THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
The Atlas.] [April 18, 1830.
The most dangerous enemies to established opinions are those who, by always defending them, call attention to their weak sides. The priests and politicians, in former times, were therefore wise in preventing the first approaches of innovation and inquiry; in preserving inviolate the smallest link in the adamantine chain with which they had bound the bodies and the souls of men; in closing up every avenue or pore through which a doubt could creep in; for they knew that through the slightest crevice floods of irreligion and heresy would break in like a tide. Hence the constant alarm at free discussion and inquiry; hence the clamour against innovation and reform; hence our dread and detestation of those who differ with us in opinion, for this at once puts us on the necessity of defending ourselves, or of owning ourselves weak or in the wrong, if we cannot, and converts that which was before a bed of roses, while we slept undisturbed upon it, into a cushion of thorns; and hence our natural tenaciousness of those points which are most vulnerable, and of which we have no proof to offer; for, as reason fails us, we are more annoyed by the objections and require to be soothed and supported by the concurrence of others. Bigotry and intolerance, which pass as synonymous, are, if rightly considered, a contradiction in terms; for, if in drawing up the articles of our creed, we are blindly bigoted to our impressions and views, utterly disregarding all others, why should we afterwards be so haunted and disturbed by the last, as to wish to exterminate every difference of sentiment with fire and sword? The difficulty is only solved by considering that unequal compound, the human mind, alternately swayed by individual biasses and abstract pretensions, and where reason so often panders to, or is made the puppet of, the will. To show at once the danger and extent of prejudice, it may be sufficient to observe that all our convictions, however arrived at, and whether founded on strict demonstration or the merest delusion, are crusted over with the same varnish of confidence and conceit, and afford the same firm footing both to our theories and practice; or if there be any difference, we are in general ‘most ignorant of what we are most assured,’ the strength of will and impatience of contradiction making up for the want of evidence. Mr. Burke says, that we ought to ‘cherish our prejudices because they are prejudices;’ but this view of the case will satisfy the demands of neither party, for prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason, or abstract undeniable truth: and again, in the eye of reason, if all prejudices are to be equally respected as such, then the prejudices of others are right, and ours must in their turn be wrong. The great stumbling-block to candour and liberality is the difficulty of being fully possessed of the excellence of any opinion or pursuits of our own, without proportionably condemning whatever is opposed to it; nor can we admit the possibility that when our side of the shield is black, the other should be white. The largest part of our judgments is prompted by habit and passion; but because habit is like a second nature, and we necessarily approve what passion suggests, we will have it that they are founded entirely on reason and nature, and that all the world must be of the same opinion, unless they wilfully shut their eyes to the truth. Animals are free from prejudice, because they have no notion or care about anything beyond themselves, and have no wish to generalise or talk big on what does not concern them: man alone falls into absurdity and error by setting up a claim to superior wisdom and virtue, and to be a dictator and lawgiver to all around him, and on all things that he has the remotest conception of. If mere prejudice were dumb, as well as deaf and blind, it would not so much signify; but as it is, each sect, age, country, profession, individual, is ready to prove that they are exclusively in the right, and to go together by the ears for it. ‘Rings the earth with the vain stir?’ It is the trick for each party to raise an outcry against prejudice; as by this they flatter themselves, and would have it supposed by others, that they are perfectly free from it, and have all the reason on their own side. It is easy indeed, to call names, or to separate the word prejudice from the word reason; but not so easy to separate the two things. Reason seems a very positive and palpable thing to those who have no notion of it but as expressing their own views and feelings; as prejudice is evidently a very gross and shocking absurdity (that no one can fall into who wishes to avoid it), as long as we continue to apply this term to the prejudices of other people. To suppose that we cannot make a mistake is the very way to run headlong into it; for, if the distinction were so broad and glaring as our self-conceit and dogmatism lead us to imagine it is, we could never, but by design, mistake truth for falsehood. Those, however, who think they can make a clear stage of it, and frame a set of opinions on all subjects by an appeal to reason alone, and without the smallest intermixture of custom, imagination, or passion, know just as little of themselves as they do of human nature. The best way to prevent our running into the wildest excesses of prejudice and the most dangerous aberrations from reason, is, not to represent the two things as having a great gulph between them, which it is impossible to pass without a violent effort, but to show that we are constantly (even when we think ourselves most secure) treading on the brink of a precipice; that custom, passion, imagination, insinuate themselves into and influence almost every judgment we pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary help (as well as hindrance) to the human understanding; and that, to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture of human understanding and society. Such daring anatomists of morals and philosophy think that the whole beauty of the mind consists in the skeleton; cut away, without remorse, all sentiment, fancy, taste, as superfluous excrescences; and, in their own eager, unfeeling pursuit of scientific truth and elementary principles, they ‘murder to dissect.’ But of this I may say something in another paper.