Habits in General
49. Habits
1. A habit is a stable quality, a quality not readily changed, which disposes its possessor with respect to well-being or ill-being in himself or in his relation to things other than himself. For example, health is a habit; so is knowledge.
2. Habit is a distinct kind or species of quality.
3. Inasmuch as habit directly affects its possessor in well-being or ill-being, it extends to his operations. A habit which affects its possessor in himself (such as health, or fatness) is called an entitative habit; a habit which affects its possessor in his operation (such as the acquired skill of playing a musical instrument) is called an operative habit.
4. Now, whatever has reference to an operation has reference also to the end towards which that operation tends. Hence good habits are useful, and even necessary, to man for the attaining of the ends of his normal operations.
50. The Subject of Habits
1. The subject of anything is the precise reality in which the thing resides or has place. The subject of habits is that precise reality to which habits are properly ascribed. The body has habits, such as health, beauty, fatness, leanness, etc., and therefore the body is the subject of habits. But body-habits are not perfect habits, for they have not a high degree of stability; they are to some extent readily changeable. Hence body-habits are more properly called habitual dispositions than habits simply. The principle and primary subject of habits is the soul. Even operative habits which are exercised by bodily members have their root in the life principle or soul.
2. Human habits are rooted in the soul. They are not, indeed, in the essence of the soul, but in its powers and operations. An operative habit can exist where a variety of operations is possible; it disposes the operator to exercise one rather than any other of these possible operations. Where there is only one way of doing a thing (as, for example, in digesting food), there can be no operative habit.
3. The sensitive powers of a man can be called subjects of habits in so far as these powers are under the control of reason. Animals, which have no higher powers than sentient powers, are not properly the subjects of habits. Wild animals that are domesticated may appear to have changed their habits, but this is only seeming. Animals are instinctively inclined to act in a manner that is good for them; the same instinct that guides them in the wild state, guides them, with different outer effects, in the tame state. Besides, animals have no free choice among possible modes of action, and such choice appears to belong to the very essence of operative habit.
4. Knowledge in the human mind or intellect is a habit; it disposes a man to act in accordance with it. Science (that is, evidenced knowledge) and wisdom (that is, deep, valuable, and appreciated knowledge) are also habits of the mind or intellect. Therefore the intellect is the subject of habits.
5. The will likewise is the subject of habits. Indeed, habit is specially referred to will. It is said of human action that "habit is what one uses when one wills." The moral virtues, for example, are habits of the will.
6. In the angels, too, there are habits, for angels have intellect and will. Yet habits are in angels in a manner suited to their superior nature, and not precisely as habits are in the human soul.
51. The Cause of Habits
1. Human nature itself, that is, the operating essence of man, may be said to form certain habits inasmuch as it is disposed for them and needs them for smooth and prompt operation. Likewise, an individual man's temperament or disposition may tend to develop habits in him; these may be called natural habits. Thus we speak of one man as naturally self-possessed and of another man as naturally quick tempered.
2. Certain operative habits are formed in a man by repeated acts. In this way, for instance, a man develops a virtue or contracts a vice. Thus, too, a mechanical skill can be developed, even to such a degree as to be called "almost a second nature."
3. Habits are regularly the product of repeated acts, not of one or two acts but of very many. A man has not the habit (or virtue) of generosity because he has made a few gifts to the poor; nor is a man said to have the habit (or vice) of drunkenness because of a single act of overindulgence in drink.
4. Some habits are not acquired by repeated acts, but are infused by almighty God. These are supernatural habits or virtues. Scripture mentions such habits, as, for example, in the statement (Ecclus. 15:5), "God filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding."
52. The Increase of Habits
1. A habit is said to increase inasmuch as its influence on its subject (the person who has it) grows fuller, wider, or more intense.
2. Increase in habit is usually a matter of greater influence, rather than of more instances of the habitual act. Habit does not increase merely by addition of act to act. Sometimes, indeed, more frequently repeated acts come from increased habit, and they may be said, in a sense, to further the increase. But the increase itself is somewhat like that of the growing body which is not measured by mere additional items of food added to the diet, even though the intake of food accompanies growth and furthers it.
3. Hence not every act which springs from habit is an increase of the habit. Indeed, an act which accords with a habit, but is less intense than the habit itself, actually tends to decrease the habit rather than to increase it. Thus the habit of studiousness is not increased, but rather harmed and diminished, by an hour's careless or halfhearted study. Acts give increase to habit when considered cumulatively, not individually. Similarly, it is the cumulative effect of drops of steadily falling water that hollows out a stone, not the individual action of each drop.
53. The Weakening or Breaking of Habits
1. Some habits cannot be directly destroyed. The intellectual habit of first principles, for instance, cannot be directly overcome or banished; as long as a man is normal and conscious, he knows that he exists, and that he can think, and that an existing thing cannot be at the same time nonexistent. But many habits can be destroyed. The habit of a science (that is, evidenced knowledge in a definite field) can be forgotten, or may be spoiled by deception entering into it. And a moral virtue (which is a habit) can be destroyed by perversity and sin.
2. Habits can be increased, and some of them can be decreased or weakened. Not every habit that increases can be decreased, for some habits grow like a growing body which increases to maturity but cannot decrease to immaturity again.
3. Some habits may be weakened or destroyed by neglect, that is, by continued failure to perform acts which accord with them. A musician may lose his skill by neglecting practice. A friendship may perish through failure of friends to meet or communicate.
54. The Distinction of Habits
1. In the same subject there may be a variety of habits which are specifically (that is, essentially) distinct from one another.
2. Habits are distinguished one from another on three scores: (a) their respective active principles; thus, for example, habits of intellect are distinguished from habits of will; (b) their own nature; thus knowledge differs from moral virtue; (c) their respective ends or objects; thus knowledge which aims at truth is distinguished from moral virtue which aims at moral goodness.
3. Habits affect their subjects with respect to well-being or ill-being. Thus habits are distinguished as good habits and bad habits. This distinction of habits holds in the physical order (health; infirmity), in the intellectual order (knowledge; ignorance), and in the moral order (virtue; vice).
4. A habit is a simple thing, and hence a single thing. No habit is a collection or coalescence of other habits. Many habits may, indeed, be found together in one subject, but they do not fuse into general or compound habits in the subject. A man is sometimes said to be "a bundle of habits." The phrase is often used as a description of what we call a man's "character." But no habit is a bundle of other habits.