SECT. III. MORAL OBSTACLES TO PERCEPTION OF TRUTH.

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IT is to the moral condition of our own minds that we may trace the obstacles which principally impede our perception and admission of truth. These are what Lord Bacon terms "the idols of the den." Every man," says he, "has his own peculiar den or cavern which breaks and corrupts the light of nature, either on account of his constitution and disposition of mind, his education and the society he keeps, his course of reading and the authorities he most respects, his peculiar impressions, as they may be made on a mind that is preoccupied and prepossessed, or is in a calm, unbiased frame.” *

The fact that these "idols" of passion, prejudice, and association derive their strong hold over the mind from the influence of the feelings over the judgment, affords a striking illustration of the connection between our moral and intellectual nature, and the importance of moral discipline to the free and successful use of the intellect. The difficulty of arriving at truth arises much more frequently from the infirmity of our moral nature, than from that of our reason. The latter, if properly cultivated and unbiased by feeling, will seldom err in cases where the terms of the proposition are clearly understood, and competent knowledge is possessed of the facts of the case. But if our feelings be enlisted on one side or the other, they prevent reason from coming fairly into operation, and perceiving a truth which militates against the cherished error. Whenever a truth has been long and obstinately opposed, the opposition has arisen, not from intellectual difficulties, but from passion. The question has been judged, not on its own merits, but on its incompatibility with opinions bound up with the interests and passions of the judges. Where can we find a stronger proof of the necessity of moral rectitude to the perfection of the intellect?

Our nature is so constituted that our affections, which are

* Quoted from Account of Bacon's Novum Organon, in Library of Useful Knowledge, § II. Par. 2.

the springs of action, are necessarily more powerful than the deliberative faculty of reason. How difficult it is to decide rightly when they are concerned, may be estimated by the admiration we feel for him whose judgment holds the balance evenly, though his dearest personal interests be in the scale. It is a melancholy proof of the infirmity of our nature, that our best affections, if not controlled and kept in their due proportion and subordination by reason and conscience, will lead us astray no less surely than the worst. Witness the records of history, in which we see piety riveting the chains of superstition, religious zeal lighting the martyr's stake, patriotism kindling the flames of civil war, and loyalty trampling on the rights of men. while breathing the heroism of self-sacrifice. It is to the union of reason with conscience, and to the love of truth, as the supreme good of our being, that we must look as our only security against the danger of our best and purest feelings degenerating into blind and destructive passions.

Prejudice, which is often the offspring of passion, is even more fatal to our perception of truth. Passion, from its very nature, cannot be permanent; and during the lull which follows its wildest storms, the voice of truth may make itself heard, and assert its authority. But prejudice has all the strength and inveteracy of habit, and is often interwoven with associations so early formed and long continued that the very foundation of all our principles and opinions would be shaken by the wrench necessary to dissever them.

All opinions which we derive from our position, education, or peculiarities of character, without examination of the grounds on which they rest, are simply prejudices.* They may or may not be just in themselves, but so long as they are held on any other ground but their abstract justice, they are prejudices to us. A child may repeat by rote the most valuable maxims, but he cannot therefore be said to have opinions, since the latter word implies the assent of the understanding to the truth or probability of the maxims advanced. The very etymology of

*

See Paley's Moral Philosophy, Chap II. p. 127.

the word opinion indicates that it is the product of thought, whereas to learn the opinions of others is merely an effort of memory, and for all practical purposes leaves the mind as unfitted as before.

False associations are amongst the most fertile sources of prejudice, and hence appears the importance of watching over those formed in childhood, when impressions are most strong, and reason is still undeveloped. The name of a party is associated in the minds of children with injustice, license, and irreligion, or with every thing that is great and good in human nature, and the prepossession so formed is retained through life, and affects the whole current of thought and action. It may, perhaps, be well founded, but it remains a prejudice, because the grounds which justify it are never examined. More than two thirds of the opinions held in the world are in this sense prejudices; for it is a small minority, indeed, amongst us, who form their opinions for themselves after careful and conscientious examination, or search the grounds of those they have imbibed from others, and maintain them no farther than reason and evidence will warrant.

It is, no doubt, unavoidable, that the great mass of mankind should receive their opinions and principles from others, for the hard necessities of life allow them neither the leisure nor the means to examine and form them for themselves. But even they do and must judge, more or less, of the claims of the authority upon which those opinions are presented to them, and hence the importance that such authority should carry with it moral weight. The uneducated cannot weigh evidence, or reason out a proof, but they are often good judges of character, and according to the character of those who profess to teach them, they will learn reverence for the doctrines which come commended by virtue and practical wisdom, or contempt for the mere intellectual superiority which they cannot appreciate. With the educated classes the case is entirely different. would be difficult to say what is meant by education, or what its value, if it leaves those on whom it has been bestowed as incapable of forming opinions, and as much the slaves of

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prejudice, as the ignorant and toil-worn clown. Indolence and timidity on the one hand, and the love of domination and dogmatism on the other, have combined to produce the strange anomaly of cultivated minds, and unreasoning prejudices, which we so frequently meet with. The bolder part of mankind has encouraged the weakness of the other, conscious that, the larger the number of independent thinkers, the more necessary would it become to restrict authority within the limits of reason and justice, and to renounce all power that could not be proved to rest on those grounds.

It may be alleged, that, by urging each individual to examine for himself the grounds of his opinions and principles, we are teaching contempt for authority. But it is not obedience to the rightful-i. e. the well-attested-claims of authority that we reprove, but passive submission to any authority. A reasoning mind does not reject authority, but simply judges of its value. The unreasoning one, on the contrary, the mere puppet of impulse or prejudice, — rejects as blindly as it obeys. Hence the spectacle, so common in our days, of the young presumptuously despising the experience and authority of age. They have taken up the prejudice of the times, namely, suspicion of all authority, and have not reasoned enough on the grounds of that suspicion, to know when it should be admitted and when set aside.

With regard to the young, this question is not practically so difficult as it appears to be. The authority from which they first received their opinions is invested with a character which belongs to no other earthly office, and from it they accept opinions and principles just as they submit to rules of action, without doubt or hesitation, because instinctively in obedience to a law of nature. The burden of proof will always rest, not with the parent, but with him who opposes the views of the parent: the first time, therefore, that the young mind examines any opinion. differing from what it has been taught, it will be with reference to that first sacred authority as a standard, and it will assuredly compare other views with that, before it begins to call that authority itself in question. None but the worst regulated

minds, or ill-conditioned natures, will arraign, in the spirit of revolt, opinions and principles received under the fond guidance of parental care. When the inquiry is made, as we urge the young to make it, with a simple, earnest love of truth, it will be accompanied with all the feelings that belong to so high a motive, and a sense of responsibility for the great task they are undertaking, which will preserve the mind from conceit, presumption, and rashness. On many points, their inexperience and ignorance of the world will make it impossible for them to sift the grounds of opinions they have perhaps imbibed from childhood, and they must be content to hold them on the authority of greater knowledge and wisdom than their own. The spirit of inquiry will not lead to their rejection; it will only keep the mind alive to the nature of the grounds on which they rest, and preserve it from the overweening confidence which springs from calling our own, borrowed opinions we had been incapable of forming for ourselves.

We must, indeed, at every age, stand in the same position with regard to many questions. It is impossible for any one to form independent opinions upon every subject that comes under his notice; there must be to each of us a vast number, on which, from want of knowledge, and various other causes, we must still be content with knowing the opinions of others. All that is required of us is to be able to give a reason for what we really profess as our own.

It is so far from true, that the examination or rejection of authority, as such, implies contempt for the opinion or knowledge of others; that, on the contrary, the habit of reasoning and acquaintance with the difficulties that attend the search after truth will awaken a keen desire to gain all possible assistance. In most cases, the knowledge requisite for forming our judg ment is to be acquired only by consulting authorities, and the inestimable benefit both of books and of conversation, often more valuable than books, would be lost, if an independent spirit of inquiry involved the determination of owing nothing to othThe arrogance implied by such a determination would be as surely a mark of an ill-disciplined moral nature, as of a nar

ers.