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How to Teach by George Drayton Strayer;Naomi Norsworthy
page 63 of 326 (19%)
accepted, limits the recognition of any other possible line of action in
that situation. Habit binds to one particular response and at the same
time blinds the individual to any other alternative. The danger of this
is obvious. If the habits formed are bad or wasteful ones, the
individual is handicapped in his growth until new ones can be formed. On
the other hand, habit makes for limitation.

Despite these dangers, habit is of inestimable value in the development
of both the individual and the human race. It is through it that all
learning is possible. It makes possible the preservation of our social
inheritance. As James says, "Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society,
its most precious conservative agent." Because of its power of
limitation it is sometimes considered the foe of independence and
originality, but in reality it is the only road to progress. Other
things being equal, the more good habits a person has, the greater the
probability of his doing original work. The genius in science or in art
or in statesmanship is the man who has made habitual many of the
activities demanded by his particular field and who therefore has time
and energy left for the kind of work that demands thinking. Habit won't
make a genius, but all men of exceptional ability excel others in the
number and quality of their habits in the field in which they show
power. As the little child differs from the adult in the number and
quality of his habits, so the ordinary layman differs from the expert.
It is scarcity, not abundance, of habits that forces a man into a rut
and keeps him mediocre. Just as the three year old, having taken four or
five times as long as the adult to dress himself, is tired out at the
end of the task, so the amateur in literature or music or morals as
compared with the expert. The more habits any one has in any line, the
better for him, both from the standpoint of efficiency and productivity,
provided that the habits are good and that among them is found the habit
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