Alexander Bain
Habit · Behaviour · Character
Alexander Bain was born in Aberdeen in 1818, the son of a weaver, and rose through scholarship to become Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen. Philosopher, psychologist and educationalist, he was one of the leading British figures in the nineteenth-century attempt to understand mental life through observation, association and physiology.
His work was particularly influential in Scotland, where psychology was still closely connected with philosophy but increasingly concerned with how thought, emotion and behaviour actually worked.
The Idea
What we repeat becomes easier to repeat.
Bain understood habit as one of the forces through which behaviour takes shape. Actions, thoughts and emotional responses do not occur independently of what has gone before.
Repetition creates tendency.
Over time, what was once a deliberate response may become familiar, easier and eventually habitual.
In this sense, character is not revealed only in exceptional moments. It is also formed quietly through repetition.
Bain and Owain Morgan
Bain gives Owain an important principle:
Do not begin with the exceptional act. Begin with the pattern that preceded it.
When confronted with behaviour that seems out of character, Owain is reluctant to accept that description without examining what character actually means.
He looks backwards.
Has the person responded similarly before, though less dramatically? Is there a recurring resentment, fear or need for control? Does he repeatedly avoid certain subjects, react badly to particular challenges, or behave differently when his authority is threatened?
A single occurrence may mean very little.
Repetition means more.
This changes the way Owain thinks about apparently sudden acts. An action may occur in a moment, yet the tendencies that made it possible may have developed over years.
Bain therefore helps Owain distinguish between occasion and cause.
The immediate circumstances may explain why something happened then. They do not necessarily explain why this particular person responded in this particular way.
Habit also complicates Owain’s understanding of character. We often speak of character as though it were something fixed — a quality a person possesses. Bain suggests something more dynamic. Character is partly constructed through repeated ways of thinking, feeling and acting.
That makes small behaviours significant, not because each contains some hidden revelation, but because together they establish a pattern.
For Owain, the question becomes:
What has this person practised becoming?
The Unresolved Question
Habit creates another difficulty.
If repeated behaviour gradually becomes easier and more automatic, at what point does habit begin to limit choice?
Owain cannot conclude that habit removes responsibility. A tendency is not an irresistible force.
But neither can he understand an action properly without considering the patterns that preceded it.
The existence of a pattern may explain why an action became more likely. It does not make the action inevitable.
That distinction allows Owain to examine character without turning it into destiny.
Further Reading
The Senses and the Intellect (1855) — Bain’s major examination of sensation, intellect, association and the physical conditions of mental life.
The Emotions and the Will (1859) — particularly important to Owain’s interests in emotion, volition and action.
Mental Science (1868) — a more concise presentation of Bain’s psychological work, widely used in teaching during the later nineteenth century.
The Essence
Bain’s importance to Owain lies in a deceptively simple idea: the extraordinary act may have an ordinary history.
Behaviour develops through repetition. Responses become tendencies; tendencies become habits; and habits contribute to character.
When Owain wants to understand what somebody has done, he therefore asks not only what happened at the decisive moment.
He asks what happened before it, again and again.