necessity for all primitive societies, but which must be broken if there is going to be indefinite advancement. It is what the shell is to the chicken, absolutely necessary to the early stage of its development, absolutely fatal to its larger life if it is not broken in due time. It is evident that the influence of habit on the successive generations is a less imposing factor if its transmission is entirely, or almost entirely, upon social lines, and not on both social and physiological. But the transmission of habit is not less of a reality in the former case than in the latter. This Easter Sunday is the Church's Resurrection Day, and our coming here this evening to consider the subject of Habit may appear to some a strange, incongruous sequel to the morning's festival of flower and song. But were I disposed to make out a connection between the sentiments appropriate to the day and my particular theme, I should have no difficulty in doing so. The nexus would be ready for my hand. For what but putting off the old man and putting on the new was the phrase by which the great apostle of the resurrection indicated the reality which the resurrection represented to his mind. Putting off the old man and putting on the new: as if each in time were a garment, a habit; as in Shakspere's phrase-"In habit as he was. To-day as eighteen centuries ago, this is the most important business that we have in hand. How the old habit sometimes clings!-like Dejaneira's fatal shirt to the unhappy Hercules. It often clings the closer because it has been woven on some loom of noble aspiration, because its warp and woof are the associations and the memories of some heroic time. That is the trouble with the worst social habit of our time, that of partisanship in politics. That is the reason why it has taken so many of the noblest spirits in its snare. The party earned their allegiance by devotion to some principle of equity, and it keeps it from the force of habit, no matter how it drags its garlands in the mire. But while this habit of political partisanship is the most baleful habit of our time, fatal alike to personal character and the public weal, there is not on the horizon any gleam of happier light than that which heralds the incoming of a habit of political independence. " "When the tale of bricks is doubled, then Moses comes.' When the McKanes and Pratts and Hills become insufferable, then good citizens break their "cake of custom," their partisan habit, and quit themselves like men. And, once rejoicing in their new-found freedom, some are recruited for the future to the ranks of those who hold the doctrine that parties were made for men and not men for parties to be sound and good. But the habit of political partisanship, although the worst, is only one of many that press balefully upon our social life, and there are other habits that press not less balefully upon us as individuals. To break the force of these, and to establish others in their places is, as Abraham Lincoln said of his special task, "a big job." But like that, it is one that sounds a note of joyous invitation to all those who are not yet given over to believe a lie. COLLATERAL READINGS SUGGESTED. Spencer's Principles of Sociology, and Principles of Ethics; Darwin's Descent of Man; Graham's Creed of Science, and The Social Problem; Ward's Dynamic Sociology; Greg's Enigmas of Life; Savage's Morals of Evolution; Huxley's Social Diseases and Worse Remedies, and Ethics and Evolution; Crooker's Problems in American Society; Hobbes's Leviathan; Malthus On Population; Keene's Art in Evolution and Ethics (Dublin Review, July, 1893); Haeckel's Evolution of Man. |