Habit as a Rolling Snowball
In chapter 13 of Screwtape Letters, Screwtape bemoans the fact that his nephew allowed his patient to "read a good book" and take a "walk through country he really likes. . . two real positive Pleasures." Screwtape goes on to advise trying to prevent his patient from acting on his "piety". He wants him to keep piety in his imagination and affection only, and not in his will and action. Screwtape states: "As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel."

I wondered what human said that, so went to my trusty research tool, Google, and found the following. This "law of habit" was first stated by Bishop Butler, an English churchman in the mid-1800's, in his book The Analogy of Religion.

The law of habit is that habitual actions develop by repetition, and then tend to repeat themselves. The same is true of non-actions (passive actions). By indulging in repeated experiences of feeling without a follow-on action, a habit of not acting develops. In fact, said Butler, the feeling itself is less felt.

An example: "Two men hear the same loud bell in the morning; it calls the one to work, as he is accustomed to listen to it, and so it always wakes him; the other has to rise an hour later, he is accustomed to disregard it, and so it soon ceases to have any effect upon him. The same principle of habit has produced in these two cases exactly opposite results." See Charles H. Smith's book review of Habit and Intelligence.

Another example. In the Burnett Lectures by William Davidson (1892-93), Davidson explained: "the more we give ourselves over to mere feeling, the less disposed to action we grow; whereas the more we accustom ourselves to act on emotion, the more does our ability to act increase, and inversely. The sick-nurse and the doctor may be taken as examples. Repeated experience of suffering does, no doubt, to some extent blunt the acuteness of their sensibility to distress; but then there comes, instead of it, the active habit of relieving, the prompt response in practical assistance, the instinctive rising up to help."

It makes me appreciate that I need to act on my appropriate feelings, not just indulge my emotion. Ergo, my resolution: I will finish my Christmas cards before the end of January! I will finish my Christmas cards before the end of January!