I remember long ago reading in an Austrian paper the advertisement of a certain Rudolph Somebody, who promised fifty gulden reward to any one who after that date should find him at the wine-shop of Ambrosius So-and-so.  ‘This I do,’ the advertisement continued, ’in consequence of a promise which I have made my wife.’  With such a wife, and such an understanding of the way in which to start new habits, it would be safe to stake one’s money on Rudolph’s ultimate success.

The second maxim is, Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.  Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up:  a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.  Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.  As Professor Bain says:—­

“The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other.  It is necessary above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle.  Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right.  The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under any circumstances.  This is the theoretically best career of mental progress.”

A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair:  Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new ‘set’ to the brain.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.  With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved.  This is an obvious consequence of the principles I have laid down.  A ‘character,’ as J.S.  Mill says, ’is a completely fashioned will’; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life.  A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘grows’ to their use.  When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost:  it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.  There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility, but never does a concrete manly deed.