Perhaps I shall be accused by modern innovators of seeking to attach importance to frivolities. That will not hurt me. Those are far more hurt and wounded who allow themselves to be seduced into believing that the works of these same innovators contain things better worth their notice than frivolities—uncouth frivolities, ill-thought, unnatural, and written in a monstrous jargon.
Who could have imagined that a single word,{99} wrested from its proper sense, made common in the mouths of boys and women to denote what does not suit their inclinations, should have the power to turn established rules—based on the experience of sages, and confirmed by ancient usage—all topsy-turvy? This word is nothing more nor less, in naked truth, than—prejudice.[19]
I have just said that the word in question has been wrested from its proper meaning; and I am prepared to maintain this proposition. According to my principles, which will have to bear the shame of being stigmatised as prejudices by the innovators, it is impossible to apply the term 'prejudice' to things which are not only harmless, but beneficial, nay, necessary to the totality of mankind.
Now I am bound to believe that religion and its{100} accessories are beneficial to society and nations. But our new-fangled philosophers have dubbed all these things the prejudices of intellects enfeebled and intimidated by seductive superstition. Consequently, religion, that salutary curb on human passion, has languished and become a laughing-stock.
I am bound to believe that the gallows is beneficial to society, being an instrument for punishing crime and deterring would-be criminals. But our new-fangled philosophers have denounced the gallows as a tyrannical prejudice, and by so doing have multiplied murders on the highway, robberies and acts of sacrilege, a hundred-fold.
I am bound to believe that heroism, probity, good faith and equity are beneficial to society. But our unprejudiced philosophers, who identify felicity with{101} enjoyment and getting hold by any means of what you can, call these virtues mere romantic prejudices. Accordingly, justice has been sold with brazen impudence, knaveries and tricks and treachery have triumphed, and a multitude of simple, innocent, down-trodden creatures, poor in spirit and impoverished in substance, have wept tears of blood.
It was pronounced a musty and barbarous prejudice to keep women at home, for the supervision of their sons and daughters, their hirelings, their domestic service and economy. Immediately, the women poured forth from their doors, storming like Bacchantes, screaming out "Liberty! liberty!" The streets swarmed with them. Their children, servants, daily duties, were neglected. They meanwhile abandoned their vapoury brains to fashions, frivolous inventions, rivalries in games, amusements, loves, coquetries, and all sorts of nonsense which their own caprices and their counsellors, the upstart sages, could suggest. The husbands had not courage to oppose this ruin of their honour, of their substance, of their families. They were afraid of being pilloried with that dreadful word, prejudice.
The law which punishes infanticide with death was styled a prejudice. Good morals, modesty, and chastity received the name of prejudice—enforced, so ran the tale, by bugbears of the Levites and the foolish training of poor superstitious females. What the result was, I blush to record. The infinite advantages{102} conferred upon society and families by these fine philosophical discoveries, and by their triumph over prejudices of the sort I have described, had better remain unwritten.
The few who stood aloof and mocked at fashions—fashions which fade and fall each year like autumn leaves—were quizzed as ignoramuses, blockheads, zanies tainted with the leprosy of prejudice.[20] They passed for stolid, coarse-grained creatures, void of thrill, of sentiment, of taste, of culture, delicacy, and refined perception. Women and men, in one vast herd, became illuminated visionaries. They piqued themselves upon their intuition and originality. They discovered endless harmonies and discords, all imaginary; endless comforts and discomforts, all imaginary; endless imaginary savours, insipidities, depravities in things about them, in furniture, in dress, in colours, in decorations, in the kitchen, in food, in wine, in dressing of the table, all imaginary. They detected elegance or inelegance in every dumb and senseless object: down to the basest of utensils there was nothing which escaped the epithet of elegant. Let thus much be said for truth's sake, with the patience which is needful nowadays in speaking truth to folk infected by the real and not the spurious leprosy of prejudice.
Well, when all the so-called prejudices which I{103} have just described had been put to flight and dissipated by the piercing sunbeams of the innovators, many great and remarkable blessings appeared in their room. These were the blessings of irreligion, of respect and reverence annulled, of justice overturned, of law-courts made the play-ground for flagitious vices, of criminals encouraged and bewept, of heated imaginations, sharpened senses, animalism, indulgence in all lusts and passions, of imperious luxury, with her brood of violent insatiable desires, deceits, intrigues, oppressions, losses of faith and honesty and honour, swindlings, pilferings, bankruptcies, pecuniary straits, base traffickings in sexual bargains, adulteries, the marriage-tie made unendurable and snapped by force or cold collusion.