ABSTRACT
Moral growth was modelled on the psychological process in which impulse, becoming rationalized and conceptualized, takes the shape of desires and needs that embody the results of experience. There is thus a layer of habit at this basic level. The conflicts of this layer of impulse and habit gives rise to conscious intervention and reconstruction and the outcome is the habits and self pattern of character. To consider habit in general as what in society becomes custom is thus to focus from the point of view of reflective thought upon the pre-reflective. The Chinese experience suggested to John Dewey that custom may in some cases be what reflection could reaffirm, the lesson that preserves rather than retards. Dewey is conscious of the fact that he is extending the customary use of the term "habit". Habit is a better term for this than attitude or disposition.
