The keener the observer the more likely he is to be struck by the empire of habit. Habit, as Wellington said, is ten times nature, and is indeed so obviously a second nature that many of the wise have suspected that nature herself is only a first habit.[316] Now Aristotle who is open to criticism, it may be, on the side of humility, still remains incomparable among the philosophers of the world for his treatment of habit on the humanistic level. Any one who wishes to learn how to become moderate and sensible and decent can do no better even at this late day than to steep himself in the “Nicomachean Ethics.” One of the ultimate contrasts that presents itself in a subject of this kind is that between habit as conceived by Aristotle and nature as conceived by Rousseau. The first great grievance of the critical humanist against Rousseau is that he set out to be an individualist and at the same time attacked analysis, which is indispensable if one is to be a sound individualist. The second great grievance of the humanist is that Rousseau sought to discredit habit which is necessary if right analysis is to be made effective. “The only habit the child should be allowed to form,” says Rousseau, “is that of forming no habit.”[317] How else is the child to follow his bent or genius and so arrive at full self-expression? The point I am bringing up is of the utmost gravity, for Rousseau is by common consent the father of modern education. To eliminate from education the idea of a progressive adjustment to a human law, quite apart from temperament, may be to imperil civilization itself. For civilization (another word that is sadly in need of Socratic defining) may be found to consist above all in an orderly transmission of right habits; and the chief agency for securing such a transmission must always be education, by which I mean far more of course than mere formal schooling.