410 Paragraphs on Prejudice. OcT. 



the soundness of the judgment formed upon it from repeated, actual 

 impressions, is one thing ; the power of vindicating and enforcing it, by 

 distinctly appealing to or explaining those impressions, is another. The 

 most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest 

 thinkers. 



To deny that we can, in a certain sense, know and be justified 

 in believing anything of which we cannot give the complete demon- 

 stration, or the exact why and how, would only be to deny that the 

 clown, the mechanic (and not even the greatest philosopher), can know 

 the commonest thing ; for in this new and dogmatical process of reason- 

 ing, the greatest philosopher can trace nothing above, nor proceed a 

 single step without taking something for granted ;* and it is well if he 

 does not take more things for granted than the most vulgar and illiterate, 

 and what he knows a great deal less about. A common mechanic can 

 tell how to work an engine better than the mathematician who invented 

 it. A peasant is able to foretell rain from the appearance of the clouds, 

 because (time out of mind) he has seen that appearance followed by that 

 consequence ; and shall a pedant catechise him out of a conviction which 

 he has found true in innumerable instances, because he does not under- 

 stand the composition of the elements, or cannot put his notions into a 

 logical shape ? There may also be some collateral circumstance (as the 

 time of day), as well as the appearance of the clouds, which he may 

 forget to state in accounting for his prediction ; though, as it has been a 

 part of his familiar experience, it has naturally guided him in forming 

 it, whether he was aware of it or not. This comes under the head of 

 the well-known principle of the association of ideas ; by which certain 

 impressions, from frequent recurrence, coalesce and act in unison truly 

 and mechanically that is, without our being conscious of anything but 

 the general and settled result. On this principle it has been well said, 

 that " there is nothing so true as habit ;" but it is also blind : we feel 

 and can produce a given effect from numberless repetitions of the same 

 cause ; but we neither inquire into the cause, nor advert to the mode. 

 In learning any art or exercise, we are obliged to take lessons, to watch 

 others, to proceed step by step, to attend to the details and means 

 employed ; but when we are masters of it, we take all this for granted, 

 and do it without labour and without thought, by a kind of habitual 

 instinct that is, by the trains of our ideas and volitions having been 

 directed uniformly, and at last flowing of themselves into the proper 

 channel. 



We never do any thing well till we cease to think about the 

 manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but 

 natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically. They do not 

 succeed in this from knowledge or reflection, but from inveterate cus- 

 tom, which is a cord that cannot be loosed. In fact, in all that we do, feel, 

 or think, there is a leaven of prejudice (more or less extensive), viz. some- 

 thing implied, of which we do not know or have forgotten the grounds. 



* Berkely, in his " Minute Philosopher," attacks Dr. Halley, who had objected to 

 faith and mysteries in religion, on this score ; and contends that the mathematician, no 

 less than the theologian, is obliged to presume on certain postulates, or to resort, before 

 he could establish a single theorem, to a formal definition of those undefinable and hypo- 

 thetical existences, points, lines, and surfaces; and, according to the ingenious and 

 learned Bishop of Cloyne, solids would fare no better than superficial in this war of 

 words and captious contradiction. 



