HABIT, John Paul Vemo S.

HABITS: Man is said to be "a creature of habits." In general sense,
habit is a quality whereby the existence or operation of a substance
is permanently affected for better or worse. Habit is a stable quality
added to a faculty whereby the faculty's capacity to act in a variety
of ways is channeled to produce readily and easily a particular kind
of act.
Habit is acquired, or in the case of the supernatural virtues,
infused. Habit adds an intrinsic perfection to faculty. Hence it is a
real modification of the agent's nature which abides with him in the
intervals between one occasion for its exercise and another. Habit is
not the same as routine, which of itself involves no skill.
Habit belongs to living things. It has two distinguishing features:
a) it presupposes activity illumined by knowledge. Although brutes
have ways of acting which resemble habits, habit is more properly a
perfection of the rational nature because, b) it operates under the
direction of free will. Essentially habit is something usable at will.
Habits are caused by the repetition of the same kind of act. Habit is
a living thing which feeds on acts and the more frequently and
intensely the act is performed the deeper the habit is implanted. A
habit is a quality which is difficult to change.
The ethical habit is skill in the performance of moral acts. The
ethical habits reside in man's moral faculties and are of two general
kinds: 1) habits which are productive of acts conducing to man's last
end are called virtue, 2) habits which incline him to activity leading
him away form his last end are called vices.
A habit is a channel whereby the energies flow freely and readily in
some particular direction. A habit is a determination of a faculty for
good or for evil. It is something intrinsic in a man, a real
modification of his or her being, abiding in him or her in the
intervals between one occasion for its exercise and another.
A person will act as he has become habituated, except under some
special motive from without, or some special effort from within. The
habits are indeed human's creation, the outcome of his or her free
acts. But human beings become the bond-slave of their own creation, so
much so that when the occasion arrives, three-fourths of the act is
already done, by the force of the habit alone, before his or her will
is awakened, or drowsily moves in its sleep.