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Untitled Article
politics but the calm walks of domestic life are invaded by prejudice : —not only religion and ethics , but literature and science are rife with its influence . It is the most formidable barrier to the progress of philosoph y > —the darkest , densest cloud to be penetrated by the beams of reason . If it be considered sometimes to act advantageously as a tie connecting man with a few obvious duties , it is , on the other hand , the
iron chain which binds the soul to error . We see abaurd customs continued , unjust opinions formed , bitter hate excited , cruel and blood-thirsty deeds committed : — the root and cause of all , this tyrant of the mind . Sons have been cast off and rendered aliens from their homes , because they could not conscientiously subscribe to their father ' s religion , their father ' s politics . Simple difference of opinion has caused disunion between husbands and wives , and rended asunder the firmest
friendships . Brother has encountered brother in the deadly strife of civil war , and the unnatural encounter has be ^ n called patriotism ! Behold the slaughter of Bartholomew ' s day ; the massacres , tortures , and persecutions of every kind , sustained by the unfortunate Jews ; the bloody deaths of martyrs for all religions , the horrors of the Inquisition ! What is the
cause of this terrible catalogue of human evils ? Fanaticism . And what is fanaticism but blind and infuriate prejudice ? Who , with the direful effects of Prejudice before his eyes * will deny that it is essential to the well-being and happiness of mankind it be diminished ? — who , but the enemies of their
species — vampyres , who feed upon human intellect , human labour , and whose existence depends upon the continued torpor of their prey . But the victim is arousing , and , though weak and numbed , his strength will come , and then woe unto the oppressor I
The best method of subduing those prejudices which clog the fine mechanism of the mind , and mar its operation , is to think deeply—to accustom the understanding early to enlarged objects of contemplation , to penetrate into firat principles , to argue with ourselves , to build hypotheses and test them by reason . In such a track it is the duty of a preceptor to conduct
? . " Those gilded flies That , basking in the sunshine of a court Fatten oo itfc corruption—what ure they ? —¦ The dronis of the community ; they feed On the mechanic ' s labour : the starved hind For them compel * the stubborn glebe to yield I ta unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form , Leaner than neshlesa misery , Unit wasUs A sunles * life in the unwholesome mino , Drag * out in labour a protracted death To glut their grandeur;—many faint with toil , That t » w inay know the cares and woe of sloth /* SlulUy— QuteH Nab .
Untitled Article
574 . Cttrtory Remarks on Prqudict .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1836, page 374, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2658/page/46/
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