more unbroken the habit, and the more nearly it coincides with
previous habitual forms of the life process, the more
persistently will the given habit assert itself. The habit will
be stronger if the particular traits of human nature which its
action involves, or the particular aptitudes that find exercise
in it, are traits or aptitudes that are already largely and
profoundly concerned in the life process or that are intimately
bound up with the life history of the particular racial stock.
The varying degrees of ease with which different habits are
formed by different persons, as well as the varying degrees of
reluctance with which different habits are given up, goes to say
that the formation of specific habits is not a matter of length
of habituation simply. Inherited aptitudes and traits of
temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in
deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any
individual's scheme of life. And the prevalent type of
transmitted aptitudes, or in other words the type of temperament
belonging to the dominant ethnic element in any community, will
go far to decide what will be the scope and form of expression of
the community's habitual life process. How greatly the
transmitted idiosyncrasies of aptitude may count in the way of a
rapid and definitive formation of habit in individuals is
illustrated by the extreme facility with which an all-dominating
habit of alcoholism is sometimes formed; or in the similar
facility and the similarly inevitable formation of a habit of
devout observances in the case of persons gifted with a special
aptitude in that direction. Much the same meaning attaches to
that peculiar facility of habituation to a specific human
environment that is called romantic love.