Vices, beginning in the
soul, seem to become at last bodily diseases; why may not virtues
follow the same law? If it were not for some such law of
accumulation as this, the work of life would have to be begun
forever anew. Formation of character would be impossible. We should
be incapable of progress, our whole strength being always employed
in battling with our first enemies, learning evermore anew our
earliest lessons. But by our present constitution he who has taken
one step can take another, and life may become a perpetual advance
from good to better. And the highest graces of all--Faith, Hope, and
Love--obey the same law." See James Freeman Clarke, Every-Day
Religion, p. 122.]
There has been therefore in the successive forms and stages of
animal life a clear sequence of dominant nervous actions. The
actions of all animals below the annelid are mainly reflex or
automatic, unconscious and involuntary. But in insects and lower
vertebrates the highest actions at least are instinctive.
Consciousness plays a continually more important part. Still the
actions are controlled by hereditary tendency far more than by the
will of the individual. But in man instinct has been almost entirely
replaced by conscious, voluntary, intelligent action. And yet in
man, as rapidly as possible, actions which at first require
conscious effort become, through repetition and habit, reflex and
automatic.
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