Habit is the "Family-Entrance" to that notorious resort called Hell.

   Most of the people who go there use this side-door.

   For two reasons. First, because it is supposed to be more respectable than that broad, front, pendulum-portal of Abandon. Second, because the policeman is always looking the other way. His name is Law, and he is paid to watch just the front entrance. I have this only by hearsay, not being acquainted with him personally. You see when Love and I go trysting together we always take the opposite direction--the road that leads to Heaven. Love says she can't bear the sight of Law--he makes her tremble all over. So I have come to avoid him myself. Since Love's feminine intuition is the nearest infallible of anything in this world.

   I do not exaggerate in thus defining Habit.

   Analyze all the crime, disease, and misfortune among men, and you trace it to a habit. Drink-habit, drug-habit, food-habit, passion-habit, worry-habit, gossip-habit, fear-habit, greed-habit, credulity-habit, hypocrisy-habit,--and health-food-habit; these with a hundred more of their close kin are directly to blame for Humanity's blind bondage to the surface form of things.

   The human body should be bound by no habits save those decreed by animal instinct. The human mind should be bound by no habits save those required in its quest for Truth. The human soul should be bound by no habits save those that iterate its own inspiration. To think for oneself, to act for oneself, most of all to feel for oneself; this is to outgrow, overtop, and bury in oblivion the habits of the race.

   The only harmless habit is that newly-created by a self-conscious soul for its own individual use. No other habit is based on absolute sincerity. I was once a Republican--because my father was; a Baptist--because my mother was; a classicist-- because my teacher was; a beefsteak-eater--because my cook was; and a Sunday-School scholar--because John D. Rockefeller, Junior, posed as official class-exhorter. Needless to say I was "doped" all through--pardon the slang.

   I am now a Cosmocrat. Which is a new word. There was none big enough before. It both includes and excludes the petty minor distinctions of party, class and creed that once made of a cosmic mind a mere collection of cubby-holes.

   Even the freedom-habit becomes bad when you can't break it. You may get your message on the mountain-peak, but only in the valley can you give it. Since deaf is the world to voices from on high, blind is the world to visions celestial.

   Man, the only being with the upturned face, is the only being with the downcast eye. Is it not pitiful?

   My conscience is pricking me. I'll have to confess to one bad habit. The note-book habit. I've jotted down enough memoranda to make a library. That's where most of the epigrams in this book come from. After all, I'm not the one to suffer on account of this habit, am I? Only my readers.

   I started to compile a Catalogue of Bad Human Habits; with Cures and Preventives,therefor.

   But the job soon grew to be hopeless. So we'll just cite a few, taken from the list at random. Everybody does these things because everybody else does. Whereas nobody wants to, nobody should. Generally speaking.

   BAD HUMAN HABITS
(To be found in your next-door neighbor)

 Arguing
Interfering
Advising
Complaining
Nagging
Tagging
Lopping
Propping
Imitating
Begging
Borrowing
Wishing
Boosting
Defending
Explaining
Straddling
Posing
Boasting
Pretending
Hesitating
Hurrying
Agitating
Reforming
Exhorting
Doubting
Punishing
Avenging
Proselyting
Economizing
Mourning
Dreading
Condoling
Misconstruing motives
Over-eating (chief of them all)
Over-fasting (not epidemic)
"Catching" diseases
''Taking something" for them
Running for the doctor (instead of from)
Discussing food
Sitting around for meal-time
Urging our friends to eat
"Cultivating an appetite"
Trying to eat, drink, talk and truckle simultaneously
Wearing flannels
Airing our ailments
Consorting with health hobbyists
Watching the clock
"Holding down" a job
Running the government
"Paying" social calls
Reading newspapers
Going to church
Attending funerals and weddings
Naming the baby
Wilting at the weather
Wearing custom-made clothes and opinions
Persisting in regular correspondence
Slandering rivals
Owning friends
Heaping abuse on the rich
Heaping charity on the poor
Deploring mistakes
Vaunting victories
Counting our "mercies"
Sandpapering our injuries
Idolizing the brain
Ridiculing what we don't understand
Teaching literature rather than Life
Imputing wisdom to doctors, preachers and professors
Belittling manual work
Bowing to authority
Pandering to public opinion
Letting "honor" outrank honesty
Wearing a label
Eulogizing consistency
Pitying anybody -- ourselves in particular
Persecuting pioneers
Despising dreamers
Frowning on enthusiasm
Cherishing outgrown ideals
Judging Genius
Sullying Sex
Denying Desire
Obeying Duty
Decreeing marriage moral
Dictating to the individual
Maligning the "lower animals"
Condemning sin
Being painfully good
Pressing tracts and plug hats on the "heathen"
Strewing a grave with flowers
Surfeiting warriors--and starving poets
Jumping at conclusions
Forgetting how to laugh
Esteeming speech more than silence
Taking pride in personality
Fearing to act on impulse
Exalting reason above instinct
Threatening and scolding children
Remaining strangers to the hills, the sea, and the stars
Worshipping man, god or devil
Imagining Truth can lead astray
Preferring dishonest orthodoxy to honest heresy
Divorcing God and Nature
Relying on faith alone, or fact alone
Prizing form more than Spirit
Forcing or crushing Love
Silencing the voice of the Soul

   Did you survive ?

   Then, after a little breathing-spell, we'll continue.

   While you are resting, you might send to B. Lust, Butler, N. J. or New York City for back numbers of The Naturopath, Dec. 1902 to March, 1903 inclusive. Enclosing say twenty cents. These issues of this Magazine contain articles written by me on "The Folly of the Food-Habit," suggesting therefrom the wisdom of the Fast. I don't entirely agree with the sentiments of so long ago--when my pen was wont to picture everything jet black with a lurid lining. But if you will refer to them, it will save a duplicate recital here of pessimistic anarchism. Iconoclasm may demolish the ruins of error--only Idealism can build the structure of Truth. Be very sure every iconoclast sees more error than Truth.

   Small men are "creatures of habit"--great men are creators of habit. This explains hero-worship. Since creature always worships creator. Either we make our habits or our habits make us.

   Did you ever know of a genius whose eating habits, for instance, were not peculiar to himself? If he be but a fledgling genius, people call him "cranky;" or if fully-winged and widely-named, they call him "eccentric." Wrong, all wrong. Genius has been defined as "an excess of normality." It is just that--the quintessence of our common instincts, motives and desires, brought to the boiling-point. Mediocrity would not be bound if it knew how to break the fetters; Genius will not be bound because it does know how. And most of us secretly long to do the very things we condemn in the man who dares. Next to the child, may the genius set copy for the race. His script may not always be stupidly regular--but oh how graceful, how lordly are his capitals!

   Did you ever observe that a weather-vane is the only thing the wind can't buffet? Its reward for daring to appear "flighty." But a weather-vane can't be upset, either. And a great soul needs fixity no less than a small soul needs mobility. We cannot be sane until we are symmetrical.

   Now for a ray of sunshine. A "bad habit" is a good thing-- to outgrow. Restriction is to the soul what trellis is to the morning-glory; a necessary support while climbing. The only way to escape it is to transcend it--not to fret over it or demand its destruction. The existence of anything sufficiently proves its beneficence; it is the persistence of the same thing that finally enthralls us. Things were made to use, then forget; but men abuse--then remember.

   Conclude you ere now that I am a Freethinker? Not so, ineradicably not so. Freedom I have won--yet Freethinker am I not. Love I live in--yet Freelover am I not. I am nothing which I can define.

   A Freelover has been denominated elsewhere.

   A Freethinker is a rash youth that smashes guide-posts unread, without having brought his own chart and compass. The blazings on a forest path grow dim and dark with time; thus has superstition cast obloquy on the keen edge of Spirit. But if you are wise, you will look for the way-marks rather than the mould.

   There are two means to darken a window; shade inside, shutter outside. The Freethinker has smashed into bits--boastful bits--the shutters of race-prejudice. But the blind of his own mentality is still down, and he mistakes the faint glow suffusing his understanding for the clear white light of the noonday sun.

   He alone is free who is unconscious that fetters exist--for himself or anybody else. Freedom laughs at labels--the tags we wear mark rather our destination than our condition. As soon as a parcel gets anywhere, you take the tag off.

   Now proportion is a question of perspective--you can't see much of the horizon through that ill-plumbed knot-hole of proximity. Habitude is a listless settling into the somnolence that surrounds us. Freedom is a mighty soaring into the sunlight that shines above us.

   This is a province of the Conquest Fast--to give you the freedom of far-sightedness.

   Freedom is an awful thing. Glorious, yet awful. To stand absolutely alone in the Universe; to watch, from your skyline-

   vantage, what people and things bound you to earth sink forever in the abyss of bondage; to stifle the sob and press back the tear; to lean like a child on the breast of Nature, and stretch out your hand for the Hand of God; this is the silent meeting of anguish and rapture, this is the vicarious At-one-ment.

   Few souls are strong enough, brave enough, sane enough. But the one soul in a thousand who is ready for the Conquest Fast is worth more than all the rest. That consciousness is sufficient recompense for the heart's blood wherewith I write this book. For the only indelible writing has been traced by the writer in his own heart's blood.

   The Conquest Fast makes you free in more ways than I can mention here. I have witnessed the prosecution of several. And in each case, a complete change in life-habits was the result. Your thinking, your feeling, your believing, your desiring, your planning, your hoping, your loving, should be your own after the Fast. It is safe to say they were not your own before the Fast.

   The most vital change is usually the entire readjustment of eating-habits. And no more vital change could be effected for the salvation of the race.

   Nowhere are men more hopelessly human than as they herd miserably together three times a day to get the money's worth of their board bill. Natural beings eat alone. They answer the call of Hunger--but they don't sit around waiting for it. They have no regular meal-hours, regularity being the cruel lash plied by the hand of a blind civilization. They don't gossip, find fault, read newspapers or complain of the food--hence are strangers to dyspepsia. They don't invoke the blessing of an all-wise Deity on such stupidly iniquitous fare as calf's brains, dumplings and brandy sauce. They don't gulp down the first helping for fear there won't be enough of the same for a second. They don't watch their neighbors when the pie is passed, to see who gets the biggest piece.

   They don't do a hundred and one things that make men most ridiculous of the absurd in the way men eat. Ever notice how cross most husbands get if their wives don't sit at the table with hem? She needn't eat--only preside at her lord's festal hoard. Heaven only knows why--unless to furnish additional proof that men are more unreasonable than women.

   No, I do not agree with Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her claim that a home and a prison are identical. Not at all--for in a prison you're relieved of responsibility.

   The remedy for prison-like homes is not communism--but individualism. When every member of the family has the same personal freedom he would have if there were no family--then will home begin to be home.

   Valuable secret for wives free. How to Keep a Husband Home Nights. "Open the door wide and prop it open." The reason for propping it open is that he'll be back presently. That is, if he loves you. If he doesn't, you shouldn't want him back. Moreover, in case you are gracious enough--or wise enough--to give him a good-bye kiss as he passes out into the night, I prophesy he'll return before the shops are closed--purpose to bring you some flowers or sweets. Men are so contrary-- so transparently contrary! If only they were as child-like in the ways they should be as they are in the way they shouldn't!

   How we do wander away from the Fast.

   We mustn't philosophize a bit more--in this chapter.

   Eating should be either a festival or a sacrament--both if you can make it so. I think of all the lessons taught me through the Conquest Fast none has proved so continuously, so cumulatively helpful as this. We should eat as animals--or as gods. Not as men. Speaking metaphysically, our attitude should be either subconscious or superconscious, instead of grossly objective as it usually is. In short, we should feel with both body and soul; but not think with the brain. Here again, as in so many instances, the jar and the whirr of mere mental machinery has diverted us from the just enjoyment of our bodily senses, while deafening us to the finer appeal of our soul-sensibilities.

   Brain may re-enforce Instinct in this far: To guarantee the wholesomeness of every food set before you. Brain should then retire--without questioning the digestibility of a single morsel. Let Hunger enjoy, undisturbed.

   By "festival" I do not mean sociability.

   By "sacrament" I do not mean solemnity.

   I can eat in a restaurant--if none of my friends are there. And when I've worked hard, thus earning a good dinner, that's where I go instead of to my cupboard. People who always prepare their own food get morbid on the subject.

   But to observe meal-time as a sacrament, I must be utterly alone--free of all personal vibrations. Which again contradicts custom, all the church communicants gathering to commemorate the Holy Supper. A sacrament can never be a commemoration; ideals are sacred--but their ashes are earthy.

   No "family table" any more?

   Yes--if you have found who your family really are. There are just three in my family circle--Nature, God and I. And our family name is Love. We seldom have company at all--so few people know our real name and residence. When mere humans do come upon us by accident at meal-time, we always shudder-- We Three. Because they disrupt the serenity of the atmosphere with their harsh echoes of civilization.

   Do not call this churlishness. If all the race would let me ove it, I should never need to leave it. But in order to realize that Love is the only thing worth while, one must first have suffered a thousand eons. So we can only wait till the world grows tender.

   Yearn and wait, in silence.