ust not be wholly a machine of habits, and
education must enable him to attain the power of breaking as well as of
forming habits, so that he may, when desirable, substitute one habit for
another. For habits may be (Sec. 29), according to their nature, proper or
improper, advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad; and, according
to their form, may be (Sec. 32) either the acceptance of the external by
the internal or the reaction of the internal upon the external. Through
our freedom we must be able, not only to renounce any habit formed, but
to form a new and better one. Man should be supreme above all habits,
wearing them as garments which the soul puts on and off at will. It must
so order them all as to secure for itself a constant progress of
development into still greater freedom. In this higher view habits
become thus to our sight only necessary accompaniments of imperfect
freedom. Can we conceive of God, who is perfect Freedom, as having any
habits? We might say that, as a means toward the ever-more decided
realization of the Good, we must form a habit of voluntarily making and
breaking off habits. We must characterize as bad those habits which
relate only to our personal convenience or enjoyment. They are often not
essentially blameworthy, but there lies in them a hidden danger that
they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. It is a false and
mechanical way of looking at the affair to suppose that a habit which
had been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken off by
an equal number of refusals. We can never utterly renounce a habit which
we decide to be undesirable for us except through decision and firmness.

Sec. 34. Education, then, must consider the preparation for authority and
obedience (Sec. 17); for a rational ordering of one's actions according to
universal principles, and, at the same time, a preservation of
individuality (Sec. 18); for work and play (Sec. 25); for habits of
spontaneity or originality (Sec. 28). To endeavor by any set rules to
harmonize in the pupil these opposites will be a vain endeavor, and
failure in the solution of the problem is quite possible by reason of
the freedom of the pupil, of surrounding circumstances, or of mistakes
on the part of the teacher, and the possibility of this negative result
must, therefore, enter as an element of calculation into the work
itself. All the dangers which may in any way threaten the youth must be
considered in advance, and h