412 Paragraphs on PrejudicS. [_Ocr. 



feeling, and observation, or is referable to the head of authority, tra- 

 dition, and fanciful conjecture ? Our practical conclusions are in this 

 respect generally right; our speculative opinions are just as likely to 

 be wrong. What we derive from our personal acquaintance with things 

 (however narrow in its scope or imperfectly digested), is, for the most 

 part, built on a solid foundation that of Nature ; it is in trusting to 

 others (who give themselves out for guides and doctors) that we are all 

 abroad, and at the mercy of quackery, impudence, and imposture. Any 

 impression, however absurd, or however we may have imbibed it, by 

 being repeated and indulged in, becomes an article of implicit and incor- 

 rigible belief. The point to consider is, how we have first taken it up, 

 whether from ourselves or the arbitrary dictation of others. " Thus 

 shall we try the doctrines, whether they be of nature or of man." 



So far then from the charge lying against vulgar and illiterate prejudice 

 as the bane of truth and common sense, the argument turns the other way ; 

 for the greatest, the most solemn, and mischievous absurdities that man- 

 kind have been the dupes of, they have imbibed from the dogmatism and 

 vanity or hypocrisy of the self-styled wise and learned, who have 

 imposed profitable fictions upon them for self-evident truths, and con- 

 trived to enlarge their power with their pretensions to knowledge. 

 Every boor sees that the sun shines above his head ; that " the moon is 

 made of green cheese," is a fable that has been taught him. Defoe says, 

 that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready 

 to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery 

 was a man or a horse. This, then, was a prejudice that they did not fill 

 up of their own heads. All the great points that men have founded a 

 claim to superiority, wisdom, and illumination upon, that they have 

 embroiled the world with, and made matters of the last importance, are 

 what one age and country differ diametrically with each other about, 

 have been successively and justly exploded, and have been the levers of 

 opinion and the grounds of contention, precisely because as their ex- 

 pounders and believers are equally in the dark about them, they rest 

 wholly on the fluctuations of will and passion, and as they can neither 

 be proved nor disproved, admit of the fiercest opposition or the most 

 bigotted faith. In what " comes home to the business and bosoms of 

 men," there is less of this uncertainty and presumption ; and there, in 

 the little world of our own knowledge and experience, we can hardly 

 do better than attend to the t( still, small voice" of our own hearts and 

 feelings, instead of being brow-beat by the effrontery, or puzzled by the 

 sneers and cavils of pedants and sophists, of whatever school or descrip- 

 tion. 



If I take a prejudice against a person from his face, I shall very pro- 

 bably be in the right; if I take a prejudice against a person from 

 hearsay, I shall quite as probably be in the wrong. We have a pre- 

 judice in favour of certain books, but it is hardly without knowledge, 

 if we have read them with delight over and over again. Fame itself is 

 a prejudice, though a fine one. Natural affection is a prejudice: for 

 though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, 

 we have no reason to think them better than others. The error here is, 

 when that which is properly a dictate of the heart passes out of its- 

 sphere, and becomes an overweening decision of the understanding. 

 So in like manner of the love of country ; and there is a prejudice in 



