facility.

If things be attentively considered, it will be found that almost the
whole conduct of man--the entire system of his actions--his occupations
--his connexions--his studies--his amusements--his manners--his customs
--his very garments--even his aliments, are the effect of habit. He owes
equally to habit, the facility with which he exercises his mental
faculties of thought--of judgment--of wit--of reason--of taste, &c. It
is to habit he owes the greater part of his inclinations--of his
desires--of his opinions--of his prejudices--of the ideas, true or
false, he forms to himself of his welfare. In short, it is to habit,
consecrated by time, that he owes those errors into which everything
strives to precipitate him; from which every thing is calculated to
prevent him emancipating himself. It is habit that attaches him either
to virtue or to vice: experience proves this: observation teaches
incontrovertibly that the first crime is always accompanied by more
pangs of remorse than the second; this again, by more than the third; so
on to those that follow. A first action is the commencement of a habit;
those which succeed confirm it: by force of combatting the obstacles
that prevent the commission of criminal actions, man arrives at the
power of vanquishing them with ease; of conquering them with facility.
Thus he frequently becomes wicked from habit.

Man is so much modified by habit, that it is frequently confounded with
his nature: from hence results, as will presently be seen, those
opinions or those ideas, which he has called _innate_: because he has
been unwilling to recur back to the source from whence they sprung:
which has, as it were, identified itself with his brain. However this
may be, he adheres with great strength of attachment to all those things
to which he is habituated; his mind experiences a sort of violence, an