Just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty; "I won"t count this." Just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and I can return the money before it will be needed. Just one little indulgence; I won"t count it, and a good night"s sleep will make me all right again. Just one small part of my work slighted; it won"t make any great difference, and, besides, I am usually so careful that a little thing like this ought not to be counted.
But, my young friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the smallest detail.
The Recording Angel is no myth; it is found in ourselves. Its name is Memory, and it holds everything. We think we have forgotten thousands of things until mortal danger, fever, or some other great stimulus reproduces them to the consciousness with all the fidelity of photographs. Sometimes all one"s past life will seem to pa.s.s before him in an instant; but at all times it is really, although unconsciously, pa.s.sing before him in the sentiments he feels, in the thoughts he thinks, in the impulses that move him apparently without cause.
"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
In a fable one of the Fates spun filaments so fine that they were invisible, and she became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to the spot by these very threads.
Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to implant civilization among the wild tribes. After fifteen years" labor he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but he goes on to say, "It took fifteen years to get it off, and just fifteen minutes to get it on him again."
Physiologists say that dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, a.s.ses, and mules. Large birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power of flight.
After a criminal"s head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and he raised his hands several times as if to brush away the exciting cause. It was said that the cheek of Charlotte Corday blushed on being struck by a rude soldier after the head had been severed from the body.
Humboldt found in South America a parrot which was the only living creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe. The bird retained the habit of speech after his teachers had died.
Caspar Hauser was confined, probably from birth, in a dungeon where no light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. At seventeen he was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent intelligence. When released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon. Only cold and dismal silence seemed to satisfy him. All that gave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain. The sweetest music was a source of anguish to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vomiting.
Deep in the very nature of animate existence is that principle of facility and inclination, acquired by repet.i.tion, which we call habit.
Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. In spite of the protests of his weakened will the trained nerves continue to repeat the acts even when the doer abhors them. What he at first chooses, at last compels. Man is as irrevocably chained to his deeds as the atoms are chained by gravitation. You can as easily s.n.a.t.c.h a pebble from gravitation"s grasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from its inevitable effect upon character and destiny. "Children may be strangled," says George Eliot, "but deeds never, they have an indestructible life." The smirched youth becomes the tainted man.
Practically all the achievements of the human race are but the accomplishments of habit. We speak of the power of Gladstone to accomplish so much in a day as something marvelous; but when we a.n.a.lyze that power we find it composed very largely of the results of habit.
His mighty momentum has been rendered possible only by the law of the power of habit. He is now a great bundle of habits, which all his life have been forming. His habit of industry no doubt was irksome and tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently, it has gained such momentum as to astonish the world. His habit of thinking, close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power. He formed the habit of accurate, keen observation, allowing nothing to escape his attention, until he could observe more in half a day in London than a score of men who have eyes but see not. Thus he has multiplied himself many times. By this habit of accuracy he has avoided many a repet.i.tion; and so, during his lifetime, he has saved years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his achievements, have thrown away.
Gladstone early formed the habit of cheerfulness, of looking on the bright side of things, which, Sydney Smith says, "is worth a thousand pounds a year." This again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in Parliament. This loss of energy has wasted years of many a useful life, which might have been saved by forming the economizing habit of cheerfulness.
The habit of happy thought would transform the commonest life into harmony and beauty. The will is almost omnipotent to determine habits which virtually are omnipotent. The habit of directing a firm and steady will upon those things which tend to produce harmony of thought would produce happiness and contentment even in the most lowly occupations. The will, rightly drilled, can drive out all discordant thoughts, and produce a reign of perpetual harmony. Our trouble is that we do not half will. After a man"s habits are well set, about all he can do is to sit by and observe which way he is going. Regret it as he may, how helpless is a weak man bound by the mighty cable of habit, twisted from the tiny threads of single acts which he thought were absolutely within his control!
Drop a stone down a precipice. By the law of gravitation it sinks with rapidly increasing momentum. If it falls sixteen feet the first second, it will fall forty-eight feet the next second, and eighty feet the third second, and one hundred and forty-four feet the fifth second, and if it falls for ten seconds it will in the last second rush through three hundred and four feet till earth stops it. Habit is c.u.mulative.
After each act of our lives we are not the same person as before, but quite another, better or worse, but not the same. There has been something added to, or deducted from, our weight of character.
"There is no fault nor folly of my life," said Ruskin; "that does not rise against me and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of sight, of understanding; and every past effort of my life, every gleam of righteousness or good in it, is with me now to help me in my grasp of this hour and its vision."
"Many men of genius have written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the loss of many brave men.
"Resist beginning" was an ancient motto which is needed in our day.
The folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the man.
In 1880 one hundred and forty-seven of the eight hundred and ninety-seven inmates of Auburn State Prison were there on a second visit. What brings the prisoner back the second, third, or fourth time? It is habit which drives him on to commit the deed which his heart abhors and which his very soul loathes. It is the momentum made up from a thousand deviations from the truth and right, for there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong. It is the result of that mysterious power which the repeated act has of getting itself repeated again and again.
When a woman was dying from the effects of her husband"s cruelty and debauchery from drink she asked him to come to her bedside, and pleaded with him again for the sake of their children to drink no more.
Grasping his hand with her thin, long fingers, she made him promise her: "Mary, I will drink no more till I take it out of this hand which I hold in mine." That very night he poured out a tumbler of brandy, stole into the room where she lay cold in her coffin, put the tumbler into her withered hand, and then took it out and drained it to the bottom. John B. Gough told this as a true story. How powerless a man is in the presence of a mighty habit, which has robbed him of will-power, of self-respect, of everything manly, until he becomes its slave!
Walpole tells of a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, and his companions began to bet upon his chances of recovery. When the physician came they refused to let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet. When President Garfield was hanging between life and death men bet heavily upon the issue, and even sold pools.
No disease causes greater horror or dread than cholera; yet when it is once fastened upon a victim he is perfectly indifferent, and wonders at the solicitude of his friends. His tears are dried; he cannot weep if he would. His body is cold and clammy and feels like dead flesh, yet he tells you he is warm, and calls for ice water. Have you never seen similar insensibility to danger in those whose habits are already dragging them to everlasting death?
Etherized by the fascinations of pleasure, we are often unconscious of pain while the devil amputates the fingers, the feet and hands, or even the arms and legs of our character. But oh, the anguish that visits the sad heart when the lethe pa.s.ses away, and the soul becomes conscious of virtue sacrificed, of manhood lost.
The leper is often the last to suspect his danger, for the disease is painless in its early stages. A leading lawyer and public official in the Sandwich Islands once overturned a lighted lamp on his hand, and was surprised to find that it caused no pain. At last it dawned upon his mind that he was a leper. He resigned his offices and went to the leper"s island, where he died. So sin in its early stages is not only painless but often even pleasant.
The hardening, deadening power of depraving habits and customs was strikingly ill.u.s.trated by the Romans.
Under Nero, the taste of the people had become so debauched and morbid that no mere representation of tragedy would satisfy them. Their cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of "a refined, delicate, aesthetic age," demanded that the heroes should actually be killed on the stage. The debauched and sanguinary Romans reckoned life worthless without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight. Tragedy must be genuine bloodshed, comedy, actual shame. When "The Conflagration" was represented on the stage they demanded that a house be actually burned and the furniture plundered. When "Laureolus" was played they demanded that the actor be really crucified and mangled by a bear, and he had to fling himself down and deluge the stage with his own blood. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull, and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear, and Icarus was compelled to fly, even though it was known he would be dashed to death. When the heroism of "Mucius Scaevola" was represented, a real criminal was compelled to thrust his hand into the flame without a murmur, and stand motionless while it was being burned. Hercules was compelled to ascend the funeral pyre, and there be burned alive. The poor slaves and criminals were compelled to play their parts heroically until the flames enveloped them.
The pirate Gibbs, who was executed in New York, said that when he robbed the first vessel his conscience made a h.e.l.l in his bosom; but after he had sailed for years under the black flag, he could rob a vessel and murder all the crew, and lie down and sleep soundly. A man may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave, and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or to propagate it.
When Gordon, the celebrated California stage-driver, was dying, he put his foot out of the bed and swung it to and fro. When asked why he did so, he replied, "I am on the down grade and cannot get my foot on the brake."
In our great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that fell hundreds of years before Adam lived, and the footprint of some wild bird that pa.s.sed across the beach in those olden times. The pa.s.sing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and the sediment hardened into stone; and there the prints remain, and will remain forever. So the child, so soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new ideas, treasures them all up, gathers them all into itself, and retains them forever.
A tribe of Indians attacked a white settlement and murdered the few inhabitants. A woman of the tribe, however, carried away a very young infant, and reared it as her own. The child grew up with the Indian children, different in complexion, but like them in everything else.
To scalp the greatest possible number of enemies was, in his view, the most glorious thing in the world. While he was still a youth he was seen by some white traders, and by them conducted back to civilized life. He showed great relish for his new life, and especially a strong desire for knowledge and a sense of reverence which took the direction of religion, so that he desired to become a clergyman. He went through his college course with credit, and was ordained. He fulfilled his function well, and appeared happy and satisfied. After a few years he went to serve in a settlement somewhere near the seat of war which was then going on between Britain and the United States, and before long there was fighting not far off. He went forth in his usual dress--black coat and neat white shirt and neckcloth. When he returned he was met by a gentleman of his acquaintance, who was immediately struck by an extraordinary change in the expression of his face and the flush on his cheek, and also by his unusually shy and hurried manner.
After asking news of the battle the gentleman observed, "But you are wounded?" "No." "Not wounded! Why, there is blood upon the bosom of your shirt!" The young man quickly crossed his hands firmly upon his breast; and his friend, supposing that he wished to conceal a wound which ought to be looked to, pulled open his shirt, and saw--what made the young man let fall his hands in despair. From between his shirt and his breast the friend took out--a b.l.o.o.d.y scalp! "I could not help it," said the poor victim of early habits, in an agonized voice. He turned and ran, too swiftly to be overtaken, betook himself to the Indians, and never more appeared among the whites.
An Indian once brought up a young lion, and finding him weak and harmless, did not attempt to control him. Every day the lion gained in strength and became more unmanageable, until at last, when excited by rage, he fell upon his master and tore him to pieces. So what seemed to be an "innocent" sin has grown until it strangled him who was once its easy master.
Beware of looking at sin, for at each view it is apt to become better looking.
Habit is practically, for a middle-aged person, fate; for is it not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed man, clean and chaste?
A Grecian flute-player charged double fees for pupils who had been taught by inferior masters, on the ground that it was much harder to undo than to form habits.
Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment. We cannot possibly hear, see, feel, or experience anything which is not woven in the web of character. What we are this minute and what we do this minute, what we think this minute, will be read in the future character as plainly as words spoken into the phonograph can be reproduced in the future.
"The air itself," says Babbage, "is one vast library on whose pages are written forever all that man has ever said, whispered, or done." Every sin you ever committed becomes your boon companion. It rushes to your lips every time you speak, and drags its hideous form into your imagination every time you think. It throws its shadow across your path whichever way you turn. Like Banquo"s ghost, it will not down.
You are fastened to it for life, and it will cling to you in the vast forever. Do you think yourself free? You are a slave to every sin you ever committed. They follow your pen and work their own character into every word you write.
Rect.i.tude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. Some men cannot tell a lie: the habit of truth telling is fixed, it has become incorporated with their nature. Their characters bear the indelible stamp of veracity. You and I know men whose slightest word is unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. There are other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in their speech.
"I never in my life committed more than one act of folly," said Rulhiere one day in the presence of Talleyrand. "But where will it end?" inquired the latter. It was lifelong. One mistake too many makes all the difference between safety and destruction.
How many men would like to go to sleep beggars and wake up Rothschilds or Astors? How many would fain go to bed dunces and wake up Solomons?
You reap what you have sown. Those who have sown dunce-seed, vice-seed, laziness-seed, always get a crop. They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
Habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it. Oh, the power of a repeated act to get itself repeated again and again! But, like the wind, it is a power which we can use to force our way in its very teeth as does the ship, and thus multiply our strength, or we can drift with it without exertion upon the rocks and shoals of destruction.
What a great thing it is to "start right" in life. Every young man can see that the first steps lead to the last, with all except his own.
No, his little prevarications and dodgings will not make him a liar, but he can see that they surely will in John Smith"s case. He can see that others are idle and on the road to ruin, but cannot see it in his own case.
There is a wonderful relation between bad habits. They all belong to the same family. If you take in one, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, you will soon have the whole. A man who has formed the habit of laziness or idleness will soon be late at his engagements; a man who does not meet his engagements will dodge, apologize, prevaricate, and lie. I have rarely known a perfectly truthful man who was always behind time.
You have seen a ship out in the bay swinging with the tide and the waves; the sails are all up, and you wonder why it does not move, but it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anch.o.r.ed. So we often see a young man apparently well equipped, well educated, and we wonder that he does not advance toward manhood and character. But, alas! we find that he is anch.o.r.ed to some secret vice, and he can never advance until he cuts loose.
"The first crime past compels us into more, And guilt grows _fate_ that was but _choice_ before."
"Small habits, well pursued betimes, May reach the dignity of crimes."