in Philosophy, an aptitude or disposition either of mind or body, acquired by a frequent repetition of the same act. See CUSTOM and Habit.

HABIT is also used for a dress or garb, or the composition of garments, wherewith a person is covered. The principal part of the dress worn by the Jews and Greeks was the ıouler and the ıouar. The ıouler was an upper garment, consisting of a loose square piece of cloth wrapped round the body; the ıouar was an under garment, or tunic, which was fastened round the body and embraced it closely, falling down to the mid thigh. It is proper in this place to observe that a person divested of this upper garment or ıouar, in the eastern language, is styled naked, and in this sense David danced naked before the ark.

The several sorts of garments in use with both sexes, amongst the Romans, were the toga, tunica, peluana, lacerna, chlamys, paludamentum, lena, stola, pallium or palla. See TOGA, &c.

For the habits of the priests amongst the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, see the article Priests.

HABIT is particularly used for the uniform garments of the religious, conformable to the rule and order. HAC

whereof they make profession; as the habit of St Benedict, of St Augustine, &c.

In this sense we say absolutely, such a person has taken the habit; meaning he has entered upon a noviciate in a certain order. So he is said to quit the habit, when he renounces the order. See Vow.

The habits of the several religious are not supposed to have been calculated for singularity or novelty: the founders of the orders, who were at first chiefly inhabitants of deserts and solitudes, gave their monks the habit usual among the country people. Accordingly, the primitive habits of St Anthony, St Hilarion, St Benedict, &c. are described by the ancient writers as consisting chiefly of sheep skins, the common dress of the peasants, shepherds, and mountaineers of that time; and the fame they gave to their disciples.

The orders established in and about cities and inhabited places took the habit worn by other ecclesiastics at the time of their institution. Thus, St Dominic gave his disciples the habit of regular canons, which he himself had always worn to that time. And the like may be said of the Jesuits, Barnabites, Theatins, Oratorians, &c. who took the common habit of the ecclesiastics at the time of their foundation. And what makes them differ so much from each other, as well as from the ecclesiastical habit of the present times, is, that they have always kept invariably to the same form; whereas the ecclesiastics and laics have been changing their mode on every occasion.