But the advantages of habit far outweigh its disadvantages. Habit helps
the individual to be consistent and helps people to know what to expect
from one. It helps society to be stable, to incorporate within itself
modes of action conducive to the common good. For example, the respect
which we all have for the property of others is a habit, and is so
firmly intrenched that we should find ourselves unable to steal if we
wished to. Habit is thus a very desirable asset and is truly called the
"enormous fly-wheel of society."

A second advantage of habit is that it makes for accuracy. Acts that
have become habitualized are performed more accurately than those not
habitualized. Movements such as those made in typewriting and
piano-playing, when measured in the psychological laboratory, are found
to copy each other with extreme fidelity. The human body is a machine
which may be adjusted to a high degree of nicety, and habit is the
mechanism by which this adjustment is made.

A third advantage is that a stock of habits makes life easier. "There
is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual
but indecision, for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of
every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day and the
beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional
deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or
regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as
practically not to exist for his consciousness at all." Have you ever
reflected how miserable you would be and what a task living would be if
you had to learn to write anew every morning when you go to class; or
if you had to relearn how to tie your necktie every day? The burden of
living would be intolerable.