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much of good or evil to society according to his future deportment in the vocation thus forced upon him , and the proportion of power attached to it of dispensing benefits ana injuries . This deportment , let it be remembered , depends upon the contingencies of an unknown organization , an unformed
disposition , the yet uncertain result of education , the operation of future circumstances , and , finally , the inclination or disinclination of the subject himself . Thus , an infidel may be forced into the dishonesty of entering the church , a philosopher driven into the army against his conviction , or a coward against his constitution , an imaginative man into the office of an
attorney , a metaphysician into a merchant ' s counting-house , or an honest man into the inferior departments of diplomacy Such results cannot fail to arise continually from a custom so contrary to nature and reason as that of predetermining the pursuit of a boy , and the sort of education to be bestowed upon mm , before the development of his understanding and peculiar
abilities offer some reasonable ground for decision . What should we say of poor parents who condemned a sickly delicate lad to the labour and fatigues of a common mariner ; and another , possessing the thewe and muscle of a Hercules to measure ribbons behind the counter of a haberdasher ?*
Yet , without due allowance being made for this comnion cause of a destructive effect , people are liberal with sneers whenever the tone of a man ' s mind is perceived to differ essentially from the nature of his employment . For example , a retail tradesman , with knowledge and talents above the standard
which is ( absurdly enough ) generally associated with his condition , affords a plentiful source for ridicule to many of those persons whom the prejudices of society have agreed to consider m a sphere above him . And it is no doubt very annoying to a gentleman ( in the conventional sense of that term ) snould
some accident force upon him the unacknowledged conviction that the tailor who made his coat , or the man who sells him a quire of paper , is a being superior to him in talent and acquirements , —an occnrrence by no means impossible , nor even improbable . On the other side , a man filling a high office or
profession , with qualifications decidedly below its requisition , is the sure butt of censure or sarcasm , without it being inquired whether , as an individual , he is not less to blame than his parents , who may have obtruded him upon a capacity to which he was averse and consciously unfitted . Two distinct and very common prejudices are above presented
* " Education must fail so Jong- as we continue to think that children are born alike , and may receive with equal advantage every kind of education . Spurtheim—Views of the Elementary Principles of Education . " In order to know in what manner things operate upon the mind , it is necessary to know how the mind i % constructed " Encyclopedia Britt— ( last edition )—A > t Educatioti .
No . 113 .
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Curtay Remark * on Prejudice . Si 8
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1836, page 313, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2657/page/49/
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