William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a psychologist who was also trained as a physician. He was the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States and is generally considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced. He is also my namesake.
In 1887, James penned Habit — a short treatise on how our behavioral patterns shape who we are and what we often refer to as character and personality. He reminds us that habits, both good and bad, are forged and not inherited, and he asserts that developing good habits and putting them into action is essential not only for the survival of civilization, but also necessary on an individual level as an integral component of a fulfilling and productive life. Here is an excerpt from Habit:
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A “character,” as J. S. Mill says, “is a completely fashioned will”; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act becomes effectively ingrained in us only in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain “grows” to their use. Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptable type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a virile concrete deed…
It is not simply particular lines of discharge, but also general forms of discharge, that seem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are…but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain processes they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that they do depend on brain processes at all, and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which is a material law. As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the person who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
“Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” – Samuel Smiles
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William James “Bill” Bacqué