Origin, nature and value of hereditary prejudice.--How far
custom, religion and government are legitimate.

Nothing could be better had the new doctrine been complete, and if
Reason, instructed by history, had become critical, and therefore
qualified to comprehend the rival she replaced. For then, instead of
regarding her as an usurper to be repelled she would have recognized in
her an elder sister whose part must be left to her. Hereditary prejudice
is a sort of Reason operating unconsciously. It has claims as well as
reason, but it is unable to present these; instead of advancing those
that are authentic it puts forth the doubtful ones. Its archives are
buried; to exhume these it is necessary to make researches of which it
is incapable; nevertheless they exist, and history at the present day
is bringing them to light.--Careful investigations shows that, like
science, it issues from a long accumulation of experiences; a people,
after a multitude of gropings and efforts, has discovered that a certain
way of living and thinking is the only one adapted to its situation, the
most practical and the most salutary, the system or dogma now seeming
arbitrary to us being at first a confirmed expedient of public safety.
Frequently it is so still; in any event, in its leading features it
is indispensable; it may be stated with certainty that, if the leading
prejudices of the community should suddenly disappear, Man, deprived of
the precious legacy transmitted to him by the wisdom of ages, would at
once fall back into a savage condition and again become what he was at
first, namely, a restless, famished, wandering, hunted brute. There was
a time when this heritage was lacking; there are populations to day with
which it is still utterly lacking.[3304] To abstain from eating human
flesh, from killing useless or burdensome aged people, from exposing,
selling or killing children one does not know what to do with, to be
the one husband of but one woman, to hold in horror incest and unnatural
practices, to be the sole and recognized owner of a distinct field, to
be mindful of the superior injunctions of modesty, humanity, honor
and conscience, all these observances, formerly unknown and slowly
established, compose the civilization of human beings. Because we accept
them in full security they are not the less sacred, and they become
only the more sacred when, submitted to investigation and traced
through history, they are disclosed