THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PREJUDICE. 641 



must get our knowledge into some sort of unity, otherwise it can 

 neither be retained nor used. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy 

 was far better than none ; it served as a framework for a great 

 body of facts, distorted though they were by the false theory. We 

 are lovers of systems. Most of us prefer unity to verity. We 

 want order and discipline among our ideas. Of absolute truth 

 we can not speak ; of order and consistency we may. Any new 

 system may find numerous adherents, if only it be presented in 

 the threefold form of unity, consistency, and repetition. It is 

 easy to understand this love of systems. They save us from the 

 inevitable mental bankruptcy which would result from the influx 

 of a mass of uncoordinated impressions. Grant us a system, all 

 complete in its several compartments, where we can pigeon-hole 

 each newly acquired fact, and peace and harmony reign within. 

 No matter if the system be so narrow that we can dispose therein 

 only a limited number of impressions ; if only we have confidence 

 in it, all heterogeneous elements we may cast out as " error." We 

 love harmony and hate antagonisms. It is mental economy, 

 therefore, for us to read the organs of our sects and parties, to 

 converse with those with whom we sympathize, to listen to that 

 which we believe already. Great historical disturbances bring 

 out systems. It is in this way that we get ourselves ready for 

 troublous times. A system is a kind of mental fortress, a vantage- 

 ground from which to scrutinize each new idea, and apperceive 

 it as a friend to be received or an enemy to be, on a priori grounds, 

 repelled. System-forming is thus the process of mental involu- 

 tion, which is the law of individual minds, as evolution is of the 

 mind of the race. 



Mental involution shows another phase in habit. Habits are 

 well-knit associations. They make us machines, committed forever 

 to a determined manner of acting and thinking. A habit is itself 

 a mental bias. Stereotyped and inherited, it becomes instinct, 

 where we see the full fruition of the involution movement and 

 the dead level of automatism. From this point of view, instinct 

 has been well called " lapsed intelligence," if by intelligence we 

 mean power to adapt ourselves to new surroundings and to avail 

 ourselves of new impressions. Habit is opposed to progress. In 

 history, our reformers Jesus, Savonarola, Luther have been 

 habit-breakers. Genius, too, is only the name of that disposition 

 which rebels against the law of mental involution, breaks away 

 from systems, and goes out in search of the objective truths of 

 nature. Thus, side by side with the involution movement, we 

 find the evolution movement. In the animal kingdom, it is rep- 

 resented by the persistent but mysterious tendency toward vari- 

 ation ; in human history, by the comet-like appearance of the 

 reformer ; in art, by the lawless product of genius. All these are 



VOL. XXXVI. 41 



