Though it is less directly selfish, the patriotic bias may fairly be classed with the prejudices we have just been considering. At this time the most stupendous war of all history is raging. But I know of no German or Austrian or Turk or Bulgarian who has so far admitted that the British or the French or the Russians or the Italians or the Belgians or the Servians or the Montenegrins or the Japanese can by any possibility have right on their side, nor do I know of any Japanese or Montenegrin or Servian or Belgian or Italian or Russian or Frenchman or Englishman who believes that the Bulgarians or the Turks or the Austrians or the Germans are in the right. Philosophers and men of science are no exception; Münsterberg, Eucken and Haeckel write publicly in favor of Germany and fifty of England’s foremost authors unanimously sign a pronunciamento in support of their native country—yet nobody is surprised.
(2) Another reason why we desire an opinion to be right is because we already happen to hold it. As one writer expresses it, “We often form our opinions on the slightest evidence, yet we are inclined to cling to them with grim tenacity.” There are two reasons for this.
When we have formed an opinion on anything, the chances are that we have communicated it to some one, and have thereby committed ourselves to that side. Now to reverse an opinion is to confess that we were previously wrong. To reverse an opinion is to lay ourselves open to the charge of inconsistency. To be inconsistent—to admit that our judgments are human and fallible—this is the last thing we can ever think of. “Inconsistency,” said Emerson, “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And if by this he meant inconsistency in the sense of changing opinions already formed, we must agree with him.
The hypothesis maker has a specific form of this fear of inconsistency. This type of theorist makes a supposition to account for certain facts. When he meets with certain allied facts for which the supposition apparently does not account, he either ignores said facts, or cuts and trims them, or bullies them into his theory. Hypotheses per se have never done any harm. In fact they are indispensable in all thought, especially as an aid to observation. But it is the desire to prove an hypothesis correct, simply because it is our hypothesis, or because it is a fascinating hypothesis, which has done harm. Darwin says that he had made it a habit “whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones.”
The second reason for desiring to cling to an opinion because we already hold it is one which could probably best be explained by physiological psychology and a study of the brain. We feel almost a physical pain when a tenet we have long cherished is torn up and exposed. The longer we hold an opinion, the harder it is for us to get rid of it. In this respect it is similar to habit. Nor is the comparison an analogy merely. An opinion is a habit of thought. It has the same basis in the brain, and is subject to the same laws, as a habit of action. It is well known that the opinions of a man over forty are pretty well set. The older a man grows, the harder it is for him to change an opinion—or for others to change it for him.
The side of a controversy we see first is usually the side we see last. This is because the arguments we meet do not have to shake up or dislodge anything in our brain (unless we are very critical, and we generally aren’t). But once let an opinion gain entrance, and any opinion contrary to it will have to dislodge the old one before it can find a place for itself.
And as Mark Twain has remarked, “When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.” Of course Mark Twain was wrong. Of course we are The Reasoning Race, as he cynically intimates we are not. To religion, for instance, the most important question which can engage our understanding, each of us always gives independent thought. It is a mere accident, of course, that almost all of the 400,000,000 Chinamen are Buddhists. It is a mere accident that the overwhelming mass of East Indians are Brahmans. It is only by chance that practically all Turks, Persians and Arabians are Mohammedans. And it merely happened to happen that England is Protestant and Ireland is Catholic. . . . But it is unsafe to bring this question of religion too near home.
We now come to our third cause of desire:
(3) We desire an opinion to be wrong because we would be forced to change other opinions if it were not; or we desire an opinion to be right because then we would be able to retain our other opinions. This is a most widespread form of prejudice. But I believe it is, fortunately, the most defensible. Its defensibility, however, depends mainly on the opinions we fear to change. These we may divide into two kinds:
(a) Those which have been formed without thought; borrowed opinions, etc. The greatest opposition to the theory of evolution came from those conservative Christians who saw that it undermined any literal interpretation of Genesis. If these Christians had investigated the sources of that book, had considered its probable authority, had given thought to the possibility of inspired writing, and had finally decided in favor of the Biblical narrative; then—right or not—their opposition to Darwin’s theory would have been free at least from this sort of prejudice. But most of this opposition had come from persons who had not thought of Genesis, but had accepted it from the first, because it had been dogmatically hammered into their heads since childhood. Hence it was prejudice, pure and simple.