HABIT-FORMING BY CONCENTRATION


As soon as the will has got the upper hand of the brain--as soon as it
can say to the brain, with a fair certainty of being obeyed: 'Do this.
Think along these lines, and continue to do so without wandering until I
give you leave to stop'--then is the time arrived when the perfecting of
the human machine may be undertaken in a large and comprehensive spirit,
as a city council undertakes the purification and reconstruction of a
city. The tremendous possibilities of an obedient brain will be
perceived immediately we begin to reflect upon what we mean by our
'character.' Now, a person's character is, and can be, nothing else but
the total result of his habits of thought. A person is benevolent
because he habitually thinks benevolently. A person is idle because his
thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleasures of idleness. It is
true that everybody is born with certain predispositions, and that these
predispositions influence very strongly the early formation of habits of
thought. But the fact remains that the character is built by
long-continued habits of thought. If the mature edifice of character
usually shows in an exaggerated form the peculiarities of the original
predisposition, this merely indicates a probability that the slow
erection of the edifice has proceeded at haphazard, and that reason has
not presided over it. A child may be born with a tendency to bent
shoulders. If nothing is done, if on the contrary he becomes a clerk and
abhors gymnastics, his shoulders will develop an excessive roundness,
entirely through habit. Whereas, if his will, guided by his reason, had
compelled the formation of a corrective physical habit, his shoulders
might have been, if not quite straight, nearly so. Thus a physical
habit! The same with a mental habit.