PREJUDICE.
PREJUDICE is a partial judgment, not original so much as traditional, inherited from the past, or picked up, ready-made, in the present, out of the atmosphere, from the environment, the nation, the locality, class, party, seek or sex. Mau rarely knows how packed with prejudices he is until he falls into the ditch ; for in this mental world of ours the blind, leaders and led, are quite happy, until a catastrophe occurs. Even then they are more apt to blame the ditch, or the ditcher, than their own blindness. And the worst of it all is that there is no possibility of avoiding prejudice, of bringing an absolutely virgin mind to bear on life and experience. If we be not born already biassed and prejudiced in our minds, yet our innocence cannot escape the influence of kith and kin, of school and college, of trade and profession, of self-interest and of friendship. And these partial judgments assume the air of instincts and intuitions, because their origins are overlooked and forgotten ; they exercise a greater authority as being before and beyond proof or reproof. Moreover, they are seldom wholly devoid of some grain or shadow of truth ; they have been true in other times and places, they may he true now in the exceptions ; they oven sometimes may make, or help to make, the truth which they assume, or the impossibility which they assert. So they obtain a sort of verification, which starts them afresh, with a new lease of life. Or again, they may have a touch of nobility about them- " my country, right or wrong ! "—which redeems them from extinction.
The enemy of Prejudice is Novelty; the feud between them is essential and everlasting. Every new idea, every fresh departure, encounters hostility and opposition from the wisdom and the folly of our predecessors, the force of tradition, the authority of the Elders. Prejudice wedded to Convention bars every political, social, and religious experiment. Prejudice, stereo- typed by Pride, disdains to learn of the new man, or the new thing. Why should not what was good enough for our fathers be good enough for us ? Why should not what is good enough for us be good enough for the coming generation ? Well, simply because one custom, even one good custom, would corrupt the world. Here indeed we may see the original sin of Prussian- ism ! Even if German Kultur were as good in itself as it may be for its native votaries, to universalize it would be to debase mankind, which is too various and complex and inexhaustible to be standardized on one pattern. But we need not go to Prussia to learn the mischief and the misery of a mechanical and servile conception of culture, education, life. Our own Education, our Science, our Arts, our institutions in State and in the Churches, our social service and intercourse, our amusements and recreations, our very philanthropies and charities, are confined and hampered by half-truths. Every originality, every vital dlan, has to prove itself in its cradle an infant Thwacks by strangling the twin snakes of Prejudice and Inertia. The Classical prejudice in Education, the Utili- tarian prejudice in Science, the Academic prejudice in the Arta, the Party prejudice in politics, the Conformist prejudice in religion, the Class prejudice in society, the Athletic prejudice in recreation, the Patronage prejudice in philanthropy, have each and all to go, if we are to find the fair field and the juste milieu in these widespread activities.
Freedom is the goal, and likewise the condition, of Progress; Progress is the condition and the test of Life ; to have Life, and to have it more abundantly, is the secret of Happiness, or welfare, for man and woman, whether as citizens of this world, or of all worlds. How long shall we bow our knees all too devoutly in the Houses of Prejudice ? Our false gods, the Dagen"; of the Cave and the Forum, of Theatre and Tribe, and all the rest, are one and all anachronisms, whose place, if any, is not in our temples, much less in our hearts and minds, but in our museums of Antiquities and our catalogues of Iniquities.
But how to be rid of them ? How to emancipate ourselves? The antidote and cure for Prejudice lies in two positive virtues, the Love of Truth and the Love of Adventure, or, to use one word which unites the twain, in Curiosity. No mere Prejudice can long withstand the question. Let it be challenged ; let it stay and deliver its reason, if it ever had one ; let it make good its right to exist, and it shall pass on through the gate of Horn ; if it fail, as a Prejudice, once challenged, is bound to fail, it shall sink through the door of ivory to the Limbo of lost illusions and delusions. The prejudices of one generation are the superstitions of the next and the laughing-stock of the third. The Love of Truth, the desire to know, to come by the reason of things, the root of the whole matter, is fatal to the irrational, the absurd, or even the merely antiquated—that indeed is its negative value, its value as a negation. Positively it is the eye of the soul, the life of life, the earnest of immortality. And so too with the Love of Adventure, which is bat curiosity, or the love of truth, exercising itself in the sphere of conduct and external action. Every life is a laboratory of experiments, every experiment is an adventure, which melts and purges and refuses a prejudice, till it may be fit to fuse itself with our Life's science and our Life's art; for Life is a failure if it be not a thing of truth and of beauty and a joy for ever. The last prejudice to be overcome, the last adventure to be tried, is Death. That indeed needs the freest thought, the most cour- ageous will, the supreme love of truth, to shed the prejudice of mortality ! Yet when the call to that adventure comm- as in these days of warfare and distress of nations it has come to such hosts of the young and the beautiful and the true, and even comes in its most honourable and glorious guise, on the field of battle—not our hearts merely, but our very reason seems to rise in rebellion against the unnatural doom. Is it prejudice, or is it not a reasonable faith in the nature and destiny of man, nay, if you will, in the goodness of God, that arraigns this all too monstrous experiment at the bar of History, and appeals, with prophetic soul, to the future to do justice 01 the enemy Adventurers, who have sacrificed the prejudice, the tradition, the convention, of Humanity in their insane lust for Power
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