636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The skeptic in religion opens a book on Christian evidences, only 

 to close it in haste when he perceives its trend ; while the pious 

 believer, who picks up the work of Strauss or Renan, drops it like 

 a burning coal. We avoid books, men, sermons, society, that are 

 not, as we say, congenial. Hence the trouble we have in getting 

 our books read by the very people for whom they were written, or 

 in getting our articles printed in the journals that circulate among 

 the readers we desire to reach. The preacher prepares a vigorous 

 sermon for " sinners," but he preaches it to his own devout peo- 

 ple ; the " sinners " are not there. 



Our psychological law of prejudice thus developed teaches us 

 that, since we seek not for what may correct our possible errors,, 

 but for what will confirm our already acquired opinions, our men- 

 tal life always tends toward intensification or involution. Evi- 

 dently this tendency of the mind toward involution will grow 

 with age, and our every-day experience confirms this deduction. 

 Teaching new tricks to old dogs is easier than giving us new ap- 

 perceptive organs when middle life is past. The old man changes 

 his politics rarely, his religion never. He lives from within. The 

 mind becomes more and more a microcosm. The cerebral tracts 

 show well-beaten paths of association. The brain becomes hard- 

 ened and fixed. "An old man/" says Dr. Holmes, "who shrinks 

 into himself, falls into ways which become as positive and as much 

 beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed by 

 clock-work." The brain, he continues, has its " systole and dias- 

 tole as regular as that of the heart itself." 



" Minds roll in paths like planets : they revolve 

 This in a larger, tbat a narrower ring, 

 But round they come at last to that same phase, 

 That self-same light and shade they showed before. 

 I learned his annual and his monthly tale, 

 His weekly axiom and his daily phrase. 

 I felt them coming in the laden air, 

 And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, 

 Even as the first-born at his father's board 

 Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest 

 Is on its way. by some mysterious sign 

 Forewarned, the click before the striking bell." 



The older we get, the larger becomes the subjective factor of 

 knowledge and the smaller the objective. We are, as said the 

 obscure sage of Ephesus, like those asleep, withdrawn each into a 

 private world of his own. We can now understand that state 

 of mind described by the word "confirmed." We hear of a con- 

 firmed pessimist, a confirmed protectionist or free-trader. Some- 

 times we apply the word without shame to ourselves, saying that 

 experience has confirmed us in this or that opinion, not know- 



