THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PREJUDICE. 635 



limited by the quality and amount of its previous acquisitions. 

 '" No man/' Emerson tells us, " can learn what he has not prepara- 

 tion for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chem- 

 ist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall 

 be never the wiser the secrets he would not utter to a chemist 

 for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. 

 Our eyes are holden that we can not see things that stare us in 

 the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened ; then 

 we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a 

 dream." Instinctively, therefore, we seek the mental food that 

 our minds are prepared to digest that, namely, which is most 

 clearly related to what we know already. In conversation, notice 

 how people brighten up when you tell them something that they 

 know already, especially if it is something they have long be- 

 lieved or themselves discovered. In society we know how to make 

 ourselves agreeable by speaking to each person on the subject of 

 his peculiar interests. If we are wise, we shall engage each person 

 in subjects of conversation about which he is best informed. By 

 so doing we can not only make ourselves agreeable, but lay by a 

 stock of useful information at the same time. Such a course is 

 by no means easy. We fall naturally into the vice of parading 

 our bwn knowledge, and we like to hear others talk, not of their 

 interests, but of ours. Sometimes persons in conversation act 

 simply as foils each for the other. I listen to your stories only 

 that you in turn may listen to mine ; and in the next company I 

 tell not the ones I heard, but the ones I told before. Thackeray, 

 in " Henry Esmond," hits upon this human weakness. " They 

 emptied scores of bottles at the ' King's Arms,' each prating of 

 his love, and allowing the others to talk on condition that he 

 might have his own turn as a listener." 



We like also to read that which favors our side of a question. 

 The Republican subscribes for a Republican newspaper, and the 

 Democrat reads the organ of his party. In the last political cam- 

 paign it was no doubt true that advocates of free trade or of tariff 

 reform, and advocates of protection, read for the most part liter- 

 ature favorable to their respective views. The churches plead for 

 greater consensus of opinion, yet the Methodist subscribes for a 

 Methodist paper, the Baptist for a Baptist paper, the Roman 

 Catholic for a Catholic paper. In general we read the organ of 

 our own sect or party. There are, of course, some valid economic 

 reasons for so doing. I shall speak of these reasons below. But, if 

 truth alone were sought, the plan we pursue would be the worst 

 plan possible. Sometimes even we indignantly refuse mental food 

 that might serve as a corrective of our possible one-sidedness, in- 

 stinctively avoiding that which we feel can not be assimilated 

 without a dangerous readjustment of our mental possessions. 



