termine the comparative weight which the mind assigns in it
to the premises.(77) In demonstrative evidence there is no opportunity for
the intrusion of emotion; but in probable reasoning the judgment
ultimately formed by the mind depends often as much upon the antecedent
presumptions brought to the investigation of the subject, as upon the
actual proofs presented; the state of feeling causing a variation in the
force with which a proposition commends itself to the mind at different
times. The very subtlety of this influence, which requires careful
analysis for its detection, causes it to be overlooked. Accordingly, in a
subject like religion, the emotions may secretly insinuate themselves in
the preliminary step of determining the weight due to the premises, even
where the final process of inference is purely intellectual.

We can select illustrations of this view of the subtlety of the operation
of prejudice from instances of a kind unlike the one previously named; in
which it will be seen that the disinclination of the inquirer to accept
Christianity has not arisen primarily from the obstacle caused by the
enmity of his own carnal heart, but from antipathy toward the moral
character of those who have professed the Christian faith.

Who can doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries
of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness
shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of
the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in
the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them
for the reception of the Christian evidences; or that the social
disaffection in the last century in France incensed the mind against the
Church that supported alleged public abuses,(78) until it blinded a
Voltaire from seeing any goodness in Christianity; or that the religious
intolerance shown within the present century by the ecclesiastical power
in Italy drove a Leopardi(79) and a Bini(80) into doubt; or that the sense
of supposed personal wrong and social isolation deepened the unbelief of
Shelley(81) and of Heinrich Heine?(82) Whatever other motives may have
operated in these respective cases, the prejudices which arose from the
causes just named, doubtless created an antecedent impression against
religion, which impeded the lending an unbiassed ear to its evidence.

The subtlety of the influence in these instances makes them