Habit, Habitude

HABIT, HABITUDE. - A stable quality by which an agent, indifferent to acting according to different orientations, acquires facility and readiness to act in one or another. When, for example, one says that a person has become accustomed to a particular diet, to a particular climate, etc., one means that, thanks to past experience, he can now endure that food or that climate with ease and without further effort.

The h. (habit), called ἔξις by the Greeks, habitus by the Scholastics, is more than simple disposition (διάθεσις); for while disposition is in itself unstable (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 49, a. 1), the h. on the other hand is a stable quality, so that Aristotle in the De memoria calls it a second nature, ὥσπερ γὰρ ψῶσις ἠδὴ τὸ ἔθος, and Cicero in the De finibus asserts "consuetudine quasi alteram quandam naturam effici". The fundamental division of h. distinguishes them into entitative and operative. The entitative h. is commonly defined as a "qualitas stabilis secundum quam subiectum bene vel male se habet in seipso": such would be health, infirmity; the operative h., on the other hand, variously modifies the powers in their mode of acting. The operative h. is divided into supernatural, which is to say transcending the pure possibilities of nature (e.g. grace), and natural; this in turn can be innate: such, for example, according to St. Thomas, is the h. of first principles (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae q. 51, a. 1), and acquired, that is, born from the repetition of acts. The operative, natural, acquired h., of which alone we speak here, is further variously subdivided, particularly by modern psychologists, according to the perspective from which they observe it. Thus one commonly speaks of good and bad h., active and passive (Maine de Biran), general and special (Egger), speculative and practical, intellectual and volitional, moral, religious, professional, etc.

The h. can be studied from the point of view of psychology, physiology, ethics, pedagogy, moral theology.

1. PSYCHOLOGY

a) Subject of the h. - Authors discuss whether animals are capable of acquiring operative h. The negative opinion is upheld not only by the supporters of Cartesian mechanism, which denies all animal psychic life, but also by many Scholastics. In general only the possibility of forming a habit of operating in a determined way is admitted in brute animals, which is considered as the fruit of a spontaneous perfecting of the faculties, or as the result of training on the part of man. In any case, as we shall note at once, the question is bound up with the more or less restricted meaning in which the h. is understood.

As for the possibility for man to acquire operative habits, it is opportune to premise a guiding principle. Since the h. modifies the power, it necessarily presupposes a certain ductility in the faculties which it as it were reshapes. Only therefore those powers that enjoy a certain indifference are capable of h. in the strict sense (cf. Scotus, Opus Oxon., II, d. 3, q. 10, n. 18). For this reason, the Scholastics concluded, the vegetative and sensitive powers do not acquire h. Peillaube and Chevalier think differently, but they understand the h. in a much broader sense than that commonly accepted by the Scholastics. In effect, if by h. is meant any permanent modification of an order not only psychic but also physiological, which determines in the principles of organic activity a constant inclination toward a given action or series of actions, nothing forbids extending the possibility of h. to all vital activities, including the sensitive and vegetative. And this particularly in man, where the development of organic and especially sensitive life is not totally subject to the necessity of instinct, but partly dependent on the free determinations of the will.

It is in fact in the will and in the intelligence, the superior principles of human spiritual activity, that h. find their elective field of formation and development. Once freedom is admitted, it follows that all the virtues and vices (which are by definition good or bad operative h.) are constituted by determination or at least under the influence of the will. When the will conforms to a judgment of value, by this very fact a tendency is created to return to the same, and if this conformity of the will is produced frequently in relation to the same object, an h. is born from it. The intellect, then, having not only capacity but also indifference toward every kind of cognition, only by means of the h. acquires facility and readiness in the determined sectors in which it particularly exercises itself. It is the h. that explains the common way of speaking: to have a mentality, an individual vision of the world and of things; and likewise every specialization. Naturally, in this acquisition of h. the intellect, like the other faculties, undergoes the influence of the will, which is thus the cause not only of its own h., but also of those inherent in the other faculties.

b) The three vital phases of the h. - Psychologically one can distinguish three stages in the vital course of an h., namely its formation, its development, its cessation. H. are formed by virtue of the law of the reviviscence of psychic states. "Past psychic states have a tendency to reproduce themselves, and they do in fact reproduce themselves to the extent that this tendency to reviviscence combines with the tendencies that correspond to the present state of consciousness" (Janet). Scholasticism, rather than investigating the psychic mechanism that induces the repetition of acts and consequently the acquisition of habits, affirms the experiential fact of the enormous importance of repetition. Modern psychology, in turn, has underscored another effect of repetition, namely the attainment of uniformity and executive mechanicity, important chiefly when the h. entails the fusion of the physical and psychic elements (Baudin). Even an isolated act, as St. Thomas affirms, can nevertheless, if sufficiently intense, establish an h. One must also bear in mind that the constitution of h. often, if not always, testifies to a pre-existing aptitude, many times hereditary; if this is lacking, the effects that ordinarily proceed from operative h. will not be fully had, especially the sense of pleasure that accompanies the action. Given man's greater recency and ductility in the evolutionary period, one must infer, and experience confirms it, that this stage is the most suited to the formation of h.

For the increase of the h., the laws that regulate learning partially hold, so that the first repetitions have greater fixative value, a value that gradually diminishes until the establishment of a kind of saturation that produces uniformity and renders impossible any further perfecting in acting. Among the psychic factors whose influence is evident in the consolidation of h. are important attention, constancy and tension of the will (De Sanctis, Ferrari); above them there emerges, by primacy of efficacy, interest, because it constitutes the motor that feeds them. Interest is considered here in a most general signification and comprehension, so that, in analyzing the establishment of any habit whatsoever, we shall always find its intimate reason in the satisfaction of an interest of the subject. Physiological conditions assume a notable part as coefficients of the development of h. that are exercised by means of the senses. Through repetitions one comes in fact gradually to overcome the resistance of the organism and to obtain a more perfect coordination of movements, which translates into a relative physiological automatism.

The diminution or cessation of any one of these physical and psychic conditions, and the formation of contrary habits, bring about the relaxation of the habit (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃ, q.53, a.3). When the repetition of acts ceases, the functional adaptation produced by the reiteration of the same actions is weakened, and likewise the general tendencies and needs of habits become ever less tyrannical. Pedagogically, in this regard, the influence of the will must not be underestimated, for it can suddenly cut short inveterate customs, as is demonstrated in sudden and lasting conversions. As a general law, however, the following principle may be stated and accepted: the weakening or exhaustion of a habit is in inverse proportion to its vitality and duration, so that the most recent and least dominant are also the most easily overcome. Other things being equal, the habits of childhood survive those of mature age. Modern medicine has established an entire therapeutics for treating habits harmful to health, such as alcoholism, tabagism, morphinomania and the like. We mention only those among the cures that meet with the widest favor, namely hypnotism, suggestion, and psychoanalysis.

c) Effects of habit. - St. Thomas (Quaest. disp. de virtut. in communi, q. unica, a. 1, c), treating of the necessity of habits, thus summarizes their effects: 1) through them uniformity in acting is obtained; 2) habit produces an action that is perfect and prompt; 3) this action will be performed with delight.

Modern authors, especially psychologists, have treated at length of the effects of habit, and it is interesting to note how its importance is increasingly emphasized. Maher asserts that character is the sum of all moral habits, and it is certain that individual personality is forged and reveals itself most of all through customary acts. Moreover, in psychic life habit is an eminent factor of conservation and progress. Without it we would be incapable of learning stably, whereas through it every action survives in us in the form of a tendency, so that the past is summed up in the present. This same conservative action is also an instrument of progress. Voluntary activity, from the moment acts become customary, remains free to fix itself on other objects, since attention is by now largely superfluous. It is true that stability and facility mechanize human action somewhat, because they entail a diminution of consciousness, but they do not for this reason eliminate psychological awareness and therefore voluntariness. Besides, the defect is amply compensated by the rapidity and precision that accompany habit.

The effects of habit are found likewise in moral and social life in the same sense of conservation and progress (Peillaube). Every virtuous act leaves a trace of virtue, which by the law of association becomes a facility for its reproduction. Logically this holds true also for bad acts, but not with the same intensity, because grace and the natural and positive laws form a barrier against the inclinations and passions of nature. Since, moreover, the community is nothing but a multiplication of individuals, the contribution of habit in the formation of social custom is natural. As a conservative agent, by the simple law of inertia it maintains the limits of order and the characteristics both familial and national, whence it is not wrong to say that a people is guided at least as much by its dead as by its living. The progressive effect of habits in social life, moreover, is determined by the fact that ideas, once acquired and become common patrimony, permit the leap toward new conquests.

Felicesimo Tinivella

2. PHYSIOLOGY

The constant repetition of acts, as was already noted, deposits and crystallizes in us, both with regard to our psychological consciousness and to our physical organism, a greater facility and indeed the need to perform again the act in question. In this way a disposition develops in us that ends by becoming stable, almost becoming one with our nature in the form of a habit. Just as the facts of knowledge remain our patrimony in the form of memories in the imagination and in memory, leaving on the other hand, by virtue of the particular mixed nature of the subject that experiences them, lasting traces in the organs that constitute our nervous system, particularly the encephalic (v. MEMORIA), so it happens with all our actions, from the most insignificant or rare to the most important also for our life of relation, particularly if repeated frequently: « the action can fix our energy in a habit » (G. Payot, op. cit., p. 167).

The question of habit and habituation must be studied, besides from the point of view of psychology, also from that of medicine (biology, neurophysiology, neuropathology).

Indeed a deeper knowledge of the problem and of the mechanism of the aforementioned phenomenon can only be had by studying the organization and function of the nervous system, particularly the central one. Given the principle that « when soul and body are united, the relations they have between them are not extrinsic and superficial, but intimate and profound » (A. Zacchi, op. cit., I, p. 441), already a priori we must admit in the psychological phenomenon of habit and habituation a direct, intrinsic instrumental participation of the physical organism, in particular of the nervous system. And, indeed, physiology and clinical practice show us the reality of such a psycho-somatic correlation, demonstrating to us the existence of particular cortical and subcortical zones in which it is possible to localize the sensori-motor mechanism of many instinctive or non-instinctive « symbolic acts », but automatized by force of continuous repetition (correlation between thought or word and mime; particular attitudes of investigation, defense; walking; writing; manual skills, etc.). The progressive facilitation that develops in relation to the habitualness of acts and that can reach a true automatism, is precisely connected to myelination of nerve fibers, alignment of neurons in synergic groups, associations of centers in coordinated complexes, shifting of functions from the cerebral cortex to the subcortical zones (v. EXTRAPIRAMIDALE, SISTEMA). In this order of phenomena, it suffices to think, for example, of walking, acquired so laboriously at the beginnings of our life of relation by means of the constant repetition of determinate attitudes and acts at first supported and guided by the will, then gradually passing into the domain of the subconscious and of automaticity; the becoming automatic and habitual of certain particular professional skills acquired in the manual work of the finest crafts; the marvelous automatism of the movements of the pianist's fingers, which can reach the point of playing the most difficult pieces while conversing with the people near him.

We may therefore admit that every form of habitual training, from the lowest organic ones to the highest in the field of our activities of a psychological order, is always a phenomenon of a mixed, physio-psychological nature, as the observation of their changing or even being lost in relation to organic or functional damage to the nervous system (intoxication, fatigue, etc.) or in relation to particular negative passionate states of the individual (grief, despair, fear, etc.) demonstrates to us. (v. PASSIONI).

Giuseppe de Ninno

3. ETHICS

The principle stated above, that habit, even if it attenuates it, does not of itself remove the freedom of the human act, has important repercussions in the ethical field, chiefly in relation to the degree of imputability, and therefore of merit or demerit, inherent in actions placed under the influence of a good or bad habit. Normally, then, moral habit does not reach such a strong character of automatism as to compromise, along with freedom, the immediate essential morality of the act; yet it is certain that, to a greater or lesser degree, it reduces it. The ethical value of the act must then be judged on the basis of the principle of mediated morality, dependent on indirect and causal voluntariness.

It is certain that a habit contracted unconsciously — and the same must be said of every purely natural and involuntary psycho-physiological disposition — modifies the actual morality of the act neither in a positive nor in a negative sense; the act will have that ethical value conferred on it by the degree of awareness and freedom with which it is actually performed. The unconscious and involuntary habit (it is understood that it can be such even only with regard to the moral character of its object), as long as it remains such, can be considered in relation to the human act, and to the extent to which it influences it, in the same way as inculpable ignorance. Quite differently must one speak of a habit contracted with full consciousness (as to its moral character) and deliberately. Then even the consequences of that habit are in a certain way foreseen and willed, at least in their cause: the ethical value that invests the arising and the forming of the habit is thus reflected back upon all the acts on which the habit itself will make its influence or its sway felt. In the case of a good habit (virtue), often conquered with intense and prolonged moral effort, the acts, having later become spontaneous and almost natural, will have the same value, the same human dignity, the same merit that accompanied the laborious forming of the habit. Similarly, in the case of a bad habit (vice), the acts that derive from it will have the same full responsibility as the habit, until such time as a free act of the will intervenes that effectively renounces, by a moral return, the habit itself: effectively, that is, with a sincere rejection by the soul and together with the practical use of the means required for the gradual destruction of the habit. When this action of the will intervenes, the bond of responsibility that linked the act to the habit is broken, and its ethical value will then be determined solely by the degree of awareness and deliberation with which it is actually performed. In practice there is no need to point out that, besides the two extreme cases analyzed, the responsibility of habits and therefore of the acts deriving from them admits of infinite degrees, according to the varying and interweaving of the many factors that contribute to them besides the free will, such as temperament, education, the degree of individual culture and the countless other circumstances of the educative-social environment.

In relation to the moral life, finally, one must note the strong negative value that bad habits, if they are not opposed, exercise, in the long run, on the very rectitude of the moral conscience (v. COSCIENZA). By virtue of that bond which binds the spiritual life of man into a unity, deviations in the ethical field, once fixed by long habits, end up by reflecting on the practical reason, bringing about the gradual darkening, at times almost to the extinction, at least partial, of the moral conscience (v. VIRTÙ; VIZIO; VOLONTÀ).

Ugo Viglino

4. PEDAGOGY

The preceding psychological and physiological observations suggest the most useful applications in the field of pedagogy. We restrict them to the following points: a) The first duty of the educator is to enrich his pupils with a set of habits that are useful for life. The small child and the older child can gradually acquire certain habits of physical life (practice of hygienic rules, restraint of gluttony, sense of one's own decorum, rules of good manners); of intellectual life (attention, reflection, application to study); of volitional and moral life (practice of duty, courage in overcoming difficulties, boldness, victory over inertia). b) One must reflect that the child possesses a very great capacity for adaptation, whereby he contracts habits with the greatest ease; he is extremely plastic material. Therefore habits contracted in infancy have stronger and more lasting roots. Hence the vigilance to ensure that bad or disorderly habits are not contracted, because they will be difficult to uproot in adulthood; and the care that many good and useful ones be contracted. c) Habits must be transformed, little by little, into conscious acts, so that the child and the young person understand ever better that they must maintain them, and know and appreciate ever better their moral and formative value. d) No exception must be tolerated before the habit is well rooted; in other words, the process of forming the habit must be constant: if a ball of yarn being formed falls to the ground, it loses many more turns of thread than are made in the same span of time. e) With the caution, however, not to become slaves of habit and to know how to free oneself from it when there is a suitable reason or when it gives rise to excesses. The habit of thrift can degenerate into avarice; the habit of order in one's actions can make us become rude, when we should have to interrupt or overturn the order because of unforeseen incidents. f) Always seize the first occasion that presents itself to act in accordance with the decision taken. Shilly-shallying, procrastinating makes the passage to action ever more difficult. g) Form in children the habit of voluntary effort. No day should pass without some voluntary sacrifice imposed on oneself: not an extraordinary sacrifice; the overcoming of a nuisance is enough; this is sufficient to keep the inhibitory and volitional powers trained to resist the passions. Moreover this is precisely the true Christian spirit: "to conquer oneself." h) Every habit is not a point of arrival, but a point of departure for the acquisition of new habits. Hence the care to make as many as possible of our habitual acts ever more spontaneous. In this way the higher energies of our mind will become ever freer and will more easily succeed in carrying out their office.

Celestino Testore

5. MORAL THEOLOGY

Questions concerning habit also interest moral theology, particularly in relation to the sacrament of penance (v.). It is indeed evident that habit in sin, and even more, relapse into habit (for nearly two centuries moralists have thus distinguished the habitual sinner from the recidivist) determine a particular state in the penitent which demands special conditions for a fruitful administration of the sacrament.

Regarding the absolution of habitual sinners, moralists generally affirm: « They can be absolved each time they show themselves truly and sincerely disposed to use the necessary means to overcome their habit ». Among the means, some are general, such as prayer, meditation, the remembrance of God's presence, the avoidance of occasions, the frequent use of the sacraments; others are particular, namely those directly opposed to the habit. He who refuses to use the necessary means to correct himself cannot regularly be absolved, being ill-disposed insofar as he retains attachment to his own bad habit. But if the refusal concerns only certain means that are suggested to him and which he does not believe necessary, being ready to resort to others, he would not cease to be disposed, or could be absolved and left for a certain time in good faith, although these other means might seem less effective in the judgment of the confessor.

Is the penitent obliged to accuse his bad habits? Among the propositions condemned by Innocent XI, by decree of 2 March 1679, the 58th says: Non tenemur confessorio interroganti fateri peccati alicuius consuetudinem; therefore, in the case that the penitent is purposely questioned by the confessor about his habit, he must sincerely answer; apart from this case, it does not seem that the penitent must accuse himself of it. A habit can indeed be a circumstance that aggravates the sin, but it does not change its species; now, according to the Council of Trent (sess. XIV, cap. V and can. 7) one is bound to confess only the number and species of mortal sins (v. RECIDIVITÀ).

Adamo Pucci