Regularity

“ In the chapter of beauty it is remarked, that regularity is required in small figures, and order in small groups; but that in advancing gradually from small to great, regularity and order are less and less required. This remark serves to explain the extreme delight we have in viewing the face of nature, when sufficiently enriched and diversified by objects. ”

“ If, again, we are asked how we account for the regularity with which each step is taken in its due order, we answer that this too is characteristic of actions that are done habitually—they being very rarely misplaced in respect of any part. ”

“ REGULARITY OF HABITS The importance of regularity and punctuality in every circumstance of daily life is not sufficiently realized. The more often and regularly any act is performed the more automatic it tends to become, and the less effort, whether mental or physical, attends its performance. This is a matter of daily experience and observation, and is true not only of mental work and manual or mechanical exercises, but of the organic functions of the body. ”

“ Order, or regularity, is an essential for success in human affairs—moral, mental, or physical; but especially in the latter. The successful conduct of large business organizations is only possible by regularity in the performance of every detail of duty. ”

“ Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work, Life in day-tight compartments. ”

“ But experience at any moment shows how I am conscious of my own deeds, of my progress, of my acts of attention, and of my approaches to selfhood in any way, in the form of a discrete series, in which one stage or act of life is followed by the next. The principle of my life, as I come to myself, and, knowing what I want, proceed to do it, is a principle winning novelty through Recurrence. ”

“ Nothing seems so short in retrospect as monotony; the number, the variety, the interest of the events which occupy us, making our hours pass glibly and flowingly, will still suggest to the mind the impressions of a longer period than when the daily routine of our occupations assumes a character of continued uniformity. ”

“ And nevertheless, your future and your past, your aspect of individuality, and of freedom, and the various aspects wherein you are dependent upon the rest of the world, your whole life of deeds, and your attainment of your individual goal through your deeds, — all these manifold facts that are yours and that constitute you, are present at once to the Absolute, — as facts in the world, as temporal contents eternally viewed, — as a process eternally finished, — but eternally finished precisely by virtue of the temporal sequence of your deeds. ”

“ Having thus defined the way in which the conceptual time of the real world of common sense corresponds in its structure to the structure of the time known to our inner perception, we are prepared to sketch our theory both of the sense in which the world of our idealistic doctrine appears to be capable of interpretation as a Temporal order, and of the sense in which, for this same theory, this world is to be viewed as an Eternal order. ”

“ This something that remains is a habit, or the beginning of a habit A habit may be produced by a single act: the mind's first intuition of an axiom or principle produces a habit or habitual knowledge of that principle. But as a rule it requires a repetition of any act, and that for a long time at comparatively short intervals, to produce a habit of that act, a stable disposition whereby it can be readily repeated; and to strengthen and perfect the habit the acts must be formed with a growing degree of intensity and energy. Progress in virtue demands sustained and increasingly earnest efforts. ”

“ Thus, the repetition of similar experiences forms habits such that each element of some new instant of passing experience comes to us saturated with the meaning that, as we look back upon our past life, we suppose to have resulted from the whole course of what has happened. And through such endlessly varied processes of habit-forming, we come to reach stages of insight in which the instantaneous presentation of a few facts gets for us, at a given moment, the value of an indirect appreciation of what we never directly grasp--that is, the value of a wide survey of life. ”

“ And the true Series is that of the Self, and of its expression in life. The true variety is that of various individual Selves, who together constitute, in their unity, the Individual of Individuals, the absolute. Beyond our own circle of concretely known facts, there are not merely series of data to be discriminated, but volitional processes to be estimated, appreciated, and conceived in their true serial order, as the stages of the world’s life. ”

“ But in explaining these symbols, in order to bring out their meaning in bold relief, we find ourselves sometimes painting the principles represented in their extremest colors. Eating of the tree of knowledge, like all other spiritual habits, is a thing that comes gradually, and becomes a habit only by a slow process. The world at that early age did not change in a day, nor in a year, perhaps not in a hundred years. ”

“ In these ways experience moulds us every hour, and makes of our minds a mirror of the time- and space-connections between the things in the world. The principle of habit within us so fixes the copy at last that we find it difficult even to imagine how the outward order could possibly be different from what it is, and we continually divine from the present what the future is to be. ”

“ Adopting, then, the statement of the essayist, "from the moment that self became an object of consciousness it became also a motive," we would add the element of time and recognise a continuous self. Then, placing the statement in a subordinate position, as part of the general evolution of life—which is the continuous adjustment of organism and environment—and acknowledging the growth of reason, we would define the course of action which results from all these factors as the rational quantitative and continuous adjustment of organism and environment. ”

“ With some people it is a condition which is present all the time. Now you take a condition which is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous; monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing. ”

“ The scenes, people, events we are able by an effort to call up do not present themselves in order; there is no order, no sequence or regular progression—nothing, in fact, but isolated spots or patches, brightly illumined and vividly seen, in the midst of a wide shrouded mental landscape. ”

“ In the development of time into causation, persistence becomes state and change becomes event. In the development of judgment into conception, consciousness becomes recollection and choice becomes inference. ”

“ Every established mental condition is an acquired habit, and it has become such by continuous repetition of thought. Despondency and cheerfulness, anger and calmness, covetousness and generosity—indeed, all states of mind—are habits built up by choice, until they have become automatic. A thought constantly repeated at last becomes a fixed habit of the mind, and from such habits proceeds the life. ”

“ Is any proof necessary that these value-forms are not the contents of the daily life? If there be, why this unvarying succession of attempts to prove that they are the contents of daily life that goes by the name of history of philosophy? In fact, experience as it comes from moment to moment is not one, harmonious and orderly, but multifold, discordant, and chaotic. ”

“ But, if neither at the same time nor at different times does it exist, as a whole, in individual places, it is evident that it does not at all exist, as a whole, in each individual place. We must now examine, then, whether this supreme Nature exists, as a whole, at individual times, either simultaneously or at distinct times for individual times. ”

“ If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistency of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness. But between these persistent concomitants there are relations, and these relations are changeable; so when we consider persistence and change, it is the persistence of particles of essentials and change of relations of particles of essentials. Only relations are changeable, essentials are persistent. ”

“ We may, then, add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature; we may fill in our picture of what is and has been, as experience gives it us, in such a way as to make the whole consistent with this uniformity. ”

“ If there be room for a choice, the sooner a circumstance be introduced, the better. Circumstances are proper for that coolness of mind, with which a period as well as a work is commenced. In the progress, the mind warms, and has a greater relish for matters of importance. When a circumstance is placed at the beginning or near the beginning of the period, the transition from it to the principal subject is agreeable: it is like ascending or mounting upward. ”

“ And are not both our need of such consistency and our pleasure in it conceivable as outcomes of the natural fact that we are beings that develop mental habits—habit itself proving adaptively beneficial in an environment where the same objects, or the same kinds of objects, recur and follow ‘law’? ”

“ The normal is either the usual, the habitual, the customary, or is, at best, an ideal construction of the variations of life more or less successfully adjusted to the conditions of the external environment. ”

“ Each comes out of the second or theoretic stage of mental functioning, with its definition of the essential nature of things, its formula of formulas prepared. The whole array of active forces of our nature stands waiting, impatient for the word which shall tell them how to discharge themselves most deeply and worthily upon life. ”

“ Duration in the abstract, distinguished from that which endures, is a being of reason,—a work which our understanding produces from the materials furnished by reality. All being is present. That which is not present is not-being. ”

“ Notwithstanding the proofs which in recent times have been obtained relative to the law of periodicity which has thus far regulated human progress the idea prevails that in our own time mental activity has reached a stage never before witnessed. ”

“ Let me begin by considering the parts of a human life—and by "the parts of a human life" I mean the division of the twenty-four hours of each day in the succession of days that make up the weeks, months, and years of our lives. ”

“ But when we speak of a man's habitual condition, we mean his constant and absolute completeness of mind or body, in some particular point—as for instance, his perception of virtue, or of some art, or else some science or other. ”

“ The element in its meaning, which comes to light at once, is succession and change. In all activity something clearly becomes something else. Activity implies a happening and a sequence in time. And, when I spoke of this meaning as coming to the light, I might have added that it positively stares us in the face, and it is not to be hidden. ”

“ Are there not periods in our own existence in which space, computed by its true measure of thoughts, feelings, and events, mocks the penury of man’s artificial scale, and comprises a lifetime in a day. ”

“ For a purpose is the tendency to realize some external action which is useful or indispensable to the life-existence of the particular individual being. The tendency to the maintenance of a definite activity in opposition to the onset of disturbing forces of the environment in order to restore the lost equilibrium, may be considered as the universal formula for purposive life in general. ”

“ Discipline, habit, and character, appear to be activity crystallized in seeking adaptation to our environments. What is the truth that stands out in relief? Clearly, that character, habit, and discipline, are the reflex upon ourselves of activity, moral, mental, or physical. Whence it seems to follow that useless or vicious activity will appear as useless or vicious character and discipline. ”

“ When, on the other hand, we say that right is largely determined by habit, we only emphasize the other aspect of that progressive mingling of continuity with change, which we see in mental life in all its phases. Habit, we know, makes lines of less resistance in thought, feeling, and action ”

“ Of course, as the ages passed, life became more complex—not complex as we would consider it to-day, but, as compared with its rude beginnings. New habits were formed, new needs developed, new activities were undertaken at different periods. ”

“ But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem so common-place and natural—in nine months. ”

“ No doubt there are properties of our minds which find delight in order, symmetry, recurring arrangement, and regular division; and the harmonious course of the material world, alternately visited by the sweet succession of day and night, the seasons, and all their lovely variety of gradation, naturally creates the idea of definite periods, to which we give definite names ”

“ Now, the belief of a rule is a habit. That a habit is a rule active in us, is evident. That every belief is of the nature of a habit, in so far as it is of a general character, has been shown in the earlier papers of this series. Induction, therefore, is the logical formula which expresses the physiological process of formation of a habit. Hypothesis substitutes, for a complicated tangle of predicates attached to one subject, a single conception. ”