of passive sensibility, and though originally an offshoot
from it, may in time take root and detach itself from
the parent stock; so much so, that in the case of
an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because
we desire it, we often desire it only because we will
it. This, however, is but an instance of that
familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise confined
to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent
things, which men originally did from a motive of
some sort, they continue to do from habit. Sometimes
this is done unconsciously, the consciousness coming
only after the action: at other times with conscious
volition, but volition which has become habitual,
and is put into operation by the force of habit, in
opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
often happens with those who have contracted habits
of vicious or hurtful indulgence. Third and last
comes the case in which the habitual act of will in
the individual instance is not in contradiction to
the general intention prevailing at other times, but
in fulfilment of it; as in the case of the person
of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue deliberately
and consistently any determinate end. The distinction
between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic
and highly important psychological fact; but the fact
consists solely in this—that will, like
all other parts of our constitution, is amenable to
habit, and that we may will from habit what we no
longer desire for itself, or desire only because we
will it. It is not the less true that will, in
the beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including
in that term the repelling influence of pain as well
as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take
into consideration, no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous
will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and
not to be fully relied on; by what means can it be
strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous,
where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted
or awakened? Only by making the person desire
virtue—by making him think of it in a pleasurable
light, or of its absence in a painful one. It
is by associating the doing right with pleasure, or
the doing wrong with pain, or by eliciting and impressing
and bringing home to the person’s experience
the pleasure naturally involved in the one or the pain
in the other, that it is possible to call forth that
will to be virtuous, which, when confirmed, acts without
any thought of either pleasure or pain. Will
is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion
of its parent only to come under that of habit.
That which is the result of habit affords no presumption
of being intrinsically good; and there would be no
reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should
become independent of pleasure and pain, were it not
that the influence of the pleasurable and painful
associations which prompt to virtue is not sufficiently
to be depended on for unerring constancy of action