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 until it
has acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit
is the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of the
importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the
will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence.