The natural effect of habit is to perfect the faculty,(341) to increase its energy, to make it more prompt to act, and thus to _facilitate_ the performance of the act for which the habit disposes it. It also engenders and develops a natural _need_ or _tendency_ or _desire_ to repeat the act, and a natural aversion from the acts opposed to the habit. Finally, according as the habit grows, the performance of the act demands less effort, calls for less actual attention; thus the habit diminishes the feeling of effort and tends to bring about a quasi-automatic and semi-conscious form of activity. Good habits are those which _perfect_ the nature of the agent, which advance it towards the realization of its end; bad habits are those which retard and prevent the realization of this end. Hence the _ethical_ importance, to the human person, of forming, fostering and confirming good habits, as also of avoiding, resisting and eradicating bad habits, can scarcely be exaggerated. The profound and all-pervading influence of habit in the mental and moral life of man is unfortunately far from being adequately appreciated even by those responsible for the secular, moral and religious education of the young. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that the influence of habit on the conduct of life, enormous as it is in fact, is so secret, so largely unconscious, that it easily escapes notice. Careful reflection on our actions, diligent study of the springs of action in our everyday life, are needed to reveal this influence. But the more we analyse human conduct in ourselves and others, the more firmly convinced we become that human character and conduct are _mainly_ dependent on _the formation of habits_. Habits are the grand conserving and perfecting—or the terrible undermining and destroying—force of life. They are the fruit of our past and the seed of our future. In them the words of Leibniz find their fullest verification: “the present is laden with the past and pregnant with the future”. By forming good habits we escape the disheartening difficulties of perpetual beginnings; and thus the labour we devote to the acquisition of wisdom and virtue has its first rich recompense in the facility it gives us to advance on the path of progress. It has been truly and rightly said that all genuine education consists in the formation of good habits.