the habit, not their existence, but the mode of their existence: that
is to say, because of the habit the acts are now formed readily,
reliably, and artistically, or virtuously. The primitive acts which
gradually engendered the habit, were done with difficulty, fitfully,
and with many failures,--more by good luck than good management, if it
was a matter of skill, and by a special effort rather than as a thing
of course, where it was question of moral well-doing. (See c.ii.,
s.ii., n.9, p. 10.)

5. A habit is a living thing: it grows and must be fed. It grows on
acts, and acts are the food that sustain it. Unexercised, a habit
pines away: corruption sets in and disintegration. A man, we will say,
has a habit of thinking of God during his work. He gives over doing
so. That means that he either takes to thinking of everything and
nothing, or he takes up some definite line of thought to the exclusion
of God. Either way there is a new formation to the gradual ruin of the
old habit.

6. _Habit_ and _custom_ may be distinguished in philosophical
language. We may say that custom makes the habit. Custom does not
imply any skill or special facility. A habit is a channel whereby the
energies flow, as otherwise they would not have flowed, freely and
readily in some particular direction. A habit, then, is a
determination of a faculty for good or for evil. It is something
intrinsic in a man, a real modification of his being, abiding in him
in the intervals between one occasion for its exercise and another:
whereas custom is a mere denomination, expressive of frequent action
and no more. Thus it would be more philosophical to speak of a
_custom_ of early rising, and of a _custom_ of smoking, rather than of
a _habit_ of smoking, except so far as, by the use of the word