4. A habit is acquired by acts. Whereupon this difficulty has been
started:--If the habit, say of mental application, comes from acts of
study, and again the acts from the habit, how ever is the habit
originally acquired? We answer that there are two ways in which one
thing may come from another. It may come in point of its very
existence, as child from parent; or in point of some mode of
existence, as scholar from master. A habit has its very existence from
acts preceding: but those acts have their existence independent of the
habit. The acts which are elicited after the habit is formed, owe to
the habit, not their existence, but the mode of their existence: that
is to say, because of the habit the acts are now formed readily,
reliably, and artistically, or virtuously. The primitive acts which
gradually engendered the habit, were done with difficulty, fitfully,
and with many failures,--more by good luck than good management, if it
was a matter of skill, and by a special effort rather than as a thing
of course, where it was question of moral well-doing. (See c.ii.,
s.ii., n.9, p. 10.
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