PREJUDICES. 



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. popular inquietude which distress, or the insinuations 

 of factious men may OCC.IMOM. On the same principle, 

 reform i* very slowly cllec ted, and revolutions seldom 

 occur; tor, except in time of great .sutlennu, or the 

 most galling oppression, the power of mi-inory has 

 much dei per influence on the popular mind than the 

 desire for reform, or the taste for change. There are, 

 undoubtedly, various other causes which lead men to 

 maintain and adhere to existing institutions ; but that 

 which we are discussing, is not only the most powerful, 

 but is the last from which we can shake ourselves i 



There is, however, one case in which the remem- 

 brances of youth, and the prejudices which result from 

 them, have a tendency to overturn established order, 

 and, unless that order be very old, to foment revolu- 

 tions. This takes place when the organization of a 

 nation, whether civil or religious, has been already 

 completely changed by a revolution. It is one of the 

 attributes of memory to efface the evil, and to magnify 

 tho good, by which former days were characterized, 

 because, as previously mentioned, memory uniformly 

 associates the remembrance of past time with ourselves, 

 with our own youth, when all was gaiety, enjoyment, 

 and hope. Unhackneyed in the ways and the wiles of 

 the world, regarding life as an uninterrupted series of 

 enjoyments, we then placed unbounded confidence in 

 others and in ourselves, and esteemed the order of 

 things as then known to us, as the most happy and 

 perfect. But when, from any cause, a revolution has 

 changed the regime under which we began life, we 

 may at first not regret the change ; but, ere many 

 years elapse, we look back with fond and longing re- 

 gards to the order of things that obtained in our youth, 

 and which we would reckon no sacrifice too dear to 

 recal and. to re-establish. If reform supersede the Ca- 

 tholic faith, the old man regrets the pomp and bril- 

 liancy of the church which, in his youth, he had em- 

 braced and reverenced, the magic of its mysteries, and 

 that unshaken confidence in its tenets which it che- 

 rishes, and which, in prohibiting examination, at the 

 same time prevented doubt. If a warlike and enter- 

 prising usurper succeed to a long series of pacific and 

 unambitious kings, the old man regrets the times of 

 peace and ignorance, when a profound silence covered 

 every corruption, and when, as his ears were never 

 troubled with any complaint, he did not believe the 

 existence of abuse. If the reverse of this takes place, 

 and if the legitimate sovereign begin to sleep on his 

 throne, instead of exhibiting the energy and the brave- 

 ry which distinguished his predecessors, the nation 

 looks back with lingering fondness to the glory of the 

 times that are past, and they forget all the sacrifices 

 and the blood by which it was acquired. This con- 

 stant disproportion between the remembrance of former 

 days, and the value set on present time, this universal 

 prejudice in favour of the regime which we have lost, 

 is one of the great causes of that long vacillancy which 

 always follows political and religious revolutions, and 

 of those daring efforts, often successful, which are 

 made to re-establish that order of things which seemed 

 to be for ever gone, and its abettors either destroyed 

 or awed into submission. For the truth of this opinion, 

 we may appeal to the history of all nations, from the 

 conspiracy of the sons of Brutus in favour of Tarquin, 

 till the present day. 



II. The Prejudices of the Imagination. 



Every one of our faculties is distinguished by its own 

 peculiar prejudices, on account of the exertion we make 



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to render these faculties a* active and as powerful as 

 possible. Every faculty alto extends its t : 

 the provinces of the neighbouring faculties, and u 

 the place, or diminishes the influn Me- 



mory is opposed to innovation and change ; and in pro- 

 portion to the power it exercises over u*, we gr. 

 subjects of it the superiority over those of our own ob- 

 servation and experience. The efforts of the imagina- 

 tion, which we are about to discus*, are of an analo- 

 gous nature ; and the more we indulge them, the more 

 are we attracted by the love of the marvellous and the 

 ideal, and the more do we substitute illusion for what 

 is known and real. The love of the marvellous, in- 

 deed, is the second great source of our prejudices, bt- 

 cause it proceeds from the second of our faculties, 

 which is found to exist in a greater or less degree in 

 every individual. 



Our judgments are the work of reason alone; but 

 reason is not the most powerful of the faculties : it in 

 not, at least, the one from which we derive the greatest 

 pleasure and enjoyment. The imagination is developed 

 earlier than reason ; it is from its nature more popular ; 

 it is communicated more easily to the great body ot* 

 mankind ; and it unusually soon forms a tie and a con- 

 nexion between individuals otherwise dissimilar. A 

 creative imagination is indeed rare ; a contemplative 

 imagination, that which revels, without fatigue, with 

 fancies and images presented to it, is almost univer- 

 sal. The marvellous is the province in which the 

 imagination delights to roam ; the belief in well-au- 

 thenticated facts affords little or no pleasure to the 

 mind : but whatever astonishes, whatever enlarges the 

 habitual sphere of our ideas, whatever removes the 

 boundaries of the universe, in which our faculties seem 

 as it were imprisoned, is the source of unspeakable de- 

 light. Imagination revolts at bare possibility ; it ranges 

 beyond the barriers of the understanding w ith the same 

 joy as a bird when escaped from its cage ; and the mo- 

 tive for indulging and believing the speculations which 

 it conjures up, is merely that they are incredible. 



The wonderful is sometimes presented to us by the 

 poets and the writers of romances, simply as the play 

 and liveliness of the imagination. In such a case we 

 surrender ourselves to it without scruple, since it does 

 not require of us the sacrifice of our reason. But the 

 pleasure we derive from it is not complete, because it 

 demands not the exercise of any extraordinary degree 

 of credulity, and because it is not sufficiently elevated 

 above the probability of common occurrences. \Ve are 

 disappointed with a work which has nothing new, not 

 because it has deceived us, but because it has not de- 

 ceived us enough. 



The marvellous is also presented to us in popular 

 recitals and traditions, which our reason cannot admit 

 or recognise, but which, from their number, the con- 

 cordance of their Circumstances, and from their result, 

 seem not to be devoid of a certain degree of authenti- 

 city. In whatever state of society we are placed, whe- 

 ther the people among whom we live be ignorant or 

 enlightened, we hear stories of apparitions, of prophe- 

 tical dreams, of visions, and a thousand others similar. 

 By observing attentively, we may see with what un- 

 common care the narrator avoids or suppresses every 

 circumstance which could give to the facts related a 

 natural explanation, and yet with what secret satisfac- 

 tion every one of the hearers, after protesting that he 

 does not believe in spirits, in dreams, or magic, de- 

 clares that the facts are singular, very singular, and 

 altogether inexplicable. Ls it not evident that every 



Prejudice*. 



