PREJUDICES. 



147 



perpetuating them. Our rulers uniformly htiuly to 

 " ~"~" 1 1 icourage and augment national hatn-i I. (.ovc-nnm-nts 

 are reciprocally offended at each other ; and the people, 

 who know not rarh other, and never have had any 

 mutual communication, are made to imbibe the same 

 i ul become deadly enemies. The supporters 

 , >f different religious sects, sometimes also, we ! 

 i-herixli no ^rt-at love or liberality towards each otlicr, 

 ami thus dishonour the name by which they are called. 

 And yet there is any tiling but a well-grounded or 

 natural enmity between nations and between churches. 

 How can one man be offended at another because he 

 has a different way of honouring and worshipping God ? 

 How can sentiments which elevate us towards our 

 creator cause us to quarrel with any of our brethren ? 

 It is not religion which is intolerant ; but it is man, 

 who has built his power and his greatness on 

 the credulity and prejudice of others : it in man 

 who has cultivated religious hatred, and who has 

 associated it intimately with a sentiment, which of it- 

 self inspires only benevolence and love. How can any 

 nation be the natural enemy of another ? Has not 

 each in its own bosom the elements of its own felicity ? 

 If one nation wish assistance from a neighbouring 

 country, will not that assistance be obtained more rea- 

 dily and efficiently from a people who are prosperous 

 and happy, than from those who are discontented and 

 oppressed ? But the hatred of which we are speaking 

 originates not in the collective body of a nation, but in 

 some individual of it. He who wishes to secure for 

 himself alone the honour and the advantages of his 

 country's prosperity, is jealous of the subjects of ano- 

 ther kingdom as he is of his own citizens ; he excites 

 mutual jealousy between them, and he thus directs 

 against his neighbours thaV jealousy which he feared 

 would be exercised against himself. 



Our natural dispositions would never excite in us 

 prejudices of hatred so inveterate as those we have been 

 describing. This is effected by the low artifice of our 

 rulers alone. They have endeavoured, and partially 

 succeeded, in making us wish the downfal and op- 

 pression of our equals and neighbours ; whilst the only 

 thing, in which nations and individuals should take an 

 interest and contend with each other, has not been suffi- 

 ciently attended to; namely, the advancement of the 

 dignity of human nature, of liberty and of reason. This 

 great object is the same in every country and nation, 

 whether allies or enemies. National hostility is merely 

 temporary, and must have a termination ; but the dif- 

 fusion of knowledge, the establishment of liberty by 

 more liberal laws, the superiority of reason over pre- 

 judices, are advantages in which the whole human race 

 are concerned, and the effects of which are equally sa- 

 lutary and permanent. 



IV. The Prejudices of Mental Indolence. 



We have hitherto considered the prejudices which 

 have their origin in, or are connected, with our facul- 

 ties ; but another class of prejudices spring up in us 

 from the absence of faculties ; from indolence, which 

 may be denominated a negative power of the mind. 

 The love of repose, timidity, and mental inactivity, are 

 voluntary diseases, which weaken and paralyse the ex- 

 ercise of reason, without substituting any other faculty 

 of the mind in its stead. 



An aversion to new ideas, to change, to reform, to 



all, in short, that requires any great energy of mind, Hrejudte. 

 or that militates against the principles we had already *~ ~~<~ 

 formed, is a disposition common to all people, and its 

 empire is great, according to the inveteracy of our pre- 

 judices, or according to the necessity under which we 

 labour to shake off its control. Activity of mind is, 

 we confess, a disposition natural to man ; but it is a 

 disposition which has a tendency to decay. It seems 

 to be peculiar almost only to youth ; and with by far 

 the greater number of men it diminishes in proportion 

 as they advance in years. Mental contention, or our 

 original and long established principles being opposed 

 by new ideas, is the source of great uneasiness and 

 labour to him who has laid aside the habit of analyzing 

 all his thoughts. The doubt that our former opinion* 

 are founded on prejudices, is the announcement of a 

 painful and laborious investigation. It compels us to 

 enter upon a process of examination, which requires 

 degree of attention which discourages us ; and not un- 

 frequently we have to retire from the task, from the 

 humiliating conv : ction that we cannot perform it that 

 it is beyond the reach of our faculties and that the 

 higher regions of thought are a sphere which id now- 

 for ever denied us. 



When we have submitted a great number of our 

 prejudices to examination, and when, having thus fixed 

 our opinions on several points, we have, as it were, 

 erected land-marks to guide us in the vast regions of 

 thought, doubt is by no means unpleasant or alarm, 

 ing. We know the firmness of the basis on which our 

 convictions rest, and we feel a repose and a surety 

 which ignorance or prejudice could never afford. The- 

 truth of our principles encourages and animates us ; and 

 our mind, anxious to fix its ideas, takes in successively 

 new objects of contemplation with an ardour more and 

 more lively. We thus are daily making conquests in 

 the region of darkness. But by far the greater num- 

 ber of men have not been accustomed to reflection. 

 They have substituted the authority of others in the 

 place of reason. They have maintained, unaltered and 

 uninvestigated, the opinions which they received from 

 their instructors, and never imagined that the ideas 

 which they thus obtained were susceptible of proof, or 

 required it. If, in a mind thus formed, a doubt on any 

 one point were to be started, it would be immediately 

 overwhelmed with confusion and astonishment ; every 

 opinion would be shaken and undermined ; truth and 

 falsehood, reason and prejudice, would be indiscrimi- 

 nately blended together, and all would be conjecture 

 and uncertainty. 



In proportion as prejudice has made inroads upon 

 our natural opinions, the habit and the power of re- 

 flection have been removed or annihilated ; and doubt, 

 when introduced into the mind, commits there the 

 greatest ravages. A mind, over the faculties of which 

 prejudice has for a considerable time exercised autho- 

 rity, has, from this long state of repose and inactivity, 

 lost the very basis of reasoning ; it possesses precise 

 and defined opinions on no subject, and it is ignorant 

 of the method of acquiring them. In a building, a 

 single stone removed, or put out of its proper place, is 

 sufficient to bring the whole edifice to destruction. In 

 like manner, doubt on one point not unfrequently 

 leads to absolute and universal incredulity. Every 

 one must have remarked, that those in the Protestant 

 church, who shake off the common belief, are content- 

 ed with modifying it in a greater or less degree ; while 

 those who abandon the Catholic church plunge almost 



