Moral habit

“ It may be asked, upon what consideration the men of our own age and country, for example, at first 314 and before a habit is formed, perform moral acts? Or, it may be asked, upon what consideration did men originally perform moral acts? ”

“ In process of time, the youth whose mental systems are in the course of expansion comes to perceive that his own acts give him pleasure or pain, and hence he derives the perception of good or bad qualities in himself. Moral goodness in ourselves—goodness of disposition, of intention, of volition, of habit—is found to be distinct from physical and intellectual goodness; and thus the consciousness of moral goodness becomes the intellectual faculty to which moral commands can be addressed, with a prospect that the connection between obedience and happiness will be perceived. ”

“ These varied combinations also give scope to the virtues of pity, tenderness, patience, mercy, justice, self-denial, and many other graces that could not be called into being without all the disparities, social, domestic, intellectual, and moral, that we find existing. Meantime, the principle of habit and the power of the will give abundant opportunities for modifying these natural peculiarities to accommodate to varying circumstances. ”

“ As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become accustomed to will a particular act ... because it is pleasurable, we at last continue to will it without any reference to its being pleasurable.... In this manner it is that habits of hurtful excess continue to be practised, although they have ceased to be pleasurable, and in this manner also it is that the habit of willing to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not desert the moral hero, even when the reward ... ”

“ Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that, others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct. ”

“ This principle applies particularly to moral habits. Truth telling, bravery, obedience, generosity, thought for others, church going, and so on must be followed by positive satisfaction, if they are to be part of the warp and woof of life. ”

“ Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment—originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit. ”

“ Such persons will generally be found in possession of good moral habits—props they instinctively set up to sustain their pretenses. They know by intuition that an affectation of wisdom and greatness would be intolerable if attended by vicious propensities and practices; so they cultivate with systematic carefulness all the forms of morality and virtue. ”

“ Reverence, etc.--As for reverence, consideration for others, respect for persons and property, I can only urge the importance of a sedulous cultivation of these moral qualities--the distinguishing marks of a refined nature--until they become the daily habits of the child's life; and the more, because a self assertive, aggressive, self seeking temper is but too characteristic of the times we live in. ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ The growth of the personal character, the reminiscences of a life advancing into perfect consciousness, are largely moulded by the gradual recognition of moral laws, by the sense of mystery evolved in the inevitable struggle between duty and pleasure,--between the desire to do right and the temptation to do wrong. ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ In what I have to say, therefore, of that kind of quality in human conduct which we call "moral," I shall distinguish it only by its absoluteness.
Every act in the conduct of a human being is incident to some one or more of the varied relationships by which his state of being is conditioned. Fundamentally, there are four groups of such relationships, subject to which every act of man is performed: 1. His relationships to inanimate Nature, or to the matter, the forces, and the routine processes, of his physical environment ”

“ The essential element in the problem is that we are contemplating, not physical movement only, like spasms or waves, but personal deeds, as acts of moral agents.185 Of course, moral quality does not attach to the action of non-moral beings, as the striking of clocks or the barking of dogs, but to deeds of self-directing personality. ”

“ Through the fascinating power thus wielded over others a great influence may be exerted to elevate the moral tone of society by presenting pictures of domestic life that shall array the merits and demerits of virtues and vices, delineating those delicate threadings among the counter currents of passions and emotions that control the individual, which escape the observation in actual life. ”

“ In this manner it is that men, born in the social state, acquire the habits of moral acting, and certain affections connected with it, before they are capable of reflecting upon the grounds which recommend the acts either to praise or blame. ”

“ It is upon that discipline chiefly that those qualities which I have called the moral qualities of the personal order, and which have their root in truthfulness and courage, depend for their evolution. ”

“ But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full information. ”

“ Secondly, that while there is diversity as to many points, there is none in its judgments as to the great body of virtues and vices of human life. As to all the49 leading qualities of character and conduct there is full and universal agreement. With respect to all the cardinal virtues, such as justice, kindness, veracity, love, courage, fidelity, generosity, the moral judgments approve them as the magnet owns its pole, in all the multi-form relations and offices of life. ”

“ They concerned the powers and possibilities of man in the crowning endowments of his nature, and in the highest ascent of their evident intention and adaptation. They touched the great problems of personal and social welfare in the most vital relations and decisive interests. So the old sages became moralists and their great themes were the themes of virtue and duty. Not very deeply, however, did they, for centuries, succeed in penetrating the rational principles of the moral life and the authority of the moral judgments. ”

“ Of all these wider, more potential selves, the potential social self is the most interesting, by reason of certain apparent paradoxes to which it leads in conduct, and by reason of its connection with our moral and religious life. ”

“ As moral agents, for whom alone exist all the predicaments of merit and demerit, praise and blame, effort and failure, vice and virtue, we are impotent and lost;—we are saved through that in us which is passive and involuntary; we are saved through our affections, it is as beings acted upon and influenced that we are saved! ”

“ Personal temperament, acquired character, or external conditions may make the feeling greater or less. The mental organization of some persons is more emotional. Education may have given a peculiar development. Temporary circumstances may heighten the excitation. But other things being equal the degree of positiveness in the moral emotions is generally dependent on two things: (a) the clearness with which the moral distinction and the consequent obligation is discerned, and (b) the pureness and tenderness of the person's moral nature. ”

“ In the same way no one will wish to deny that the moral feeling, as the natural expression of the inner voice of conscience, constitutes in social life the fundamental condition and the surest foundation for all lofty and noble sentiments. ”

“ Yet this very tone of society, and all these standards of honor and uprightness, when traced to their origin, are found to arise from the precepts of revelation. We are all, physically and intellectually, the creatures of circumstance. Experience moulds and develops the intellect. Our moral natures are not innate, but solely and entirely the result of the influences by which we are surrounded. ”

“ This new intellectual life, speaking broadly, has reacted favorably upon the moral life. It has dispelled superstition, destroyed prejudices, widened the outlook of men, and broadened their moral sympathies. ”

“ In each of these great religions, virtue was that line of conduct which would be pursued by a prudent egoist. Neither of these, however, has much influence on the practical morality of our own time. For energetic people, the moral code of our time is that of "success"—the code which my generation learnt in childhood from Smiles' Self-help and which modern young men learn from efficiency experts. ”

“ But ages earlier, far back in the course of animal evolution, there emerged phenomena which we may consider rudimentary forms of morality; and all early human history was replete writh unanalyzed and unformulated moral struggles. Concretely, we mean by personal morality courage, industriousness, self-control, prudence, temperance, and other similar phenomena, which have this in common, that they involve a crossing of earlier-developed impulses and redirection of the individual's conduct, with the result, normally, that his welfare is enhanced. ”

“ The pleasures and pains which the moral sentiments originate will, like bodily pleasures and pains, become incentives and deterrents so adjusted in their strengths to the needs that the moral conduct will be the natural conduct. ”

“ The realization of the good in personal morality is the habituated will, the moral character of individuals. It is actual in the virtues of the heart, and those virtues are the habits which, embodying good acts of will, have become part of the man’s self, and which answer to the various sides of his station, or more generally to his various relations to the ideal. ”

“ What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of personality. ”

“ The dispute of the moralists has reference, not to any characteristic of the qualities in conduct which we cognize as moral, but to the mode in which they are cognized. Our conception of such qualities involves the conception of absoluteness in them, and it is only by that notion of absoluteness that they are distinguished from the other qualities which appear in human conduct, such as wisdom, prudence, ingenuity, and the like. ”

“ All the facts of our moral consciousness, therefore,—the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,—all these could be traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or follow them. ”

“ But with a knowledge both more extensive and more minute of the nature, relations, and fitnesses of beings and objects, we find an increasing number of instances in which acts that seemed indifferent have a clearly perceptible fitness or unfitness, and thus acquire a distinct moral character as right or wrong. ”

“ But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. ”

“ We are aware of the attempts which have been made to invest our emotions with the stamp and attribute of morality: but, in addition to the testimony of our own experience, we have the highest authority for holding that none of the natural feelings or modifications of the human heart partake in any degree of a moral character. ”

“ But though neither the true source of our Knowledge of Moral Distinctions nor yet the right Motive why we are to choose the Good, this Moral Sense of Pleasure in Virtue, and Pain in Vice, is a psychological fact demanding the investigation of the Moralist. ”

“ It may be that our moral instincts are made to work in this way, because any ambition of conscience, any pride or ostentation of virtue, any air of moral vanity or conceit, any wearing of rectitude on the outside, as if put on for effect, or "to be seen of men," if it be not essentially fictitious and false, is certainly in the most direct course of becoming so. ”

“ The attainment of character through the development of an ideal of self and the systematization of habits and motives is a slow and gradual process, and only rarely is complete independence of judgment attained, which alone renders the highest form of moral conduct possible, when all conduct is determined by will with regard to the realization of ends. ”