[PRE-JUDGMENTS.]
A few remarks are deemed requisite on this topic. A pre-judgment is an assumption, that a proposition or statement is true or false, before the facts, bearing upon the case, have been heard. Such assumptions are generally classed under the term prejudice. Thus it is said of individuals, that they are prejudiced in favor or against certain persons, sentiments, or causes. The real meaning of such statements is, that individuals have made assumptions in one direction or another, prior to a hearing of the facts of the case, and irrespective of such facts.
[INTELLECT NOT DECEIVED IN PRE-JUDGMENTS.]
It is commonly said, that such prejudices, or pre-judgments, blind the mind to facts of one class, and render it quick to discern those of the other, and thus lead to a real mis-direction of the Intelligence. This I think is not a correct statement of the case. Pre-judgments may, and often do, prevent all proper investigation of a subject. In this case, the Intelligence is not deceived at all. In the absence of real data, it can make no positive affirmations whatever.
So far also as pre-judgments direct attention from facts bearing upon one side of a question, and to those bearing upon the other, the Intelligence is not thereby deceived. All that it can affirm is the true bearing of the facts actually presented. In respect to those not presented, and consequently in respect to the real merits of the whole case, it makes no affirmations. If an individual forms an opinion from a partial hearing, that opinion is a mere assumption of Will, and nothing else.
[THE MIND HOW INFLUENCED BY PRE-JUDGMENTS.]
But the manner in which pre-judgments chiefly affect the mind in the hearing of a cause, still remains to be stated. In such pre-judgments, or assumptions, an assumption of this kind is almost invariably included, to wit: that all facts of whatever character bearing upon one side of the question, are wholly indecisive, while all others bearing upon the other side are equally decisive. In pre-judging, individuals do not merely pre-judge the real merits of the case, but the character of all the facts bearing upon it. They enter upon the investigation of a given subject, with an inflexible determination to treat all the facts and arguments they shall meet with, according to previous assumptions. Let the clearest light poured upon one side of the question, and the reply is, “After all, I am not convinced,” while the most trivial circumstances conceivable bearing upon the other side, will be seized upon as perfectly decisive. In all this, we do not meet with the operations of a deceived Intelligence, but of a “deceived heart,” that is, of a depraved Will, stubbornly bent upon verifying its own unauthorized, pre-formed assumptions. Such assumptions can withstand any degree of evidence whatever. The Intelligence did not give them existence, and it cannot annihilate them. They are exclusively creatures of Will, and by an act of Will, they must be dissolved, or they will remain proof against all the evidence which the tide of time can roll against them.
[INFLUENCES WHICH INDUCE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS.]
The influences which induce false and unauthorized assumptions, are found in the strong action of the Sensibility, in the direction of the appetites, natural affections, and the different propensities, as the love of gain, ambition, party spirit, pride of character, of opinion, &c. When the Will has long been habituated to act in the direction of a particular propensity, how difficult it is to induce the admission, or assumption, that action in that direction is wrong! The difficulty, in such cases, does not, in most instances, lie in convincing the Intelligence, but in inducing the Will to admit as true what the Intelligence really affirms.