“From time to time there returns upon the cautious thinker, the conclusion that, considered simply as a question of probabilities, it is decidedly unlikely that his views upon any debatable topic are correct. ‘Here,’ he reflects, ‘are thousands around me holding on this or that point opinions differing from mine—wholly in most cases; partially in the rest. Each is as confident as I am of the truth of his convictions. Many of them are possessed of great intelligence; and, rank myself high as I may, I must admit that some are my equals—perhaps my superiors. Yet, while every one of us is sure he is right, unquestionably most of us are wrong. Why should not I be among the mistaken? True, I cannot realize the likelihood that I am so. But this proves nothing; for though the majority of us are necessarily in error, we all labor under the inability to think we are in error. Is it not then foolish thus to trust myself? When I look back into the past, I find nations, sects, philosophers, cherishing beliefs in science, morals, politics, and religion, which we decisively reject. Yet they held them with a faith quite as strong as ours; nay—stronger, if their intolerance of dissent is any criterion. Of what little worth, therefore, seems this strength of my conviction that I am right? A like warrant has been felt by men all the world through; and, in nine cases out of ten, has proved a delusive warrant. Is it not then absurd in me to put so much faith in my judgments?’”9

I trust the reader will pardon this second rather extended quotation from Herbert Spencer, but the thought expressed must be kept in mind if we are to approach our present subject in the proper spirit....

Our subject is prejudice. Our object is to free ourselves as much as possible from our own prejudices. But before we can get rid of a thing it is first necessary to recognize that thing when we see it.

Prejudice is often confused with intolerance. They are not the same. A man may be prejudiced and not intolerant. You may think that your alma mater, your city, or your country, is the greatest in the world, for little other reason than simply that it is yours. Your opinion is prejudiced. But you may not protest if any other man thinks that his alma mater, or his city, or his country, is the best in the world. In fact you may not have much respect for him if he doesn’t think so. And your opinion is tolerant.

On the other hand, a man may be intolerant and not prejudiced. You may decide, solely on the evidence and on grounds of pure reason, that paper money—fiat money—is always a harmful form of currency, and you may be justly wrathful against the man who advocates it. You may even wish him suppressed. Yet you may be able to answer all his arguments. But you fear that if he is allowed to air his views they will take hold on minds as shallow as his own. You fear that once they have taken root it will be difficult to dislodge them, and that in the meanwhile they may do harm by being put into practice. You are intolerant. But you are not prejudiced. It is well to remember this distinction when accusations of prejudice are flying through the ozone.

One thing more must be kept in mind. Prejudice has less connection with truth and falsity than is generally supposed. The fact that a man is unprejudiced does not make his opinion right. And the fact that a man is prejudiced does not necessarily make his opinion wrong; though it must be admitted that if it is right it will be so only by accident.

It is often thought that prejudice can be immediately recognized. Locke says, “Every one is forward to complain of the prejudices that mislead other men or parties, as if he were free and had none of his own. ... This is the mote which every one sees in his brother’s eye, but never regards the beam in his own.”10 However, slight con­si­der­a­tion will convince us that because one man accuses another of prejudice, it does not follow that the accused is guilty. The general practice is to accuse of prejudice any one whose views happen to differ from our own.

Let us consider a formal dictionary definition of prejudice: “Judgment formed without due examination; opinion adverse to anything, without just grounds or sufficient knowledge.” This is not altogether satisfactory. A man may form a judgment without sufficient knowledge and still be unprejudiced. He may be perfectly open minded and willing to change his opinion if other evidence is adduced. But even if the formation of a judgment without sufficient knowledge is prejudice, it is often justified. At all events, every one will agree that the foregoing definition helps us little in discovering our own prejudices. All of us, for instance, believe our judgment on any given question has been formed with due examination, each being his own judge of what constitutes “due.”

It is difficult to find any satisfactory definition. Perhaps the best I can do is to point out various specific forms of prejudice and their causes. The first form of prejudice I shall name consists in a love for, and a desire to hold, some opinion. We may roughly ascribe this desire to three causes:

(1) We desire an opinion to be right because we would be personally benefited if it were. Promise a man that if he invests his money in the Lookgood Gold Mine he will receive dividends of over 40 per cent. annually, and he is in danger of becoming extremely gullible. He shirks looking up the previous record of the promoters or directors because he has a secret and indefined fear that if he does he will find their pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery. Advertise in a magazine that any thin man can gain seven to fourteen pounds a week by drinking Fattilac and you will receive hundreds of answers enclosing the fifty cents for a trial bottle. Not one desperately slim man in ten will stop to ask himself how the miracle can be performed. In fact, he will do his worst to argue himself into the matter. He will tell himself that the advertisement is in a reliable magazine, that the company would not dare to make an assertion like that unless it could make good, that...

But we may pass over the more obvious benefits, and proceed to those causes of prejudice less consciously selfish or directly beneficial. If an economist were to write a book attempting to prove that bankers were really unnecessary and could be dispensed with, it is a rather sure guess that a banker would not regard very highly the in­tel­lec­tual powers of that economist. If he considered his arguments at all, it would be only with the view of refuting them. In an even less conscious way, a rich man is likely to oppose socialism or communism, not so much because he has evidence of intrinsic worth against them, but because he fears that if such systems of society were put into effect he would lose most of his wealth. The man who has nothing is likely to look with favor upon these schemes, because they offer him promise of better things.

The mere fact that we are ignorant of a certain thing will prejudice us against it, while knowledge of it will prepossess us in its favor. Ten chances to one a person who has been taught Esperanto will favor the adoption of an international language—and the adoption of Esperanto in par­tic­u­lar. Most of the remarks on the uselessness of the classics come from those ignorant of them; while those who, in order to get a college degree or for some like reason, have been forced to study Greek and Latin, will generally always exaggerate their importance. Most of the opposition to simplified spelling is due to the fact that having taken the time and toil to master our atrociously inconsistent spelling, people have a vague fear that if a phonetic system were adopted, children, the ignorant classes and persons of poor memories would be able to spell just as well as they, without one quarter the trouble of learning. Not that they are conscious of this childish and unworthy attitude, for usually they are not, but the motive is operative none the less.

Of course in all the foregoing cases of prejudice, as in those to follow, none of the victims ever uses any of his real reasons in argument, though he will bring forward nearly every other reason on earth to justify his belief. And to do him justice, it must be admitted that he is often unaware of the true cause of his inclination to one side rather than another.

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.

(b) The second kind of opinions we fear to change are those resting mainly upon evidence. William James gives an example:

“Why do so few ‘scientists’ even look at the evidence for telepathy, so-called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the uniformity of nature, and all sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.”11 Darwin writes that when a youth he told Sedgwick the geologist of how a tropical Volute shell had been found in a gravel pit near Shrewsbury. Sedgwick replied that some one must have thrown it there, and added that if it were “really imbedded there, it would be the greatest misfortune to geology, as it would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties”—which belonged to the glacial period.12

Some readers may object to calling the last case prejudice. They may say that Sedgwick was perfectly justified. That, however, is not the present question. Prejudice itself may sometimes be justified. But Sedgwick tacitly admitted that he not only believed the shell had not been imbedded, he actually desired that it had not been. And our desires always determine, to a great extent, the trouble we take to get evidence, and the importance we attach to it after we have it.

Emerson’s remark, that inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, is true in a double sense. For not only is it harmful to fear to change an opinion which we have entertained, it is even harmful at times to fear to hold simultaneously two opinions incongruous with one another. If a thought springs up in your mind, and you come to see after a time that it is inconsistent with another thought, do not immediately try to throw out one or the other. Instead, think the new thought out in all its bearings and implications, just as if you had never had the first. Perhaps follow the same practice with the first idea. By and by one will reveal its falsity and the other its truth. Or more likely you will find that there was some truth in each idea, and you will reconcile the two in a truth higher, deeper, or more comprehensive.

I have set down these three cases of prejudice to help the reader in recognizing the same or similar prejudices in himself. And the mere recognition of prejudices as prejudices will do much toward their elimination. But though we all strenuously maintain our anxiety to get rid of prejudices, the real reason most of us have them is that we do not want to get rid of them. We are all willing to get rid of prejudice in the abstract. But when some one troubles himself to point out any par­tic­u­lar concrete prejudice of ours we defend it and cling to it like a dog to his bone. The only way we can get rid of this desire to cling to our prejudices, is thoroughly to convince ourselves of the superiority of the truth; to leave not the slightest doubt in our own minds as to the value of looking with perfect indifference on all questions; to see that this is more advantageous than believing in that opinion which would benefit us most if true, more important than “being consistent,” more to be cherished than the comfortable feeling of certainty. When we really do desire to get rid of our prejudices we will put ourselves on the path of getting rid of them. And not before then.

One more prejudice has yet to be considered. This may be called the prejudice of imitation. We agree with others, we adopt the same opinions of the people around us, because we fear to disagree. We fear to differ with them in thought in the same way that we fear to differ with them in dress. In fact this parallel between style in thought and style in clothing seems to hold throughout. Just as we fear to look different from the people around us because we will be considered freakish, so we fear to think differently because we know we will be looked upon as “queer.” If we have a number of such dissenting opinions we will be regarded as anything from a mere crank to a fanatic or one with a “screw loose.” When our backs are turned people will wisely point their index fingers to their temples and move them around in little circles.

Our fear of freak opinions is only equalled by our dread of ideas old-fashioned. A little while ago it was considered popular to laugh at the suffragettes. And everybody laughed. Now it is getting to be popular to laugh at the anti-suffragettes. A little while ago it was considered quite comme il faut to fear socialism. Now it is becoming proper to remark, “There is really quite a good deal of truth in their theories.” And soon we shall doubtless all be out and out socialists.

Nor is the prejudice of imitation confined to the layman. If anything, it is even more common among so-called “thinkers.” I remember quoting some remark of Spencer to an acquaintance, and getting this: “Yes, but isn’t Herbert Spencer’s philosophy considered dead?” This same acquaintance also informed me that John Stuart Mill had been “superseded.” He candidly admitted—in fact seemed rather proud of the fact—that he had read practically nothing of either philosopher. I am not trying to defend Spencer or John Stuart Mill, nor am I attempting to bark at the heels of any of our present-day philosophers. But I am willing to wager that most of these same people now so dithyrambic in their praise of James, Bergson, Eucken and Russell will twenty-five years hence be ashamed to mention those names, and will be devoting themselves solely to Post-neofuturism, or whatever else happens to be the passing fadosophy of the moment.

If this is the most prevalent form of prejudice it is also the most difficult to get rid of. This requires moral courage. It requires the rarest kind of moral courage. It requires just as much courage for a man to state and defend an idea opposed to the one in fashion as it would for a city man to dress coolly on a sweltering day, or for a young society woman to attend a smart affair in one of last year’s gowns. The man who possesses this moral courage is blessed beyond kings, but he must pay the fearful price of ridicule or contempt.

There is another form of this prejudice of imitation radically opposed to this. Just as with fashions in clothes there are people who strive to imitate others, so there are people who devote themselves entirely to being “different.” Their greatest fear is that they will be taken for “one of the mob.” They dress themselves as uniquely as possible in order to acquire “individuality.” We have these same people in the realm of thought. They are in constant trepidation lest they say something that everybody else says. They say things not for the sake of truth but for humor or paradox. Their great delight is to affirm or defend something “new” regardless of its truth; something deliciously radical which will shock everybody else and startle even themselves. The worst part of this is that these people gradually come to regard their propositions as true, just as a liar finally comes to believe his own lies.

The only cure for such a mental condition is a constant sincerity in every opinion we advance. People are often led into the fault by a motive not incommendable in itself—the desire for originality. But they choose the wrong path to their goal. If you make originality and radicalness your aim, you will attain neither truth nor originality. But if you make truth your aim you will very likely get truth, and originality will come of itself.

There are hundreds of prejudices, hundreds of forms of prejudice. There is, for instance, the prejudice of conservatism, which manifests itself in a vague fear that if the present order were changed in any par­tic­u­lar—if women were given the vote, if socialism were to triumph, if a new filing system were to be installed at the office—all would be lost. But I cannot deal adequately with all the forms of bias which flock to mind.

The dis­tin­guish­ing mark of the great thinkers of the ages was their comparative freedom from the prejudices of their time and community. In order to avoid these prejudices one must be constantly and un­com­pro­mis­ingly sounding his own opinions. Eternal vigilance is the price of an open mind.

Prejudice is not the only danger which lies in wait for the would-be thinker. In his very efforts to get rid of prejudice he is liable to fall into an even greater in­tel­lec­tual sin. This sin is uncertainty.

As uncertainty and doubt are nearly synonymous, the reader will probably be surprised at this statement because of the praise I have hitherto accorded to the doubtful attitude. But the doubtful attitude, necessary and praiseworthy as it is, should not be maintained always. We think in order to have opinions. We have opinions in order to guide action; in order to act upon should occasion require. Herbert Spencer, even after his remarks quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which imply the need of extreme caution, adds, “... In daily life we are constantly obliged to act out our inferences, trustless as they may be— ... in the house, in the office, in the street, there hourly arise occasions on which we may not hesitate; seeing that if to act is dangerous, never to act at all is fatal....”

There are other reasons why we cannot afford to keep the doubtful attitude. If our lives were interminable, if we had limitless time for thinking, we could afford to remain in doubt indefinitely. But life is fleeting. So if you have examined facts obtainable on such a question as psychic phenomena, have kept your mind open for a certain time, and have decided that communication with the dead is impossible, you are justified in discontinuing to look for evidence on that question. Every hour devoted to examining such evidence would be an hour taken away from thought on some other subject, and the law of diminishing returns is just as applicable in thinking as in economics.

Another trouble with the attitude of doubt is that when not properly utilized it hinders rather than aids the acquisition of truth. This is especially the case when it takes the form of fear of prejudice. If guided by this fear, in our anxiety not to dis­cri­mi­nate in favor of one side of a question we are apt to dis­cri­mi­nate in favor of the other. In an attempt to give an opposing argument due con­si­der­a­tion, we are liable to give it undue con­si­der­a­tion. Instead of removing prejudice with reason we may be trying to balance one prejudice with a counter prejudice. When a person disagrees with him, a very conscientious thinker, fearing that he may be prejudiced, and in order to prove himself broad-minded, will often say regarding an objection, “Well, there may be something in that.” Now your only excuse for ever saying, “There may be something in that,” will be as an attitude to assume in experimenting or observing, or looking up material or arguments to find whether there actually is anything in it. Then, if you do not find anything in it you are justified in saying so—and you ought to.

It is useless to stimulate doubt unless you intend, on grounds of reason, to settle the doubt. The doubtful attitude should be maintained only so long as you are actively searching for evidence bearing on a question. Maintained at any other time or used in any other way it means merely uncertainty, indefiniteness, vagueness, and leads nowhere.

It is important that we be unprejudiced. It is even more important that our views be definite. And if our definite views are wrong? ... But the words of Thomas Huxley on this subject cannot be improved:

“A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—I mean Francis Bacon—said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.”13

When you find yourself fluctuating back and forth between two opinions you might find it helpful to hold an internal debate. State to yourself as strongly as possible the case for the affirmative, and then put as convincingly as possible the case for the negative, holding a refutation if necessary. You may even elaborate this by writing the arguments for both sides in parallel columns. Of course you should never use an argument which you can see on its face to be fallacious, nor a statement which represents merely a prejudice and nothing more. You should use only such arguments as you think a sincere debater would con­sci­en­tious­ly employ. By thus making your reasons articulate you will often find that there is really no tenable case at all for one side, and you will seldom fail to reach a definite conclusion. This method of arriving at a decision may be voted childish and even artificial, but nothing is to be despised which can render in­tel­lec­tual help.

One word more on this. There is a type of individual, most often met with among writers, who fears to make a statement of his thought definite, because he has a faint suspicion that it may be wrong. He wishes to allow himself plenty of loopholes to slip out of an in­tel­lec­tual position in case any one should attack it. Hence he never says outright, “Such and such is the case.” Instead, his talk or writing is guarded on all sides by such expressions as “It is probable that,” “it is possible that,” “the facts seem to indicate that”; or “such and such is perhaps the case.” Not satisfied with this he makes his statement less positive by preceding it with an “I believe,” or worse yet, with an “I am inclined to believe.”

This is often done under the impression that it is something noble, that it signifies broad­mind­ed­ness, lack of dogmatism, and modesty. It may. If it does, so much the worse for broad­mind­ed­ness, lack of dogmatism, and modesty. Never yield to the temptation to word your thoughts in this manner. If you truly and firmly believe that “such and such is the case” say “such and such is the case”; not “it is possible that such and such is the case,” or “such and such is perhaps the case,” or “it is my belief that such and such is the case.” People will assume that it is your belief and not somebody else’s.

Suppose you have made a positive statement. And suppose you later find it to be wrong? Well then, acknowledge that it is wrong. Acknowledge that you have done something human; that you have done something which every man before you has done; that you have made a mistake. I realize such a confession is hard. It is the severest blow you can deal to yourself, and few people will think the better of you for doing it. Most of them will say, “See, he acknowledges himself that he was wrong.” And with these people, both you and your theory will be far more discredited than if you had clung to it until the end of your life, no matter how obviously, how flagrantly, it opposed itself to facts. But a few people will appreciate your sacrifice. A few people will admire your bigness. And you will grow. You will grow as a thinker. What is more, you will grow morally. And the time will come when you will have fewer and fewer occasions to reverse yourself, for you will learn to think longer before you advocate an opinion.

The question of the avoidance of prejudice and the necessity of breaking off doubt, remains still unsettled. There can be no doubt that the two desideratums conflict; that to cut off doubt, or even to refrain from stimulating it, is to encourage by so much the dominance of prejudice.

The answer to this question will depend entirely upon the par­tic­u­lar problem under con­si­der­a­tion. No rules can be laid down. Everything will depend upon the importance of the question, upon the possibility or frequency of occasions when we may be called to act upon the answer, and upon the way in which the answer will affect conduct when we do act upon it. Where the importance of the question is trifling, it would be foolish to sound our prejudices too deeply, or to go to any elaborate pains to collect evidence. Where immediate, unhesitating action is required, remaining in doubt might be fatal. Any decision would be better than no decision. When the importance of the question is vital, or when the possibility of having to act on the answer is distant, we can afford to preserve our doubts, to suspend final judgment, for years—perhaps during our entire life; and we should spare no pains to investigate fully all that relates to the question.

Just how much trouble to take, how long to keep alive the attitude of doubt in any par­tic­u­lar question, will have to be decided by the individual. His own judgment must be the sole criterion.