t of the evil
habits which are usually described by that term. It is destructive of
judgment and devastating in its effect on the mentality because it is a
symptom of a narrowness of outlook on the world. The man who can learn
to outlive prejudice has broken through an iron ring which binds the
mind. And yet we all come into the world of affairs in early youth with
that ring surrounding our temples. We have subconscious prejudices even
where we have no conscious ones. Family, tradition, early instruction
and upbringing fasten on every man preconceptions which are hard to
break.

I write out of my own experience. I was brought up as the son of a
minister of the Church of Scotland, who left Edinburgh University as a
young man to take up a ministry in Canada. The Presbyterian faith was,
therefore, the one in which I was brought up in my boyhood, and I still
feel in my inner being a prejudice, which I cannot defend in reason,
against those doctrines which traverse the Westminster Confession of
Faith. However much thought and experience have modified my views on
religious questions, my tendency is to become the Church of Scotland
militant if any other denomination challenges its views or organisation.

Such are the prepossessions which surround youth. They are formidable,
whether they take the shape of religion or politics or class--and a
fixed form of religious belief is probably the most operative of them
all. It is quite possible that but for subconscious training of the
mind inbred through the generations neither man nor society would have
been able to survive. None the less, now that man has attained the stage
of social reason, prejudice is rather a weakness than a strength.

The greatest prejudice in social life is that against persons--not
against people known to one, for in that case it is dislike or
indifference or even hatred, but against some individual not even known
by sight.

A mentions B to C. "Oh!" says C. "I loathe that man." "But have you ever
met him?" says A. "No, and I don't want to, but I know quite enough
about him."

"But what do you know against him?"

"Well, I know that E told D, who told me, that he was black through and
through, and a bad man."

A few weeks afterwards C sits next B at dinner; finds him an excellent
sort of man to talk to and to do business with, and henceforward goes
about chanting his praises. Thus is personal prejudice disproved by the
actual fact. It is a curious freak