THE ZOOLOGIST 



FOR 1849. 



On Reason and Instinct. By the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, M.A., 

 Domestic Chaplain to the Viscount Downe. 



The full meaning of the word " prejudice," as I understand it, is a 

 notion or belief taken up and adopted antecedent to such judgment or 

 decision of the understanding as can be come to only after careful 

 and impartial consideration of all the bearings of the subject in ques- 

 tion, including, of course, whatever reasons and arguments may be 

 alleged in favour of or against each several view of it. Perhaps, then, 

 the most unfortunate position, as regards the admission of the truth, 

 into which the human mind is apt to throw itself, is that which may 

 be called the position of prejudice, — a position, that is, which prevents 

 it from reasoning on, no matter how fair the premises, lest the antici- 

 pated consequence should be the establishment of a doctrine incon- 

 sistent or at variance with certain preconceived notions, or impressions, 

 or estimates, as the case may be. And besides that the nascent in- 

 quiry is thus as it were " burked " in its infancy, to the complete 

 prevention, necessarily, of its resulting in the discovery or the esta- 

 blishing of the truth, the mind from habit becomes not only hardened 

 in its prejudice, but increasingly less inclined to, and less capable of, 

 the due exercise of its functions in the examination of any future 

 question or matter of inquiry which may chance to be presented to it. 

 Moreover, it for the most part happens that in the preconceived notion 

 or fancy alleged in bar of the inquiry, there is, and naturally enough, 

 some great fallacy, if not absurdity. 



Thoughts of this kind have more than once been suggested to me 

 when conversing with people on the subjects of Reason and Instinct, 

 VII B 



