se
morally indifferent habits, which constitute a large portion of a regular
and systematic life; and thirdly, habits of virtuous conduct, of industry,
of punctuality, of charity.

*Habit bears a most momentous part in the formation and growth of
character*, whether for evil or for good. It is in the easy and rapid
formation of habit that lies the imminent peril of single acts of vicious
indulgence. The first act is performed with the determination that it
shall be the last of its kind. But of all examples one's own is that which
he is most prone to follow, and of all bad examples one's own is the most
dangerous. The precedent once established, there is the strongest
temptation to repeat it, still with a conscious power of self-control, and
with the resolution to limit the degree and to arrest the course of
indulgence, so as to evade the ultimate disgrace and ruin to which it
tends. But before the pre-determined limit is reached, the indulgence has
become a habit; its suspension is painful; its continuance or renewal
seems essential to comfortable existence; and even in those ultimate
stages when its very pleasure has lapsed into satiety, and then into
wretchedness, its discontinuance threatens still greater wretchedness,
because the craving is even more intense when the enjoyment has ceased.

*The beneficent agency of habit no less deserves emphatic notice.* Its
office in practical morality is analogous to that of labor-saving
inventions in the various departments of industry. A machine by which ten
men can do the work that has been done by thirty, disengages the twenty
for new modes of productive labor, and thus augments the products of
industry and the comfort of the community. A good habit is a labor-saving
instrument. The cultivating of any specific virtue to such a degree that
it shall become an inseparable and enduring element of the character
demands, at the outset, vigilance, self-discipline, and, not infrequently,
strenuous effort. But when the exercise of that virtue has become
habitual, and therefore natural, easy, and essential to one's conscious
well-being, it ceases to task the energies; it no longer requires constant
watchfulness; its occasions are met spontaneously by the appropriate
dispositions and acts. The powers which have been employed in its culture
are thus set free for the acquisition of yet other virtues, and the
formation of other good habits. Herein lies the secret of progressive
goodness,