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1 Habit is . the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
1 Habit is . . . the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It2 alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from3 the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life4 from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-5 hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to6 his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by7 the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. . . . It keeps different social strata from mixing.8 Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young9 commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-10 law. . . .It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like11 plaster, and will never soften again.12 If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and13 professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal14 habits, properly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address.15 Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can16 a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech17 bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much 18 money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants19 offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest "swell,"1 but he simply cannot buy the right20 things. An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as 21 he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the things they wear will22 be for him a mystery till his dying day.23 The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of24 our enemy. . . . For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many25 useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be26 disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our27 daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers28 of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than29 one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the30 drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every31 bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes32 to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not33 to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of34 my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. 1 The term "veriest 'swell'" is an obsolete term for a man who is very fashionably dressed.
Do you agree or disagree with what William James says about "intellectual and professional habits" and "personal habits"? Summarize James's argument and state your position on it; be sure to support your position with specific evidence from the passage and from your own experience and/or observations.
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