1830.] Paragraphs on Prejudice. 411 



If I am required to prove the possibility, or demonstrate the mode of 

 whatever I do before I attempt it, I can neither speak, walk, nor see ; 

 nor have the use of my hands, senses, or common understanding. I do 

 not know what muscles I use in walking, nor what organs I employ in 

 speech : those who do, cannot speak or walk better on that account ; 

 nor can they tell how these organs and muscles themselves act. Can 

 I not discover that one object is near, and another at a distance, from 

 the ei/e alone, or from continual impressions of sense and custom con- 

 curring to make the distinction, without going through a course of per- 

 spective and optics ? or am I not to be allowed an opinion on the sub- 

 ject, or to act upon it, without being accused of being a very prejudiced 

 and obstinate person ? An artist knows that to imitate an object in the 

 horizon, he must use less colour ; and the naturalist knows that this 

 effect is produced by the intervention of a greater quantity of air : but 

 a country fellow, who knows nothing of either circumstance, must not 

 only be ignorant, but a blockhead, if he could be persuaded that a hill ten 

 miles off was close before him, only because he could not state the 

 grounds of his opinion scientifically. Not only must we (if restricted to 

 reason and philosophy) distrust the notices of sense, but we must also 

 dismiss all that mass of knowledge and perception which falls under the 

 head of common-sense and natural feeling, which is made up of the strong 

 and urgent, but undefined impressions of things upon us, and lies 

 between the two extremes of absolute proof and the grossest ignorance. 

 Many of these pass for instinctive principles and innate ideas ; but there 

 is nothing in them " more than natural." 



Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find 

 my way across the room ; nor know how to conduct myself in any cir- 

 cumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life. Reason may play 

 the critic, and correct certain errors afterwards ; but if we were to wait 

 for its formal and absolute decisions in the shifting and multifarious 

 combinations of human affairs, the world would stand still. Even men 

 of science, after they have gone over the proofs a number of times, 

 abridge the process, and jump at a conclusion : is it therefore false, 

 because they have always found it to be true ? Science after a certain 

 time becomes presumption ; and learning reposes in ignorance. It has 

 been observed, that women have more tact and insight into character 

 than men, that they find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead, sooner. 

 The explanation is, that they trust more to the first impressions and 

 natural indications of things, without troubling themselves with a learned 

 theory of them ; whereas men, affecting greater gravity, and thinking 

 themselves bound to justify their opinions, are afraid to form any judg- 

 ment at all, without the formality of proofs and definitions, and blunt 

 the edge of their understandings, lest they should commit some mistake. 

 They stay for facts, till it is too late to pronounce on the characters. 

 Women are naturally physiognomists, and men phrenologists. The 

 first judge by sensations; the last by rules. Prejudice is so far then 

 an involuntary and stubborn association of ideas, of which we cannot 

 assign the distinct grounds and origin ; and the answer to the question, 

 " How do we know whether the prejudice is true or false?" depends 

 chiefly on that other, whether the first connection between our ideas has 

 been real or imaginary. This again resolves into the inquiry, Whether 

 the subject in dispute falls under the province of our own experience, 



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