, for example, writes that “just as the natural light of reason is something different from the acquired virtues, which are ordained to this natural light, so also the light of grace, which is a participation of the divine nature, is something different from the infused virtues which are derived from and are ordained to this light.” These “infused virtues,” like the natural virtues, are good habits—principles of operation, determining acts of thought or desire. They are either the specifically theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, or the supernatural counterparts of the acquired intellectual and moral virtues—the habits which are called “the infused virtues” and “the moral and intellectual gifts.”

Grace, taken in itself rather than in its consequences, is not an operative habit, that is, it is not a habit of performing certain acts. Nevertheless, regarded as something added to and perfecting nature, it is considered under the aspect of habit. But rather than “a habit whereby power is inclined to an act,” Aquinas includes it among those habits by which “the nature is well or ill disposed to something, and chiefly when such a disposition has become a sort of nature.” Through the habit of grace, man’s nature is elevated by becoming “a partaker … of the divine nature.”

To distinguish this kind of habit from those in the operative order, it is sometimes called an “entitative habit”—a habit of the very being of man’s personality. On the purely natural plane, health may be thought of in the same way as a habit which is entitative rather than operative. It is a habit not of thought, desire, or conduct, but of man’s physical being.


THE WORD CUSTOM is sometimes a synonym for habit and sometimes a variant with special connotations. What a man does habitually is customary for him to do. So far as the single individual is concerned, there seems to be no difference between habit and custom. But we usually think of customs in terms of the group or community rather than the individual. As indicated in the chapter on CUSTOM AND CONVENTION, the prevailing modes of behavior in a society and its widely shared beliefs represent common habits of thought and action on the part of its members. Apart from the habits of individuals social customs have no existence whatsoever. But social customs and individual habits cannot be equated because, with respect to any customary practice or opinion, there may be non-conforming individuals—men of divergent habit. The prevalent or predominant customs are the habits of the majority.

No society endures for long or functions peacefully unless common habits generate the ties of custom. To perpetuate itself, the state necessarily attempts to mould the habits of each growing generation—by every means of education, by tradition, by law. So important is the stability of custom in the life of society, according to Montaigne, that it is very unjust ... to subject public and established customs and institutions to the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy. He doubts whether any so manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let it be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it. His extreme caution with regard to changing the law comes from a preference for the stability of settled customs and from the recognition that government is a structure composed of diverse parts and members joined and united together, with so strict connection, that it is impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the whole body will be sensible of it.

Without habits of action, at least, neither the individual nor society can avoid chaos. Habits bind day to day in a continuity which would be lost if the recurring problems of conduct or thought had to be solved anew each time they arose. Without habits life would become unbearably burdensome; it would bog down under the weight of making decisions. Without habits men could not live with themselves, much less with one another. Habits are, as William James remarks, “the fly-wheel of society.”

OUTLINE OF TOPICS

  1. Diverse conceptions of habit: as second nature, perfection of power, retained modification of matter 1a. Habit in relation to potency and act 1b. Habit in relation to the plasticity of matter
  2. The kinds of habit: the distinction of habit from disposition and other qualities 2a. Differentiation of habits according to origin and function: innate and acquired, entitative and operative habits 2b. Differentiation of habits according to the capacity habituated or to the object of the habit’s activity
  3. The instincts or innate habits of animals and men 3a. Instinctual needs or drives 3b. The innate sense of the beneficial and harmful: the estimative power 3c. Instinct in relation to reason 3d. The instinctive basis of habit-formation: the modification of instincts and reflexes through experience or learning 3e. The genesis, transmission, and modification of instincts in the course of generations
  4. Habit formation 4a. The causes of habit: practice, repetition, teaching, and the law 4b. The growth and decay of habits: ways of strengthening and breaking habits
  5. The analysis of specifically human habits 5a. Habits of body: manual arts and the skills of play 5b. Habits of appetite and will: the moral virtues as good habits 5c. The natural habits of reason: innate predispositions of the mind 5d. The acquired habits of mind: the intellectual virtues 5e. Supernatural habits 1. Grace as an entitative habit of the person 2. The infused virtues and the supernatural gifts 3. The theological virtues
  6. The force of habit in human life 6a. The automatic or unconscious functioning of habits 6b. The contribution of habit to the perfection of character and mind 6c. Habit and freedom
  7. The social significance of habit: habit in relation to law

REFERENCES

To find the passages cited, use the numbers in heavy type, which are the volume and page numbers of the passages referred to. For example, in 4 Homer: Iliad, BK II [265-283] 12d, the number 4 is the number of the volume in the set; the number 12d indicates that the passage is in section d of page 12.

Page Sections: When the text is printed in one column, the letters a and b refer to the upper and lower halves of the page. For example, in 53 James: Psychology, 116a-119b, the passage begins in the upper half of page 116 and ends in the lower half of page 119. When the text is printed in two columns, the letters a and b refer to the upper and lower halves of the left-hand side of the page, the letters c and d to the upper and lower halves of the right-hand side of the page. For example, in 7 PLATO: Symposium, 163b-164c, the passage begins in the lower half of the left-hand side of page 163 and ends in the upper half of the right-hand side of page 164.

Author’s Divisions: One or more of the main divisions of a work (such as PART, BK, CH, SECT) are sometimes included in the reference; line numbers, in brackets, are given in certain cases; e.g., Iliad, BK II [265-283] 12d.

Bible References: The references are to book, chapter, and verse. When the King James and Douay versions differ in title of books or in the numbering of chapters or verses, the King James version is cited first and the Douay, indicated by a (D), follows, e.g., OLD TESTAMENT: Nehemiah, 7:45—(D) II Esdras, 7:46.

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1. Diverse conceptions of habit: as second nature, perfection of power, retained modification of matter

7 PLATO: Republic, BK III, 330a
8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 8 [8b26-9a13] 13d-14a / Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a6] 329c-330d / Metaphysics, BK V, CH 20, 544a / On the Soul, BK II, CH 5 [417a21-418a6] 647d-648d
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1 [1103a14-b2] 348b,d-349a; BK VII, CH 10 [1152a28-33] 403b / Politics, BK VII, CH 13 [1332a39-b10] 537a-b / Rhetoric, BK I, CH 11 [1370a5-8] 613b
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VIII, par 10 55c-d / Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 24, 630d-631a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 18, A 2, REP 2 105c-106b; Q 87, A 2 466c-467b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, la-6a; Q 94, A 1 22la-d
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 489c-d
27 SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet, ACT III, SC IV [160-170] 56b
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 93 190a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXXIII, SECT 6 249a-b
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 36, 464d
43 MILL: On Liberty, 269c-d
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, PART III, PAR 151, 57a
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 119b-d
53 JAMES: Psychology, 68a-83b esp 68a-69b, 73b-74a, 78b-79a

1a. Habit in relation to potency and act

8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a8] 329c-330d; BK VIII, CH 4 [255a30-b23] 340a-c / Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 1-2 570b,d-572a; CH 5 573a-c / On the Soul, BK II, CH 1 [412a22-28] 642b; CH 5 [417a21-418a6] 647d-648d; BK III, CH 4 [429a15-23] 661d-662a / On Sense and the Sensible, CH 4 [441b16-24] 679b
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1 [1103a14-b2] 348b,d-349a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 14, A 1, REP 1 75d-76c; Q 18, A 2, REP 2 105c-106b; Q 79, AA 6-7 419b-421c; A 10, ANS 423d-424d; A 12 425c-426b; Q 87, A 2, ANS 466c-467b; Q 89, A 6, REP 3 478b-d
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, QQ 49-56 la-35a passim; Q 71, A 4, ANS and REP 3 108b-109a; Q 94, A 1, REP 1 22la-d

1b. Habit in relation to the plasticity of matter

20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, A 1, ANS 6a-7b; A 6, ANS and REP 1 11a-12a
53 JAMES: Psychology, 68a-71a; 423a-424a passim; 429a-430a
54 FREUD: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 651d-652c

2. The kinds of habit: the distinction of habit from disposition and other qualities

8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 8 [8b26-9a13] 13d-14a; CH 15 21c-d / Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246a10-248a6] 329c-330d / Metaphysics, BK I, CH 1 [981b2-5] 499d; BK V, CH 19-20 543d-544a; BK IX, CH 1-2 570b,d-572a; CH 5 573a-c
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1 [1103a14-b2] 348b,d-349a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, AA 1-3 1b-5a; Q 54 22d-25d; Q 71, A 4, ANS and REP 3 108b-109a; Q 74, A 4, REP 3 13la-d; PART III, Q 7, A 13, REP 2 755c-756c; Q 9, A 3, REP 2 765b-766b

2a. Differentiation of habits according to origin and function: innate and acquired, entitative and operative habits

8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 5 [1047b31-34] 573a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, A 2, ANS 2b-4a; A 3, ANS and REP 2 4b-5a; Q 50, AA 1-2 6a-8a; A 6 11a-12a; Q 51 12a-15d; Q 54, A 1, ANS 22d-23d; A 2, ANS 23d-24c; A 3 24c-25b; Q 55, A 2 27a-d; Q 82, A 1 168a-d; Q 110, AA 3-4 350a-351d
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 54a; 66c-d; 68b
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 428a-c
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT IX, DIV 83-85 487c-488c
42 KANT: Practical Reason, 303d-304a
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 459b-461c
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 68b-69c esp 69a; 119a-d / Descent of Man, 304b,d [fn 5]; 310b
53 JAMES: Psychology, 68a
54 FREUD: General Introduction, 591d-592b; 594d-595b / War and Death, 758a-759c

2b. Differentiation of habits according to the capacity habituated or to the object of the habit’s activity

7 PLATO: Theaetetus, 518a-b
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a9] 329c-330d
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK I, CH 13 [1102a26-1103a10] 347d-348d; BK VI, CH 12 [1144a1-11] 393c-d / Politics, BK VII, CH 14 [1333a16-36] 538a-b; CH 15 [1334b8-28] 539b-d
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, 6a-12a; Q 54, AA 1-2 22d-24c; A 3, REP 1,3 24c-25b; A 4, ANS 25b-d; PART II-II, Q 24, A 5, ANS 492b-493d
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 333a-b

3. The instincts or innate habits of animals and men

7 PLATO: Republic, BK I, 320b-c
8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 8 [9a13-28] 14b / Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 5 [1047b31-34] 573a
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK I, CH 1 [487a11-488b29] 7d-9d; BK VIII, CH 1 114b,d-115b esp [588a23-589a10] 115b; CH 12 [596b20-28] 122d / Politics, BK VII, CH 13 [1332a39-b10] 537a-b
10 GALEN: Natural Faculties, BK I, CH 12, 173a-c
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK III [741-747] 39c-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 18, A 3, ANS 106b-107c; Q 59, A 3, ANS 308b-309a; Q 83, A 1, ANS 436d-438a; PART II-II, Q 40, A 3 794c-795a; Q 46, A 4, REP 2 815b-d
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, A 3 8b-9a
26 SHAKESPEARE: Henry V, ACT III, SC II [187-204] 535d-536a
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 428a-c
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT IX, DIV 85 488c
38 MONTESQUIEU: Spirit of Laws, BK I, 2b-d
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 334d-336a
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 409d-410a
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 119a-135a,c esp 119a-121a, 134d-135a,c / Descent of Man, 287d-291c esp 287d-288d, 308a-312d
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK VII, 278a-287a passim; BK XI, 499c-500c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 8a-17b esp 12b; 47b-52a esp 49b-50a; 68a; 700a-737a esp 700a-703a
54 FREUD: Instincts, 412a-421a,c esp 412b-415b / The Unconscious, 439d / General Introduction, 615b-616c / Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 639a-663d esp 651d-653a / Ego and Id, 708d-709b / Civilization and Its Discontents, 789b-791d esp 790a-d, 791b-d / New Introductory Lectures, 846a-853b esp 846a-847b, 85la-d

3a. Instinctual needs or drives

6 HERODOTUS: History, BK II, 62d-63a; 67b-c; BK III, 111d-112c
7 PLATO: Symposium, 157b-159b; 165c-166b
8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK I, CH 1 [980a22-28] 499a
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK V, CH 8 [542a17-b1] 68d-69a; BK VI, CH 18 [571b6-573a30] 97b-99a; BK VIII, CH 1 [581a21-b22] 107a-b; BK VIII, CH 12 [596b20-28] 122d / Generation of Animals, BK III, CH 1 [749b1-750a11] 290d-291b; CH 2 [753a7-17] 294a-b / Ethics, BK III, CH 11 [1118a8-18] 365a-b; BK VII, CH 6 [1149b24-1150a8] 400b-c
10 GALEN: Natural Faculties, BK I, CH 12, 173a-c
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK IV [1037-1057] 57d
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK I, CH 23 128c-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 12, A 5, ANS and REP 3 672a-c; Q 13, A 2, REP 2-3 673c-674c; Q 16, A 2, REP 2 684d-685b; Q 17, A 2, REP 3 687d-688b; Q 41, A 1, REP 3 798b-d
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XVIII [19-75] 80a-c
22 CHAUCER: Manciple’s Tale [17,104-144] 490a-b
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 61a-d; 84c-86b; PART II, 14la-b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 184a-b; 424d-425c; 512a-b
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 339b; 346a-347d; 349a-350a; 361c-362a; 402a-d; 460d-46la; 476b-477b
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 72c-73a
31 DESCARTES: Meditations, VI, 99d-103a
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART III, PROP 4-9 398d-399c
35 LOCKE: Civil Government, CH VII, SECT 78-80 42b-43a / Human Understanding, BK I, CH III, SECT 3 104b-d
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 38, 466b; DIV 45 469c; SECT IX, DIV 85 488c; SECT XI, DIV 118 504c-d
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 342c-346d passim
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 469b-470c
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, INTRO, 164b-c
48 MELVILLE: Moby Dick, 286b-288a
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 122d-131b / Descent of Man, 298a-c; 304a-314b esp 304b-305a, 308a-310a, 311a-312d; 371c-372c; 456b-457c; 583a
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, EPILOGUE I, 665a-d
53 JAMES: Psychology, 198b-199a; 700a-704a; 712b-737a esp 736b-737a [fn 1]
54 FREUD: On Narcissism, 400c-402c esp 40la-c / General Introduction, 569c-593b esp 574a-d, 590a-593b; 615b-616c; 618d-619a / Beyond the Pleasure Principle 639a-663d esp 651d-663c / Group Psychology, 669a-b; 673b-c; 684d-686c esp 685a-b / Ego and Id, 708c-712c esp 708d-709b, 711c-712a, 714c-717a,c esp 717c / Civilization and Its Discontents, 787a-788d esp 787a-c; 789b-791d / New Introductory Lectures, 837b-d; 846b-852c esp 85la-d; 883b-c

3b. The innate sense of the beneficial and harmful: the estimative power

6 HERODOTUS: History, BK I, 63b-c
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK VIII, CH 12 [596b20-28] 122d; BK IX, CH 5-6 136d-138b
17 PLOTINUS: Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 20 167d-168b
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 19, A 10, ANS 117d-118b; Q 59, A 3, ANS 308b-309a; Q 76, A 5, REP 4 394c-396a; Q 78, A 4, ANS and REP 4-5 411d-413d; Q 81, A 2, REP 2 429c-430c; A 3, ANS and REP 2 430c-431d; Q 83, A 1, ANS 436d-438a; Q 96, A 1, ANS and REP 4 510b-511b
22 CHAUCER: Nun’s Priest’s Tale [15,279-287] 457b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 286d-287b
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 456d-457a
31 DESCARTES: Meditations, VI, 100a
35 LOCKE: Civil Government, CH VII, SECT 79-80 42c-43a / Human Understanding, BK I, CH II, SECT 3 104b-d; BK II, CH X, SECT 3 141c-d; CH XI, SECT 5 144d-145a; SECT 11 145d-146a
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 337d-338a
48 MELVILLE: Moby Dick, 144a-b; 146b-148a
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 121a; 122c / Descent of Man, 287d-288a; 290c-291a; 292b-c
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK III, 11la-c; 129a-c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 8a; 13a; 708a-709a; 720b-725a passim; 729b
54 FREUD: General Introduction, 607d-609c; 612c-614a esp 613d-614a; 623b-c / Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 640d-641a / Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, 720a-721c esp 721a; 737b-738a; 75la-752b / New Introductory Lectures, 845a-846a

3c. Instinct in relation to reason

8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK II, CH 8 [199a20-33] 276c
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK IX, CH 7 [612a18-613a16] 138b-d / Politics, BK VII, CH 13 [1332a39-b10] 537a-b; CH 15 [1334b7-28] 539b-d
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK I, SECT 16 262d-263a,c
17 PLOTINUS: Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 20-21 167d-168c
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 18, A 3, ANS 106b-107c; Q 59, A 3, ANS 308b-309a; Q 76, A 5, REP 4 394c-396a; Q 78, A 4, ANS and REP 4-5 411d-413d; Q 83, A 1, ANS 436d-438a; Q 96, A 1, REP 4 510b-511b; PART I-II, Q 12, A 5, ANS and REP 3 672a-c; Q 17, A 2, REP 3 687d-688b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, A 3 8b-9a
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 216b-219b
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 428a-c
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 108 128d
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART V, 59d-60b / Objections and Replies, 156a-d
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART III, PROP 9, SCHOL 399c
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 339-344 233a-b / The Vacuum, 357a-b
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 38, 466b; DIV 45 469c; SECT IX, DIV 85 488c; SECT XII, DIV 118-119 504c-505b
38 ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, BK I, 393b-c
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 409d-410a
42 KANT: Fund. Prin. Metaphysic of Morals, 256d-257a / Practical Reason, 316c-317a / Judgement, 602b,d [fn 1]
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 465a-b
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, INTRO, 164b-c; 171b-c; PART IV, 361c-d

3d. The modification of instincts and reflexes through experience or learning

9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK IV, CH 9 [536b14-20] 63b; BK IX, CH 49 156d-157a / Politics, BK VII, CH 13 [1332a39-b10] 537a-b
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK III [307-322] 34a-b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, A 3, REP 2 8b-9a
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 38, 466b; DIV 45 469c; SECT IX, DIV 83-85 487c-488c esp DIV 85 488c
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, ADDITIONS, 97, 132c-133a
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 288b; 290c-291c; 293d-295c; 298a-c; 317c-319a; 569c-571b passim, esp 570a; 592d-593b
53 JAMES: Psychology, 8b-9a; 13a-17b esp 17a; 44a-52b esp 49b-50a; 705a-712b; 718a; 720a-b; 725a; 732b-735b; 827a-835a esp 834a-835a
54 FREUD: Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, 15d-18a / On Narcissism, 407c-408a / Instincts, 415b-421a,c esp 415d-418a / Repression, 422a-423b / General Introduction, 574d-575d; 587d-588b; 590c-593b esp 592b-c / Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 640c / Group Psychology, 693b-695c esp 693d-694b / War and Death, 757a-759d / Civilization and Its Discontents, 781a-d / New Introductory Lectures, 847a-b; 870a-b

3e. The genesis, transmission, and modification of instincts in the course of generations

12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK II [661-668] 23b-c; BK III [741-753] 39c-d
42 KANT: Judgement, 580a-b
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 82d-85c; 111a; 119a-135a,c esp 121b-122d, 131c-134d; 236d-237a / Descent of Man, 288b-c; 292c; 304b,d [fn 5]; 318a-319a passim; 504c-507a esp 506c-507a
53 JAMES: Psychology, 691a-b; 717a-725a passim, esp 718b, 724a, 724b-725a; 851b; 853a-858a; 890b-897a
54 FREUD: Instincts, 413b-c / General Introduction, 591d-592b; 594d-595b; 613a / Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 651d-654c; 660c / Ego and Id, 707c-708b / War and Death, 758d

4. Habit formation

4a. The causes of habit: practice, repetition, teaching, and the law

7 PLATO: Republic, BK III, 330a; 333b-d / Theaetetus, 518a-b
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a6] 329c-330d / Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 5 [1047b31-34] 573a; CH 8 [1049b29-1050a3] 575c-d / On the Soul, BK II, CH 5 [417a21-418a6] 647d-648d
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK VIII, CH 1 [581b11-22] 107b; BK VIII, CH 29 [607a9-13] 132c / Ethics, BK II, CH 1-4 348b,d-351b passim; BK III, CH 5 [1114a3-10] 360a; CH 12 [1119a22-34] 365d-366a / Politics, BK II, CH 8 [1269a14-23] 465b; BK VII, CH 15 [1334b8-28] 539b-d; BK VIII, CH 1 [1337a19-27] 542b; CH 5 [1339a21-25] 544c-d / Rhetoric, BK I, CH 10 [1369b6-8] 612d
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK II, CH 18 16la-162b; BK III, CH 3, 179d; CH 8 184b-c
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK V, SECT 16 271c-d
14 PLUTARCH: Pericles, 121a-122b
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VIII, par 10 55c-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 86, A 2, ANS 462a-463a; Q 89, A 6, REP 3 478b-d
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 51, 12a-15d; Q 54, A 4, REP 1,3 25b-d; Q 92, A 1 213c-214c; A 2, REP 4 214d-215a,c; Q 95, A 3 228c-229b; Q 96, AA 2-3 231c-233a
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XVI [85-114] 77d-78a
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 154d-155a
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 16c-d; 42b-44c; 64a-b; 534a-c
27 SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet, ACT III, SC IV [160-170] 56b
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 78d-79c
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART V, PROP 10, SCHOL 455a-456a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXI, SECT 71 197b-198a; CH XXXIII, SECT 5-18 248d-251c passim
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 35-36, 464c-d; DIV 38, 466b
42 KANT: Practical Reason, 357c-360d
43 FEDERALIST: NUMBER 27, 95c-d
43 MILL: Representative Government, 329d-330a
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, ADDITIONS, 97, 132c-133a / Philosophy of History, PART II, 251b
53 JAMES: Psychology, 70a-73b; 332a; 57la-b
54 FREUD: General Introduction, 573d

4b. The growth and decay of habits: ways of strengthening and breaking habits

7 PLATO: Theaetetus, 518a-b
8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 8 [10b26-11a4] 15d-16a
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1-4 348b,d-351b passim; BK VII, CH 10 [1152a28-33] 403b
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK I, CH 27 132b-133b; BK II, CH 18 16la-162b; BK III, CH 12 187b-188b
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK V, SECT 16 271c-d
17 PLOTINUS: Sixth Ennead, TR III, CH 20, 293a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, QQ 52-53 15d-22d; Q 54, A 4, REP 1,3 25b-d
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 64a-b; 390b-c; 391c-393b; 395b-396d; 525d-527a
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 69a; 69d-70a; 79b-c; 80a-b
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART III, 48b-49d
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 6 173a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXI, SECT 71 197b-198a
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 464a-d
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 259a
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 309c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 79b-83b; 332a

5. The analysis of specifically human habits

8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a6] 329c-330d
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1-6 348b,d-352d passim
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, QQ 49-54 la-25d
31 DESCARTES: Rules, 1la-2a
53 JAMES: Psychology, 73b-83b

5a. Habits of body: manual arts and the skills of play

7 PLATO: Protagoras, 46c / Republic, BK III, 334a-335b; BK VII, 391d / Theaetetus, 518a-b / Laws, BK VII, 717b-d
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-b19] 329c-330a / On the Heavens, BK II, CH 12 [292a14-a18] 383d-384b / Metaphysics, BK V, CH 20 [1022b10-13] 544a
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1 [1103a33-35] 348d; [1103b6-13] 349a / Politics, BK IV, CH 1 [1288b10-20] 487a-b; BK VII, CH 15 [1334b7-28] 539b-d; CH 17 [1336a3-22] 54la-b; BK VIII, CH 4 544a-c
10 HIPPOCRATES: On the Articulations, PAR 52 109b-110a; PAR 55, 111c; PAR 58 112b-113a / Aphorisms, SECT II, PAR 49-50 133d
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK III, CH 15, 190a-c
13 VIRGIL: Aeneid, BK IX [590-620] 295a-b
14 PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, 40d-42a / Coriolanus, 175b / Philopoemen, 293d-294a / Demosthenes, 693c; 695b
17 PLOTINUS: Third Ennead, TR I, CH 8, 87a-b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, A 2, REP 1,3 2b-4a; A 3, REP 3 4b-5a; A 4, ANS 5a-6a; Q 50, A 1 6a-7b; A 3, REP 2 8b-9a; Q 52, A 1, ANS 15d-18a; A 2, ANS 18a-19a; Q 54, A 1, ANS 22d-23d
24 RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel, BK I, 28a-29b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 43d; 66c-67a; 73c; 316b-c
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 53d-54a
36 SWIFT: Gulliver, PART IV, 166b-167a
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 335a-b
39 SMITH: Wealth of Nations, BK I, 53a; BK V, 337d-338a
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 5a-b
42 KANT: Judgement, 586a-b
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, PART I, PAR 52, 25c / Philosophy of History, PART III, 267b-268b
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 269b-271a; 278c-d
50 MARX: Capital, 164b-167a; 170c-171a; 237d-240c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 73b-78b esp 75a; 332a; 774a

5b. Habits of appetite and will: the moral virtues as good habits

8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b20-247a19] 330a-b
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK VIII, CH 1 [581b11-22] 107b / Ethics, BK II, CH 1-6 348b,d-352d; BK VII, CH 5 [1148b15-1149a4] 399a-c; CH 10 [1152a28-33] 403b / Politics, BK VII, CH 15 [1334b8-28] 539b-d
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK III, CH 3 178d-180a; CH 8 184b-c; BK IV, CH 1 213a-223d
14 PLUTARCH: Cato the Younger, 637b-c
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VIII, par 10 55c-d; par 20-21 58c-59a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, A 1, REP 3 1b-2b; A 2, REP 3 2b-4a; Q 50, A 3 8b-9a; A 5 10b-d; Q 56, A 4 32b-33c; A 6 34b-35a; QQ 58-61 41a-59d; Q 94, A 1, REP 1 22la-d
27 SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet, ACT III, SC IV [160-170] 56b
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 69d-70a; 78d-81c esp 79a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXI, SECT 71 197b-198a
42 KANT: Practical Reason, 357c-360d / Pref. Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, 368d; 378a-b / Judgement, 521b-523c; 604d-606d esp 606a-d
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 445d-446a; 463d-465b
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 386a
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, INTRO, 171b-c
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 304a-305c esp 304b,d [fn 5]; 310c-319a esp 31lc-d, 318a-319a; 321b-322d; 593a-b
53 JAMES: Psychology, 80a-83b; 798b-808a passim, esp 799a-b
54 FREUD: War and Death, 757c-759d

5c. The natural habits of reason: innate predispositions of the mind

8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK I, CH 1 [980a22-28] 499a; BK IV, CH 3 [1005b15-34] 524d-525a; BK XI, CH 5 [1061b34-1062a5] 590a-b
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK VI, CH 11 [1143a25-b13] 392d-393a / Rhetoric, BK I, CH 1 [1355a14-17] 594b
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK I, CH 22 127c-128c; BK II, CH 11 150a-151b
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK IV, SECT 4 264a
17 PLOTINUS: First Ennead, TR III, CH 1-3 10a-11a; TR VIII, CH 9, 3lc
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 16, A 6, REP 1 98b-d; Q 18, A 3, ANS 106b-107c; Q 79, AA 12-13 425c-427a; PART I-II, Q 1, A 4, REP 2 612a-613a; A 5, ANS 613a-614a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 51, A 1, ANS and REP 1-2 12b-13c; Q 53, A 1, ANS 19d-21a; Q 94, A 1 221a-d; PART III, Q 9, A 1, ANS 763b-764c
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XVI [73-81] 77c-d; XVIII [19-21] 80a; [49-66] 80b-c
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 54a; 60a-b; 86b-d
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 59c-d, 60c-61c / Novum Organum, BK I, APH 48 110d-111a
31 DESCARTES: Rules, I, la-b; IV, 5c-d; VII, 13c-d / Discourse, PART I, 41b; PART V, 54c / Objections and Replies, 224b,d
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART IV, PROP 19 429d
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 1, 171a; 81 186b / Geometrical Demonstration, 440b
35 LOCKE: Civil Government, CH I, SECT 5-8 26a-27a / Human Understanding, BK I, 95b,d-121a,c passim
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 38, 466b; DIV 45 469c; SECT XII, DIV 118 504c-d
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 20a; 48a-c; 58c-59b; 66d-72c esp 67c-69c; 109b-c; 157d; 229b-c; 234c / Judgement, 562a-564c; 604d-606d esp 606a-d
43 FEDERALIST: NUMBER 31, 103c-d
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 445d-446a; 465a-b; 469b-470c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 851a-890a esp 851a-852a, 879b-882a, 889a-b

5d. The acquired habits of mind: the intellectual virtues

7 PLATO: Theaetetus, 518b; 542a-c
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [247b1-248a9] 330b-d; BK VIII, CH 4 [255a30-b23] 340a-c / Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 5 [1047b31-34] 573a; CH 8 [1049b32-1050a3] 575c-d / On the Soul, BK II, CH 5 [417a21-418a6] 647d-648d / On Memory and Reminiscence, CH 2 [451a10-452a6] 693a-694b
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK VI 387a-394d / Politics, BK VII, CH 15 [1334b8-28] 539b-d
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK III, CH 3 178d-180a; CH 8 184b-c; BK IV, CH 1, 216c-223d
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK III, SECT 4 260b-26la; BK V, SECT 16 271c-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 14, A 1, REP 1-2 75d-76c; Q 79, AA 6-7 419b-421c; A 10, ANS 423d-424d; Q 86, A 2, ANS 462a-463a; Q 87, A 2, REP 2-3 466c-467b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, A 1, REP 3 1b-2b; A 2, REP 3 2b-4a; Q 50, A 3, REP 3 8b-9a; A 4 9a-10b; Q 51, A 3 14b-15a; Q 52, A 1, ANS 15d-18a; A 2, ANS 18a-19a; Q 53, A 1, ANS and REP 2-3 19d-2la; A 3, ANS and REP 3 21d-22d; Q 54, A 4, REP 3 25b-d; QQ 57-58 35a-45c; Q 64, A 3 68b-69b
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 54a; 60a-b; 66c-68c
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 26a-27a
31 DESCARTES: Rules, 1la-2a / Discourse, PART I, 41b,d
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART IV, PROP 25-28 430d-431c; PART V, PROP 10, SCHOL 455a-456a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH IX, SECT 8-10 139b-140b; CH XXXIII, SECT 5-18 248d-251c passim; BK IV, CH I, SECT 8-9 308b-309b
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 35-38 464c-466c; DIV 40, 467c; DIV 44 468d-469c; SECT VII, DIV 59-61 476b-478a passim; SECT IX, DIV 83-84 487c-488b
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 347a-b
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 223a-d
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 135c-136a
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, ADDITIONS, 97, 132c-133a
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 320b-321a passim; 593a
53 JAMES: Psychology, 83b; 295b-298a esp 296b; 331b-336a; 361a-380a passim; 427b-430a; 433a-434a esp 434a; 502a-507a esp 504a; 520a-526b esp 520b, 524a-525a; 555a-557b passim; 852b-853a; 860b-862a

5e. Supernatural habits

5e(1) Grace as an entitative habit of the person

20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, A 2, ANS 7c-8a; Q 51, A 4 15a-d; Q 82, A 1 168a-d; Q 110 347d-351d

5e(2) The infused virtues and the supernatural gifts

OLD TESTAMENT: I Kings, 3:5-15; 4:29-34—(D) III Kings, 3:5-15; 4:29-34 / I Chronicles, 22:12—(D) I Paralipomenon, 22:12 / II Chronicles, 1:7-12—(D) II Paralipomenon, 1:7-12 / Job, 32:8 / Psalms, 119:34-40,73,125,130,144,169—(D) Psalms, 118:34-40,73,125,130,144,169 / Proverbs, 2 esp 2:6 / Ecclesiastes, 2:26 / Isaiah, 11:2-5—(D) Isaias, 11:2-5 / Daniel, 1 esp 1:17; 2:20-23
APOCRYPHA: Wisdom of Solomon, 3:9; 7:7,22; 8:7,21; 9—(D) OT, Book of Wisdom, 3:9; 7:7,22; 8:7,21; 9 / Ecclesiasticus, 1:1,5,10; 11:15; 15:5; 24:24-28; 43:33; 50:29; 51:17—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 1:1,5,10; 11:15; 15:5; 24:34-38; 43:37; 50:31; 51:22-23
NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, 6:33 / Acts, 2:1-21 / I Corinthians, 1:30; 2; 12:4-11 / Ephesians, 1:16-18; 4:17-5:21 / Philippians, 3:9 / James, 1:5-7,17; 3:13-18 / II Peter, 1:1-10
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 51, A 4 15a-d; Q 55, A 4, ANS and REP 6 28c-29d; Q 63, AA 3-4 65a-66c; Q 68 87c-96c esp A 3 90d-91b; Q 100, A 12, ANS and REP 3 264d-265d; Q 110, A 3, ANS and REP 3 350a-d; A 4, REP 1 350d-351d; PART II-II, QQ 8-9 416d-426c; Q 19 465a-474d; Q 45 598c-603c
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 57c; PART II, 176d-177b; PART IV, 270c-d

5e(3) The theological virtues

OLD TESTAMENT: Psalms, 22; 25; 71—(D) Psalms, 21; 24; 70 / Proverbs, 3:1-26 / Isaiah, 40:31—(D) Isaias, 40:31 / Jeremiah, 39:18—(D) Jeremias, 39:18
APOCRYPHA: Wisdom of Solomon, 3:9—(D) OT, Book of Wisdom, 3:9 / Ecclesiasticus, 2:6-9; 13:14—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 2:6-10; 13:18
NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, 9:20-22,27-30; 15:22-28; 17:14-21 esp 17:19-21; 19:16-23 esp 19:21—(D) Matthew, 9:20-22,27-30; 15:22-28; 17:14-20 esp 17:18-20; 19:16-23 esp 19:21 / Mark, 9:17-27 esp 9:23-24—(D) Mark, 9:16-26 esp 9:22-23 / Luke, 17:5-6 / John, 14:21; 20:20-29 / Romans, 1:5,16-17; 3:20-5:9; 8:24-25; 10 / I Corinthians, 13 / Galatians, 5:5-6 / Ephesians, 2:1-10 / Colossians, 1:1-8 / I Thessalonians, 5:8 / Hebrews, 6; 11 / James, 2:14-26 / I Peter, 1:5-8 / I John / II John / III John
18 AUGUSTINE: City of God, BK X, CH 3 300b-301a; BK XXI, CH 16 573b-574a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 51, A 4 15a-d; Q 58, A 3, REP 3 43b-44a; Q 62 59d-63a; Q 63, A 3 65a-d; Q 64, A 4 69b-70a; Q 67, AA 3-6 83b-87c; Q 110, A 3, REP 1 350a-d; A 4, ANS 350d-351d; PART II-II, Q 23 482c-489c
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PARADISE, XXIV [1]-XXVI [81] 142d-146c
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 149c-d; PART III, 241c-242a
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 2c-4c
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK XII [576-605] 331b-332a

6. The force of habit in human life

OLD TESTAMENT: Job, 20:11-13 / Proverbs, 22:6 / Jeremiah, 13:23—(D) Jeremias, 13:23
6 HERODOTUS: History, BK I, 35c-d; BK III, 97d-98a; BK IV, 137a-138c
7 PLATO: Laws, BK VII, 716a-b; 717d-718d
8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK II, CH 3 [994b31-995a6] 513c
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1-6 348b,d-352d passim, esp CH 1 [1103b22-25] 349b; BK VII, CH 5 [1148b15-1149a4] 399a-c; CH 10 [1152a28-33] 403b / Rhetoric, BK I, CH 10 [1368b28-1369a27] 612a-613a esp [1369a1-7] 612a-b, [1369b6-8] 612d, [1369b16-19] 612d-613a
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK III [307-322] 34a-b
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VIII, par 23 50b-c; BK VIII, par 18 57d-58a; par 25-26 60a-b / Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 24 630c-631a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, AA 3-4 4b-6a
23 MACHIAVELLI: Prince, CH XXV, 35d
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 16c-d; 42b-43d; 63d-64b; 307c-308a; 316b-c; 390b-c; 391c-393b; 395b-396d; 489b-490c; 524b-527a
28 HARVEY: Motion of the Heart, 285b-c
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART III, 48b-49d
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 6 173a
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 35-36 464c-465c; DIV 44-45, 469b-c
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 347a-b
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 464d
41 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 125a
43 FEDERALIST: NUMBER 27, 95c-d
43 MILL: Representative Government, 370c-d / Utilitarianism, 464a-d
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 259a
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 308b, 317b-d
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK III, 150c; BK VI, 244a-b; BK VIII, 303a-305b; BK XI, 486a; BK XII, 556d-557a; BK XIV, 609d; BK XV, 639c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 73b-83b
54 FREUD: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 643d-646a esp 645b-646a

6a. The automatic or unconscious functioning of habits

8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 8 [8b26-9a13] 13d-14a
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK VII, CH 10 [1152a28-33] 403b / Rhetoric, BK I, CH 11 [1370a5-8] 613b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 49, A 2 2b-4a; Q 109, A 8, ANS 344d-346a
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 307c-308a; 316b-c
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH IX, SECT 8-10 139b-140b passim
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 464a-b
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 119b
53 JAMES: Psychology, 3b; 73b-78b; 93a; 295b-298a esp 296b; 774a; 788a-789a esp 788b-789a; 790b-791a; 810a-b
54 FREUD: General Introduction, 455b

6b. The contribution of habit to the perfection of character and mind

OLD TESTAMENT: Proverbs, 22:6 / Jeremiah, 13:23—(D) Jeremias, 13:23
APOCRYPHA: Ecclesiasticus, 30:8—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 30:8
5 EURIPIDES: Suppliants [857-917] 266a-b
6 THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War, BK II, 396d-397a
7 PLATO: Republic, BK III, 330a-331c; 333b-d; BK VI, 389d-390b; 391c-d / Timaeus, 474d-475d / Theaetetus, 518b / Laws, BK II, 653a-c
8 ARISTOTLE: Categories, CH 10 [13a16-31] 18d / Physics, BK VII, CH 3 [246b10-248a6] 329c-330d
9 ARISTOTLE: History of Animals, BK VIII, CH 1 [581b11-22] 107b / Ethics, BK I, CH 4 [1095b4-13] 340c-d; CH 9 345a-c; BK II, CH 1-6 348b,d-352d passim, esp CH 1 [1103b22-25] 349b; BK III, CH 5 [1114a3-10] 360a; BK X, CH 9 [1179b33-1180b32] 434a-435a / Politics, BK IV, CH 11 [1295b14-18] 495d; BK VII, CH 13 [1332a39-b10] 537a-b; CH 15 [1334b8-28] 539b-d; CH 17 [1336b40-1337a8] 541c-542a
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK I, CH 4 108d-110a; BK II, CH 18 161a-162b; BK III, CH 3 178d-180a; CH 12 187b-188b; BK IV, CH 1 213a-223d; CH 9 237d-238d
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK III, SECT 4 260b-261a; BK V, SECT 16 27lc-d; BK XI, SECT 26 306b
18 AUGUSTINE: Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 9-10 627a-b; CH 24, 630d-631a
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 50, AA 4-5 9a-10d; Q 63, A 2 64b-65a; Q 92, A 1, REP 1 213c-214c; A 2, REP 4 214d-215a,c
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 42b-43d; 63d-64b; 176c-177a; 202d-203a; 390b-c; 391c-393b; 525d-527a
30 BACON: Advancement of Learning, 69a-70a; 78d-81c
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART I, 41b; PART II, 45b-46c; PART III, 48b-49d
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXI, SECT 71 197b-198a; CH XXXIII, SECT 8 249c-d
35 HUME: Human Understanding, SECT V, DIV 44-45, 469b-c; SECT IX, DIV 83-84 487c-488b
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 347a-b
39 SMITH: Wealth of Nations, BK I, 7d-8b
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 223a-d / Pref. Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, 368d
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 464a-d
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 259a
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, ADDITIONS, 96-97 132c-133a
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 305a; 310d-314a passim, esp 313d-314a; 322a; 322d; 592b-593b esp 593a
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK I, 47b-48d; BK IX, 369c-d; BK XIV, 605b-d
53 JAMES: Psychology, 78b-83b esp 81b-83b; 331b-332b; 433a-434a; 711b-712a; 751b-752a; 760a-b
54 FREUD: War and Death, 757d-759d / New Introductory Lectures, 844b-c; 870a-b

6c. Habit and freedom

18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VIII, par 10 55c-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 83, A 1, REP 5 436d-438a; A 2, ANS 438a-d
38 MONTESQUIEU: Spirit of Laws, BK XIX, 142a
42 KANT: Pref. Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, 378a-b
43 MILL: Utilitarianism, 464a-d
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, ADDITIONS, 97, 132c-133a / Philosophy of History, INTRO, 171b-172b
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 288b-d
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK V, 221b-d
52 DOSTOEVSKY: Brothers Karamazov, BK VI, 164b-d
53 JAMES: Psychology, 74a-78b; 80a

7. The social significance of habit: habit in relation to law

6 HERODOTUS: History, BK I, 35c-d; BK III, 97d-98a; BK IV, 137a-138c
6 THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War, BK I, 396d-397a
7 PLATO: Republic, BK IV, 344b-345d; BK VII, 40lc-d / Laws, BK VII, 713c-714c; 716a-b; 717d-718d
8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK II, CH 3 [994b31-995a14] 513c
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK II, CH 1 [1103b3-6] 349a; BK V, CH 1 [1129b19-24] 377a; BK X, CH 9 [1179b33-1180b32] 434a-435a / Politics, BK II, CH 8 [1269a14-23] 465b; BK V, CH 9 [1310a15-18] 512b-c; BK VII, CH 13 [1332a27-b10] 537a-b; BK VIII, CH 1 [1337a19-27] 542b; CH 5 [1339a21-25] 544c-d
14 PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, 38c; 48a-c / Lycurgus-Numa, 63d-64a
15 TACITUS: Annals, BK III, 57d-58b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 92, A 1 213c-214c; A 2, REP 4 214d-215a,c; Q 94, A 1 22la-d; Q 95, A 3 228c-229b; Q 96, AA 2-3 231c-233a; Q 97, A 2 236d-237b; Q 100, A 12 264d-265d; Q 106, A 2 322b-323a
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XVI [85-114] 77d-78a
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 42b-51a; 131b-132a; 463b-d
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 41-43 109c-110a
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART II, 45b-46c; PART III, 48b-49d
36 STERNE: Tristram Shandy, 380a
38 MONTESQUIEU: Spirit of Laws, BK VI, 39a; BK X, 65c; BK XIV, 106b; BK XIX, 135a-142a; BK XXIII, 197c-198a
38 ROUSSEAU: Inequality, 324d; 347a-b / Social Contract, BK II, 402b-c; 406c-d; BK IV, 434b-435a
39 SMITH: Wealth of Nations, BK I, 7d-8b
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 464d
41 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 125a; 227b
42 KANT: Intro. Metaphysic of Morals, 383a-b
43 FEDERALIST: NUMBER 27, 95c-d
43 MILL: On Liberty, 305b-312a passim / Representative Government, 329d-330a; 330d-33la / Utilitarianism, 464c-d
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, PART III, PAR 151-152 57a-b; ADDITIONS, 97 132c-133a / Philosophy of History, PART III, 271d-272d; PART IV, 365b-c
49 DARWIN: Descent of Man, 305a; 317b-d
50 MARX: Capital, 235a-236c
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK VIII, 303a-305b; BK XI, 499c-500c
53 JAMES: Psychology, 79b-80a

CROSS-REFERENCES

For terms of fundamental relevance to the conception of habit, see BEING 7c-7c(3); MATTER 2a; MIND 2b; NATURE 2c.

For the psychological analysis of the faculties or powers in which habits are situated, see ANIMAL 1a-1a(3); LIFE 3; MAN 4-4d; SOUL 2c-2c(3); VIRTUE AND VICE 2a.

For other discussions of instinct, see ANIMAL 1d; DESIRE 3a; EMOTION 1c; EVOLUTION 3b; SENSE 3d(3).

For consideration of the factors involved in the formation or breaking of habits, see EDUCATION 3-6; LAW 6d; VIRTUE AND VICE 4-4d(4).

For the role of habit in the theory of virtue, see VIRTUE AND VICE 1e; for other discussions of the intellectual virtues, see ART 1; MIND 4c, 4e-4f; PRUDENCE 1-2c; SCIENCE Ia(1); VIRTUE AND VICE 2a, 2a(2); WISDOM 2a; for other discussions of the moral virtues, see COURAGE 1, 4; JUSTICE 1c-1d; TEMPERANCE 1-1b; VIRTUE AND VICE 2a-2a(1), 3b; for other discussions of the theological virtues, see KNOWLEDGE 6c(5); LOVE 5b-5b(2); MIND 5c; RELIGION 1a; VIRTUE AND VICE 2b, 8d-8d(3); and for other discussions of the infused virtues and the supernatural gifts, see MIND 4f, 5c; VIRTUE AND VICE 8e.

For matters relevant to grace as an entitative habit, see GOD 7d; MAN 9b(2); NATURE 6b; SIN 3c, 4d, 7; VIRTUE AND VICE 8b; WILL 7e(2).

For other considerations of the natural habits of the mind, see JUDGMENT 8a; KNOWLEDGE 6c(2)-6c(4); LAW 4a; MIND 4d(2)-4d(3); PRINCIPLE 2b(2), 3a(1), 4; VIRTUE AND VICE 4a.

For the relation of habit to freedom, see WILL 3a(2).

For the relation of habit to custom and law, see CUSTOM AND CONVENTION 2, 6b; LAW 5, 6d.

ADDITIONAL READINGS

Listed below are works not included in Great Books of the Western World, but relevant to the idea and topics with which this chapter deals. These works are divided into two groups: I. Works by authors represented in this collection. II. Works by authors not represented in this collection. For the date, place, and other facts concerning the publication of the works cited, consult the Bibliography of Additional Readings which follows the last chapter of The Great Ideas.

I.

  • AQUINAS. Quaestiones Disputatae, De Veritate, Q 16
  • DESCARTES. The Passions of the Soul, XVI, XLIV, L
  • HUME. A Treatise of Human Nature, BK I, PART III, SECT VII-IX, XIV; BK II, PART III, SECT V
  • C. R. DARWIN. A Posthumous Essay on Instinct
  • —. The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

II.

  • SENECA. “On the Diseases of the Soul,” in Moral Letters
  • SUÁREZ. Disputationes Metaphysicae, XXXIX, XLII (2-5), XLIII-XLIV, XLVI (3), LII
  • MALEBRANCHE. De la recherche de la vérité, BK II (I), CH 5
  • LEIBNIZ. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, BK II, CH 22 (10)
  • HARTLEY. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty and His Expectations, VOL I, PROPOSITION 21
  • CONDILLAC. Traité des animaux, PART II, CH 5
  • VOLTAIRE. “Instinct,” in A Philosophical Dictionary
  • T. REID. Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, III, PART I, CH 2-3
  • BENTHAM. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, CH II
  • MAINE DE BIRAN. The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking
  • D. STEWART. Outlines of Moral Philosophy, PART I, CH 10
  • —. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, PART I, CH 5
  • SCHOPENHAUER. The World as Will and Idea, VOL III, SUP, CH 27
  • J. MILL. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, CH III
  • RAVAISSON-MOLLIEN. De l’habitude
  • E. HARTMANN. Philosophy of the Unconscious, (A) III; (B) 1
  • HERING. Memory
  • S. BUTLER. Life and Habit
  • RADESTOCK. Habit and Its Importance in Education
  • ROMANES. Mental Evolution in Animals, CH 11-18
  • C. S. PEIRCE. Collected Papers, VOL III, PAR 154-164, 359-403; VOL VI, PAR 259-263
  • H. R. MARSHALL. Instinct and Reason
  • BERGSON. Creative Evolution, CH 2
  • WOODWORTH. Psychological Issues, CH 9
  • C. L. MORGAN. Habit and Instinct
  • —. Instinct and Experience
  • JUNG. Instinct and the Unconscious
  • RIVERS. Instinct and the Unconscious
  • B. RUSSELL. The Analysis of Mind, LECT 2
  • DEWEY. Human Nature and Conduct, PART I-II
  • PAVLOV. Conditioned Reflexes
  • VANN. Morals Makyth Man
  • THORNDIKE. Man and His Works