or Prejudgment, from præ and judicium, means a judgment formed beforehand, without examination; the preposition præ expressing an anticipation, not so much of time as of knowledge and due attention: hence the schoolmen have called it anticipation and a preconceived opinion. Prejudice arises from the associating principle, which we have explained at large in another article (see Metaphysics, Part I. chap. 5.), and it is a weakness from which no human mind can be wholly free. Some are indeed much more than others under its influence; but there is no man who does not occasionally act upon principles, the propriety of which he never investigated; or who does not hold speculative opinions, into the truth of which he never seriously inquired. Our parents and tutors, yea, our very nurses, determine a multitude of our sentiments: our friends, our neighbours, the custom of the country where we dwell, and the established opinions of mankind, form our belief; the great, the pious, the learned, and the ancient, the king, the priest, and the philosopher, are characters of mighty efficacy to persuade us to regulate our conduct by their practice, and to receive as truth whatever they may dictate.

The case cannot indeed be otherwise. The occasions of acting are so frequent, and the principles of action are so various, that were a man to investigate accurately the value of every single motive which presents itself to his mind, and to balance them fairly against each other, the time of acting would in most instances pass away long before he could determine what ought to be done; and life would be wasted in useless speculation. The great laws of religion and morality, which ought to be the general and leading principles of action, no man of science will take upon trust; but in the course of a busy life a thousand circumstances will occur in which we must act with such rapidity, that, after being satisfied of the lawfulness of what we are about to do, we must, for the prudence of it, confide entirely in the general customs of our country, or in the practice of other individuals placed in circumstances similar to ours. In all such cases, though we may act properly, we act from prejudice.

But the dominion of prejudice is not confined to the actions of the man of business: it extends over the speculations of the philosopher himself, one half of whose knowledge rests upon no other foundation. All human sciences are related to each other (see Philosophy, No. 2.), and there is hardly one of them in which a man can become eminent unless he has some general acquaintance with the whole circle; but no man could ever yet investigate for himself all those propositions which constitute the circle of the sciences, or even comprehend the evidence upon which they rest, though he admits them perhaps as truths incontrovertible. He must therefore receive many of them upon the authority of others, or, which is the same thing, admit them by prejudice.

To this reasoning it may be objected, that when a man admits as true abstract propositions, which, though not self-evident, he cannot demonstrate, he admits them not by prejudice, but upon testimony, which has been elsewhere shown to be a sufficient foundation for human belief (see Metaphysics, No. 138.). The objection is plausible, but it is not solid; for testimony commands belief only concerning events which, falling under the cognizance of the senses, preclude all possibility of mistake; whereas abstract propositions, not self-evident, can be proved true only by a process of reasoning or by a series of experiments; and in conducting both these, the most vigorous mind is liable to mistake. When Sir Isaac Newton told the world that it was the fall of an apple which first suggested to him the general law of gravitation, he bore testimony to a fact concerning which he could not be mistaken; and we receive his testimony for the reasons assigned in the article referred to. When he lays down the method of obtaining the fluxion or momentum of the rectangle or product of two indeterminate quantities, which is the main point in his doctrine of fluxions, he labours to establish that method on the basis of demonstration; and whoever makes use of it in practice, without understanding that demonstration, receives the whole doctrine of the modern geometrical analysis, not as a matter of fact upon the credit of Sir Isaac's testimony, but as a system of abstract truth on the credit of his understanding: in other words, he is a fluxionist by prejudice.

In vain will it be said, that in mathematical demonstration there is no room for mistake; and that therefore the man who implicitly adopts the method of fluxions may be considered as relying upon the veracity of its author, who had no inducement to deceive him, and whose comprehension was confessedly greater than his. In fluxionary mathematics, which treat of matters of which it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have adequate and steady conceptions, the most comprehensive mind is liable to mistake; and it is well known that the celebrated bishop of Cloyne wrote his Analysis to prove that the incomparable author of the method of fluxions had committed two mistakes in his fundamental proposition, which balancing one another, produced a true conclusion by false reasoning. One or other of these great men, of whom the least was an eminent mathematician, must have been bewildered in his reasoning, and have fallen into error; and therefore whoever follows either of them implicitly without perceiving the error of the other, is unquestionably under the influence of prejudice. This is the case with the writer of the present article. He perceives not the error of Bishop Berkeley's reasoning, and yet he admits the doctrine of fluxions on the authority of Sir Isaac's demonstration. That demonstration, however, he pretends not to understand; and therefore he admits the doctrine through prejudice.

We have made these observations, to point out the impossible absurdity of the fashionable cry against the harbouring or eradication of any prejudices. To eradicate all prejudices from all prejudices from the human mind is impossible; and if it were possible, it would be very unwise: for we see that prejudice may exist on the side of truth as well as on that of falsehood; and that principles professed and believed by any individual may be useful and true, though he was brought to them not by a train of fair and candid reasoning, but through the medium of profession or authority. Indeed such is our nature, and such are the laws of association, that many of our best principles, and our obligation to perform many of the most amiable of our duties in common life, must evidently be acquired in this way. From endearing associations and authoritative instruction, we acquire a knowledge of our duty to our parents, and a facility in performing it, together with the first principles of religion, without a single effort of our own reason. Even when reason has begun to assert its power, and shows us the propriety of such duties, we are wonderfully assisted in performing them by the amiable prejudices which we had before acquired. Prejudice, and which now appear to be natural to us. He who has never had the advantage of such associations, and who acquires a knowledge of the duties suggested by them after he has come to the years of discretion, and chiefly by the efforts of his own reason, will seldom, *ceteris paribus*, perform these duties with an energy and delight equal to that of the person who has. This remark appears to be confirmed by experience; for it is often found, that the children of the great, who have been given out to nurse in their infancy, and who have seldom been in the company of their parents till their reasoning faculties have been far advanced, are much less dutiful and affectionate than those in the middle or lower stations of life, who have scarcely ever been out of their parents company.

Would it then be wise, even if it were practicable, to dissolve all those associations which tend so powerfully to increase the mutual affections of parents and children? We cannot think that it would; as we believe it might be easily shown that public spirit springs out of private affection. Plato indeed held an opinion very different from ours; for in order to extend that affection which is usually lavished at home to the whole state, he proposed that children should be educated at the public expense, and never be permitted to know the authors of their being. But this is only one of the many visionary projects of that great man, of which daily experience shows the absurdity. In modern times, we are certain that less dependence is to be had upon the patriotism of the man who, for the love which he pretends to his country, can overlook or forget his own partial connections in it, than on him who, at the same time that he wishes his country well, is feelingly alive to all the endearments of kindred affection.

Such affection may be called partial, and very probably has its foundation in that which is the source of all our prejudices; but if it be properly trained in early life, it will gradually extend from our nearest relations to the persons with whom we associate, and to the place which not only gave us birth, but also furnished our youthful and most innocent enjoyments. It is thus that the *amor patriae* is generated (see PASSION and PATRIOTISM), which in minds unfeduced by false principles is exceedingly strong; and, though a partial affection, is of the most general utility. It is this prejudice which reconciles the Laplander to his freezing knows, and the African to his burning sun; which attaches the native of the Highlands or of Wales as much to his mountains and rocks, as the apparently happier inhabitant of the southern counties of England is to the more fertile and delightful spot where he drew his first breath. And we find in fact, that when a native of Kent and a Scotch Highlander have in some distant corner of the world gained a competent fortune without being corrupted by luxury, they return, the one to his hop-gardens, and the other to his mountains. Were this prejudice, for such it surely is, wholly eradicated from the human mind, it is obvious that large tracts of country which are now full of inhabitants would be totally deserted; and that the hungry barbarians, to make room for themselves, would exterminate the proprietors of more favourable climes. From an affection to our friends and to our country, we naturally contract an affection for that mode of government under which we live; and unless it be particularly oppressive to ourselves or any order of citizens, we come as naturally to prefer it to all other modes, whether it deserve that preference or not. This no doubt is prejudice, but it is a beneficial prejudice; for were the multitude, who are wholly incapable of estimating the excellencies and defects of the various modes of government, to become dissatisfied with their own, and rise in a mass to change it for the better, the most horrible consequences might justly be dreaded. Of this truth the present state of Europe affords too melancholy and convincing a proof. The man therefore who, under the pretence of enlightening the public mind and extirpating prejudices, paints to the illiterate vulgar, in aggravated colours, the abuse of that government which has hitherto protected them from the ferocity of each other, is one of the greatest criminals if his views be selfish, and one of the worst reasoners if they be disinterested, that human imagination can easily conceive.

With the selfish patriot we have at present no concern; but we may with propriety ask the disinterested lover of truth, whether he thinks it possible, that in a large community, of which nine-tenths of the members are necessarily incapable of taking comprehensive views of things, or feeling the force of political reasonings, any form of government can be acceptable to the people at large, which does not gain their affections through the medium of prejudice? It has been shown by Mr Hume with great strength of argument, that government is founded on opinion, which is of two kinds, viz., opinion of interest, and opinion of right. By opinion of interest, he understands the sense of the general advantage which is reaped from government, together with the persuasion that the particular government which is established is equally advantageous with any other that could easily be settled. The opinion entertained of the right of any government is always founded in its antiquity; and hence arises the passionate regard which under ancient monarchies the people have for the true heir of their royal family. These opinions, as held by the philosopher conversant with the history of nations, are founded upon reasoning more or less conclusive; but it is obvious, that in the minds of the multitude they can have no other foundation than prejudice. An illiterate clown or mechanic does not see how one form of government promotes the general interest more than another; but he may believe that it does, upon no other evidence than the declamation of a demagogue, who, for selfish purposes, contrives to flatter his pride. The same is the case with respect to the rights of hereditary monarchy. The anatomist finds nothing more in the greatest monarch than in the meanest peasant, and the moralist may perhaps frequently find less; but the true philosopher acknowledges his right to the sovereignty; and though he be weak in understanding, or infirm in years, would, for the sake of public peace and the stability of government, maintain him in his throne against every competitor of the most shining talents. The vulgar, however, who would act with this philosopher, are influenced by no such views, but merely by their prejudices in favour of birth and family; and therefore it is ridiculous to think of changing the public mind with respect to any form of government by pure reasoning. In France a total change in the minds of the people has indeed been effected, and from the most violent prejudices in favour of royalty, they have now become more violently prejudiced. diced in favour of republicanism. Bad as their government unquestionably was, the change that has now taken place is not the effect of calm reasoning and accurate inquiry (for of that the bulk of mankind appears to be incapable), nor are their prejudices less violent than they were before. They are changed indeed; but no one will deny that prejudice, and that of the most violent kind, leads them on at present; nor can any one assert that their new prejudices have rendered them more happy, or their country more flourishing, than their former ones, which made them cry *Vive le Roi* under the tyrannic government of Louis XIV.

The influence of prejudice is not more powerful in fixing the political opinions of men, than in dictating their religious creed. Every child of a religious father receives his faith by inheritance long before he be capable of judging whether it be agreeable or disagreeable to the word of God and the light of reason. This experience shows to be the fact; and sound philosophy declares that it cannot be otherwise. Parents are appointed to judge for their children in their younger years, and to instruct them in what they should believe, and what they should practice in the civil and religious life. This is a dictate of nature, and doubts would have been so in a state of perfect innocence. It is impossible that children should be capable of judging for themselves before their minds are furnished with a competent number of ideas, and before they are acquainted with any principles and rules of just reasoning; and therefore they can do nothing better than run to their parents, and receive their directions what they should believe and what they should practice.

This mode of tutoring the infant mind, and giving to our instructions the force of prejudice, before reason can operate with much effect, will, we know, be highly displeasing to many who challenge to themselves alone the epithet of liberal. With them it will be cramping the genius and perverting the judgment: but we cannot help thinking that such an objection, if it should be made, would be the offspring of ignorance; for it requires but very little knowledge of human nature to be able to see, that if children be not restrained by authority, and if we do not infuse a love of good principles into their minds, bad ones will infuse themselves, and a little time will give them the force of inveterate prejudice, which all the future efforts of reason and philosophy will find it difficult to eradicate. The idea of keeping a child ignorant of the being of a God, and the grand duties of morality and religion, till he shall come to years of discretion, and then allowing him to reason them out for himself, is an absurd chimera; it is an experiment which never has been tried, which to us it appears impossible to try, and which, if it could be tried, could not possibly produce any good effect. For suppose we had a youth just arrived at years of discretion, totally ignorant of all these things, and unbiased to any system of opinions, or rather possessed of no opinions at all—it would, in the first place, we suspect, be absolutely necessary to direct his thoughts into a particular train, and for some person to lead him on from one idea to another, till he should arrive at some conclusion: but in all this there is the influence of authority, affection, and of prejudice.

It being therefore absolutely necessary that sentiments of religion be instilled into the minds of children before they be capable of discovering by the use of their reason whether those sentiments be just or not, it need not excite wonder, nor is it any reflection upon religion, that most men adhere with bigotry to the creed of their fathers, and support that creed by arguments which could carry conviction to no minds but their own. The love and veneration which they bear to the memory of those from whom they imbibed their earliest opinions, do not permit them to perceive either the falsehood of those opinions, or their little importance, supposing them true. Hence the many frivolous disputes which have been carried on among Christians; and hence the zeal with which some of them maintain tenets which are at once contrary to scripture, to reason, and to common sense. A due reflection, however, on the source of all prejudices ought to moderate this zeal; for no man is wholly free from that bias which he is to ready to condemn in others: and indeed a man totally free from prejudice, would be a more unhappy being than the most violent bigot on earth. In science, he would admit nothing which he could not himself demonstrate; in business, he would be perpetually at a stand for want of motives to influence his conduct: he could have no attachment to a particular country; and therefore must be without patriotism, and without the follies of friendship; and his religion, we are afraid, would be cold and lifeless.

What, it will be said, are the authors of a work which professes to enlighten the public mind by laying before it a general view of science and literature, become at last the advocates of prejudice, which is the bane of science, and the prop of superstition? No, we are advocates for no prejudice which is either inimical to science or friendly to absurdity; but we do not think that the moralist would act wisely who should defer his proper business to make himself master of the higher mathematics, merely that he might not be obliged to trust occasionally to the demonstrations of others. The writer of this article is not skilled in trade; but it is not his opinion that the merchant would soon grow rich, who should never make a bargain till he had previously calculated with mathematical exactness all the probabilities of his gain or loss. That to dissolve all the associations which are the source of partial attachments of kindred, affection, and private friendship, would tend to promote the public happiness, we cannot possibly believe. And we think, that the experience of the present eventful day abundantly confirms Mr Hume's opinion, that far from endeavouring to extirpate the people's prejudices in favour of birth and family, we should cherish such sentiments, as being absolutely requisite to preserve a due subordination in society. That men would be better Christians if they were to receive no religious instruction till they should be able by their own reason to judge of its truth, daily observation does not warrant us to conclude; for we see those who have seldom heard of God when children, "live without him in the world" when they are men.

Pernicious prejudices we have traced to their source elsewhere, and shown how they may be best prevented by proper attention in the education of children. (See METAPHYSICS, No 98.) We shall only add here, that the earlier such attention is paid, the more effectual it will be found; and that it is much easier to keep prejudices out of the mind than to remove them after they have been admitted. This however must be sometimes attempted; and where prejudices are strong, several methods have been recommended for rendering the attempt successful. The following are taken mostly from Dr Watts's Improvement of the Mind.

1. Never attack the prejudice directly, but lead the person who is under its influence step by step to the truth. Perhaps your neighbour is under the influence of superstition and bigotry in the simplicity of his soul; you must not immediately run upon him with violence, and show him the absurdity or folly of his own opinions, though you might be able to set them in a glaring light; but you must rather begin at a distance, and establish his affections to some familiar and easy propositions, which have a tendency to refute his mistakes, and to confirm the truth; and then silently observe what impression this makes upon him, and proceed by slow degrees as he is able to bear, and you must carry on the work perhaps at distant seasons of conversation. The tender or diseased eye cannot bear a deluge of light at once.

Overhastiness and vehemence in arguing is oftentimes the effect of pride; it blunts the poignancy of the argument, breaks its force, and disappoints the end. If you were to convince a person of the falsehood of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and you take up the consecrated bread before him and say, "You may see, and taste, and feel, this is nothing but bread; therefore whilst you assert that God commands you to believe it is not bread, you most wickedly accuse God of commanding you to tell a lie," This sort of language would only raise the indignation of the person against you, instead of making any impressions upon him. He will not so much as think at all on the argument you have brought, but he rages at you as a profane wretch, setting up your own sense and reason above sacred authority; so that though what you affirm is a truth of great evidence, yet you lose the benefit of your whole argument by an ill management, and the unreasonable use of it.

2. Where the prejudices of mankind cannot be conquered at once, but will rise up in arms against the evidence of truth, there we must make some allowances, and yield to them for the present, as far as we can safely do it without real injury to truth; and if we would have any success in our endeavours to convince the world, we must practise this complaisance for the benefit of mankind. Take a student who has deeply imbibed the principles of the Peripatetics, and imagines certain immaterial beings, called substantial forms, to inhabit every herb, flower, mineral, metal, fire, water, &c. and to be the spring of all its properties and operations; or take a Platonist, who believes an anima mundi, "an universal soul of the world," to pervade all bodies, to act in and by them according to their nature, and indeed to give them their nature and their special powers; perhaps it may be very hard to convince these persons by arguments, and constrain them to yield up those fancies. Well then, let the one believe his universal soul, and the other go on with his notion of substantial forms, and at the same time teach them how by certain original laws of motion, and the various sizes, shapes, and situations of the parts of matter, allowing a continued divine concourse in and with all, the several appearances in nature may be solved, and the variety of effects produced, according to the corpuscular philosophy, improved by Descartes, Mr Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton; and when they have attained a degree of skill in this science, they will see these airy notions of theirs, these imaginary powers, to be so useless and unnecessary, that they will drop them of their own accord. The Peripatetic forms will vanish from the mind like a dream, and the Platonic soul of the world will expire.

We may give another instance of the same practice, where there is a predicate fondness of particular words and phrases. Suppose a man is educated in an unhappy form of speech, whereby he explains some great doctrine of the gospel, and by the means of this phrase he has imbibed a very false idea of that doctrine; yet he is so bigoted to his form of words, that he imagines if those words are omitted the form is lost. Now, if we cannot possibly persuade him to part with his improper terms, we will indulge them a little, and try to explain them in a scriptural sense, rather than let him go on in his mistaken ideas. A person who has been bred a Papist, knows but little of religion, yet he resolves never to part from the Roman Catholic faith, and is obstinately bent against a change. Now it cannot be unlawful to teach such an one the true Christian, i.e., the Protestant religion out of the Epistle to the Romans, and show him that the same doctrine is contained in the Catholic Epistles of St Peter, James, and Jude; and thus let him live and die a good Christian in the belief of the religion taught him out of the New Testament, while he imagines he is a Roman Catholic still, because he finds the doctrine he is taught in the Catholic Epistles and in that to the Romans. Sometimes we may make use of the very prejudices under which a person labours, in order to convince him of some particular truth, and argue with him upon his own professed principles as though they were true. Suppose a Jew lies sick of a fever, and is forbidden flesh by his physician; but hearing that rabbits were provided for the dinner of the family, desired earnestly to eat of them; and suppose he became impatient, because his physician did not permit him, and he insisted upon it that it could do him no hurt—surely rather than let him persist in that fancy and that desire, to the danger of his life, we might tell him that these animals were strangled, a sort of food forbidden by the Jewish law, though we ourselves might believe that law to be abolished.

Where we find any person obstinately persisting in a mistake in opposition to all reason, especially if the mistake be very injurious or pernicious, and we know this person will hearken to the sentiment or authority of some favourite name; it is needful sometimes to urge the opinion and authority of that favourite person, since that is likely to be regarded much more than reason. We are almost ashamed indeed to speak of using any influence of authority in reasoning or argument; but in some cases it is better that poor, silly, perverse, obstinate creatures, should be persuaded to judge and act right, by a veneration for the sense of others, than to be left to wander in pernicious errors, and continue deaf to all argument, and blind to all evidence. They are but children of a larger size; and since they persist all their lives in their minority, and reject all true reasoning, surely we may try to persuade them to practise what is for their own interest by such childish reasons as they will hearken to. We may overawe them from pursuing pursuing their own ruin by the terrors of a solemn shadow, or allure them by a sugar plum to their own happiness. But after all, we must conclude, that wherefore it can be done, it is best to remove and root out those prejudices which obstruct the entrance of truth into the mind, rather than to palliate, humour, or indulge them; and sometimes this must necessarily be done, before you can make a person part with some beloved error, and lead him into better sentiments.

On the whole, we would recommend more mutual forbearance and less acrimony than is commonly found among writers on disputed subjects, as the only means by which our differences in religion, politics, and science, ever can be healed, and truth certainly discovered. If men were less violent in defending their particular opinions, they would always gain a more patient hearing, they would be less suspected of, and less liable to, prejudice, and of course more apt either to convince or to be convinced. They would likewise by so doing show, in the most unequivocal manner, their attention to sound philosophy, and above all to genuine Christianity; which, though it is far from encouraging skepticism, or a temporizing spirit, recommends in the strongest terms, among all its professors, universal charity and mutual forbearance. See PROBABILITY, TRUTH, and SUPERSTITION.