The knowledge which we obtain from others, we may be said to believe, but we know what we have ascertained from our own observation and experience, or from our own research. To the knowledge which, being received from others, we are said to believe, the term prejudice is evi dently and directly applicable, till, upon every point of our belief, we entertain that philosophical doubt and dis trust which precedes and uniformly produces examination ; a step, without which it is impossible for our prejudices to be superseded by judgment or confirmed by it. Nor is this step to be neglected because it is found to be difficult and tedious, even to minds of the most vigorous and pene trating character. It is indispensably necessary ; for of the opinions generally admitted, and on which we place the utmost confidence, not a few, after this examination, arc found to be entirely groundless ; and the influence of those which we have not subjected to this test, remains, till the end of life, infinitely greater than of those which have been most assiduously examined and analyzed. Every man, therefore, if he has not adopted the step in question, what ever be the energy of his mind or the uprightness of his thoughts, is continually under the influence of prejudice, because his principles have not been established on the ba sis of his own reason and judgment.
Not only are our general and miscellaneous opinions either the result of prejudice, or are much modified by it, but, as previously hinted, many even of our philosophical principles can be traced to the same origin; and therefore the examination which we have been recommending, is necessary to ascertain the bias, which, on this important i subject, may have insinuated itself into our views, or the views of our predecessors. In philosophy, however, we must take many of our sentiments on the authority of others; but we should endeavour, by our own research and ex amination, to determine the degree of influence which any opinion, not radically our own, should exercise upon our minds; and having made this distinction, we will not place a blind confidence in any hypotheses, however plausible, which are handed down to us by previous enquirers, but regard them as doubtful, and liable to be superseded by more extensive experience and more ingenious scrutiny, though in their place we cannot, in the mean time, pro duce any thing more solid and satisfactory.
Prejudice is liable to be confounded with presumption, with which, indeed, it is nearly connected. Presumption is that by which, when proof is defective, we draw infer ences and form conclusions, and which, in the business of life, or in the speculations of philosophy, determines us in the choice of opinions supported only by probability, and devoid of the certainty of actual demonstration. But these two principles, though analogous, are not the same. Pre; sumption is extrinsic, and the result of examination : pre judice is antecedent to it, and originates in the dispositions of our own mind; or, in other words, we apply the term presumption to the predominating shades of probability which spring from a question we have been examining, or from the accessory circumstances; whilst the word preju dice is used to denote all the predispositions to believe or not to believe, by which we are actuated prior to examina tion, and which take their rise in the peculiar habits and character of the mind. Presumptions, therefore, are from
without, and are as various as the circumstances from which they spring ; and though it is not a difficult task to appreciate and analyze them, it is totally impossible to ar range or classify them. But prejudices are within us ; and though we are unable to foresee the thousand different forms they may assume with different individuals, or at different periods of the life of the same individual, yet they can be easily reduced to a pretty accurate classification ac cording to the natural sentiments and feelings to which they are allied, or from which they result. Nor is this analysis of the origin of prejudice merely an object of cu riosity. Showing us the manner in which prejudices are imbibed, it is calculated, in a very powerful manner, both to make us view with greater indulgence the opinions of others, however ill founded, and to render our own more accurate and just. We are thus led to see the most absurd belief in the most favourable light, and to check and ob viate that secret propensity which we feel in ourselves, and which indeed is almost universally felt, of forming premature conclusions on subjects, the true nature and leaning of which cannot be correctly ascertained, but by careful investigation and scrutiny.
Tradition, in short, (and this term we apply to all the mass of knowledge we receive from others,) presents us only with presumptions, and it is our own minds that trans form them into prejudice. Analogous principles having distinguished the generations of men who lia?e existed before us, presumptions have in all ages been converted into prejudices in a similar manner. It is the principles from which this results, which usurp the place of judg ment, and which form, as it were, the prism which colours to us every object, that we mean to analyze and illustrate in this treatise. Judgment, memory, imagination, and sensibility, are faculties or states of the mind, with which all are acquainted. This division we propose to follow, in order to show how the mind, by means of one or other of these faculties, mould or qualify the various subjects which are submitted to it, or, in other words, how the last three usurp the place of judgment, and put each its own pecu liar prejudices in the room of the decision of the first. But, in addition to these active faculties, there is another state of mind, which, from its being passive, we shall de nominate mental indolence, and which resists, as it were, the energy of the others. These faculties, then, form the division of prejudices; and in the subsequent part of this article we shall consider them in succession,—memory, imagination, sensibility, and mental indolence.