The right, then, is not merely the repressive discipline with which we sometimes identify it, but is also something warm, fresh and outward-looking. That which we somewhat vaguely and coldly call mental development is, when at its best, the revelation of an expanding, variegating, and beautiful whole, of which the right act is a harmonious member. When, on the other hand, we say that right is largely determined by habit, we only emphasize the other aspect of that progressive mingling of continuity with change, which we see in mental life in all its phases. Habit, we know, makes lines of less resistance in thought, feeling, and action; and the existence of these tracks must always count in the formation of a judgment of right, as of any other judgment. It ought not, apparently, to be set over against novel impulses as a contrary principle, but rather thought of as a phase of all impulses, since novelty always consists, from one point of view, in a fresh combination of habits. It is much the same question as that of suggestion and choice, or of invention and imitation. The concrete fact, the real thing, in each case, is not one of these as against the other, or one modified by the other, but a single, vital act of which these are aspects, having no separate existence. Whether a person’s life, in its moral or any other aspect, is obviously changeful, or, on the contrary, appears to be merely repetitive or habitual, depends upon whether the state of his mind, and of the conditions about it, are favorable to rapid changes in the system of his thought. Thus if he is young and vigorous, and if he has a natural open-mindedness and keenness of sensibility, he will be so much the more likely, other things equal, to incorporate fresh elements of thought and make a new synthesis, instead of running on habit. Variety of life in the past, preventing excessive deepening of the mental ruts, and contact with strong and novel influences in the present, have the same tendency. The rigidly habitual or traditionary morality of savages is apparently a reflection of the restriction and sameness of their social life; and a similar type of morals is found even in a complex society, as in China, when the social system has become rigid by the equilibration of competing ideas. On the other hand, the stir and change of the more active parts of our society make control by mere habit impossible. There are no simple dominant habits; tendencies are mixed and conflicting, so that the person must either be intelligently moral or else degenerate. He must either make a fresh synthesis or have no synthesis at all.