Therefore a habit that works almost automatically has less of the
character of a true habit, and passes rather out of morality into the
region of physics. Again, bad habits, vices to which a man is become a
slave against his better judgment, are less properly called habits
than virtues are; for such evil habits do not so much attend on
volition (albeit volition has created them) as drag the will in their
wake. For the like reason, habit is less properly predicable of brute
animals than of men: for brutes have no intelligent will to govern
their habits. The highest brutes are most susceptible of habit. They
are most like men in being most educable. And, of human progeny, some
take up habits, in the best and completest sense of the term, more
readily than others. They are better subjects for education: education
being nothing else than the formation of habits.
3. Knowledge consists of intellectual habits. But the habits of most
consequence to the moralist lie in the will, and in the sensitive
appetite as amenable to the control of the will. In this category come
the virtues, in the ordinary sense of that name, and secondarily the
vices.
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