but recently that more potent and refined warfare than any of which they had ever before had experience, has compelled the Chinese to recognize a superior civilization, which their prejudices, fostered by ignorance and a severe exclusiveness, had always characterized as "outside" barbarism.

Perhaps prejudice is not a misnomer for that which gives rise to so strong and universal a love of country and home. This does not at all depend upon the beauty and superiority of that accidental spot, which men call country and home.

The Icelanders have a proverb, that "Iceland is the fairest land on which the sun shines;" and what country, whether frowned upon or favored by nature, has not a similar one? Transplant the wild tenant of the forest into the midst of refinement and luxury, and he will sigh for his native haunts again. This sentiment no maxims of reason can unsettle, time only can shake, and even time itself cannot destroy. The very names of country and home and of their associations, are a spell with which to call up the nobler feelings of human nature, when all other earthly ties have lost their power, and the very nature seems imbrued beyond all hope of recovery. These sentiments remain the last faint token of that celestial principle, which is the common birthright of all, the last link which binds man to a common sympathy with his kind. These feelings are all strengthened and kept alive by prejudices.

Neither truth nor error are ever stationary; they are always upon the move, and never retrograde. Hence, when opinions diverge in the least from the truth, the lapse of time and the natural course of events inevitably carry the difference to an extent, measured by nothing in the original importance of the perversion, but by the constantly increasing stability arising from prescription, and by the laws of mental progress. Thus prejudices sometimes fix, or at least perpetuate the character of whole races of men. The Jews, bound together by the ties of a common origin, and by the special guidance and favor of Heaven, have fallen utterly as a nation, and sadly as individuals. Theirs were the" oracles of God," but upon a misunderstanding of them, was built up the expectation of a mighty temporal prince in their promised Messiah. This prejudice was so firmly rooted in the minds of the multitude, that they could not look upon an unpretending teacher, as any other than an imposter. They were consequently visited speedily with a curse, which has haunted them till this day. Upon the descendants of Ishmael was imposed the character of wild, roving men, and, true to his nature, the Arab is still the nomad of the desert. In the East, a peculiar system of mingled philosophy and religion has caused the tide of life to stagnate and remain almost stationary for ages. So that ages as well as races not unfrequently owe their character to prejudices peculiarly their own.

But, besides these more general instances and manifestations of prejudice, it appears to have a great and almost supreme control over individual character. This would indeed follow from what has been already said; for what are races, and ages, and nations, and govern

ments, but aggregations of individuals, and individual characters? An abstraction can do nothing; it is only when it is embodied, and becomes an active principle in the minds of individuals, that it can have any practical character and influence. When the eye first opens upon the world around, when the awakening mind first drinks in the ideas which are perpetually rising before it, impressions are made lasting as time, and indelible as its traces. The voices of familiar friends, the charms of familiar scenes, the empire of familiar thoughts, are a part of the future man, and as such, never leave him. It would seem that nature bestows upon every one a certain constitution of mind, as well as of body. But there is in the character of every man something more than this. No one grows up without education of some sort, and a good or a faulty education must have a great effect upon the character and compass of the mind. The child has every thing to learn, and it must make a great difference what and how he learns. The power of education has passed into a proverb, and some would even have us believe that genius itself is the result of education. But aside from the professed discipline of the schools, there is a training which every one, though unconsciously, undergoes. His associations shape his ideas; they give a permanent bias to his mind, they turn the current of his character. The simple child, under these influences, may thus become a confirmed barbarian, or may stand high in the ranks of refinement and cultivated intellect. Thus the youth of strong mind and violent disposition may become a bold and outlawed wretch, or, trained to self-control and self-respect, by the vigor and superiority of his character, become a leader and a benefactor of his fellowmen. Such influences do not necessarily convince the reason, but they act upon the under-current of character, which controls and carries along with it the whole man. They are intertwined with the feelings and impulses of the soul, they command the assent of the mind, and thus govern the springs of thought and action. This early bias moulds the manners, fixes the habits, and, in a great measure, opens and prepares, or fills up and obstructs the way to truth and greatness. It fits or unfits the subject of these influences for those walks of life to which his talents might reasonably lead him to aspire.

The world can never know how much it has lost in the talents of many, who, by reason of the prescriptions of education and circumstances, have lived obscure and died unknown. Nor again does it appreciate how much these same causes have contributed to build up the character of many of its favorites.

The greatest rulers and conquerors have been almost always marked by prejudices peculiarly their own, and have also, by skillful management, taken the lead of prevalent prejudices, and made them conspire to the accomplishment of their own ends. Great generals seem almost always to have been inspired with a presentiment of success, and to have imbued their soldiers with the same confidence, which was often a guarantee of victory in the most desperate circumstances. Numa, following the bent of his own mind, and working upon the superstitions of his subjects, instituted a code of religious rites, under

the pretended sanction of a Godess, which, in a great measure, controlled all the future observances of the Roman religion, and which, along with his own virtues, caused him to be remembered ever afterwards, as Rome's greatest benefactor after Romulus. The father of Hannibal instilled into the youthful mind of his son, his own bitter hatred against the Romans, and caused him to swear, upon his country's altars, eternal enmity against them. Who can tell how great influence these early prejudices had upon that great mind, and upon Rome, and through Rome, upon the world? Constantine is said to have seen, in the heavens, the mystic symbol of the Christian faith, and to have interpreted it as an omen of victory. The prejudice thus inspired led him to espouse the religion of the cross; and thus commenced its prevalence, sanctioned by the government in the Roman Empire. Napoleon was, from early youth, trained in the ideas and the arts of war, and doubtless this early bias, along with his own native preeminence, marked him out as the future Emperor of France, and conqueror of Europe. Cromwell's youth is said to have been haunted with strange visions of royalty, and it seems to be agreed that this cast of mind, whether arising from, or giving rise to, these fancies, influenced his whole future career. The mother of Byron seems by her indiscretion to have awakened prejudices, which, combined with his sensitive nature and his passions, permanently perverted his character. And who has not observed upon what seemingly trivial incidents have hinged the character and fortunes of those around him? A word, a look, a single action, are often at the beginning of a course of thought and of life, of which no philosophy could have ever dreamed.

Men are constantly thrown into positions where immediate action is required; sometimes when it is impossible to call in the direct aid of reason, authority or fact; and here prepossessions must decide the question. All men are thus, either directly or indirectly, under the empire of prejudice. For the mind is not a collection of disconnected parts, any one of which may be cultivated, or perverted, or disorganized without affecting the rest; but it is a complex system of interdependant parts, the growth, or perversion, or alteration of any one of which, in any way, affects the whole character.

Thus powerful and universal is the sway of prejudice. On every page of the world's history are traced its workings. In every sphere of influence, in every juncture of fortune, its hand is seen guiding the present, and shaping the future. Its influence is sometimes for good, but oftener for evil. It is for good when existing prejudices are in the direction of truth. They may thus stand in its place and prepare the way for it. 66 Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short time, while Reason slumbers in the citadel, but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for itself." When it is united with a contracting ignorance and headstrong passions, the combination excludes truth and defies reason. As we have seen, it sometimes keeps an age groping in darkness behind its time. It shuts out whole races of men from sympathy and commerce with their kind. It pampers an exclusive national vanity. It draws the bounds of national distinctions so strict, that

"Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other."

It calls all foreign lands barbarian-it perpetuates vicious systems of government; and it is only when ripened into a prudent conservatism, that it proves a blessing to a people. It transforms punctillios and unimportant distinctions, into binding codes of manners, and unyielding notions. It makes religion often a perpetual despotism of old, but un· founded authorities; or again it fills with bitterness the hearts of sectarian champions, and widens every moment the gulf between sects once dwelling together in brotherly love. It fans the flames of persecution-it gives birth to fanaticism—it nourishes superstition—it is the patron of bigotry. It has led men to condemn their kindred flesh and blood for unhallowed intercourse with demons-it has made them visionary and extravagant. It is the ready tool of the demagogue, the false teacher, and the designing of every grade and kind. It has, in fine, become almost a synonym with mischief or harm.

To unlearn is a harder task than to learn anew; but when both these must be done, when the way back to truth thus doubles upon itself, the difficulty is greatly aggravated. As truth and reason tend to make character constantly purer and better, so error and prejudice involve it deeper and deeper in wrong, until it becomes thoroughly perverted, and its extrication is next to impossible. We want nothing to come between us and the truth; we would banish prejudices-for there does not seem to be a conception of society or of individual character, fully realizing the cravings of our higher nature, from which these are not excluded.

But, since they cannot, from the constitution of men and things, be wholly removed, the efforts of the wise and good will be directed to the task of softening and lessening those which exist, and of guarding against their future prevalence.

It is a grand, distinguishing characteristic of superior civilization, that, where it prevails, truth reclaims its place from prejudice, and the system of things tends to keep the mind disabused of those errors which it sanctions and sustains.

Two of these influences are especially worthy of notice. The extensive and comparatively frequent and free intercourse of different nations and remote parts of the earth, for commercial and other purposes, manifestly tends to bring about a catholic liberality of sentiment the world over. Instead of frowns of distant suspicion and distrust, nations are even now exchanging smiles of familiarity and mutual good will. A new sphere of ideas is opened to the traveler in foreign lands, and it is natural that he should carry away with him enlarged views and liberal feelings. And if the earth is ever to become the home of one great brotherhood of nations, all under the rule of universal truth and right, we cannot doubt that a free and familiar interchange of friendly offices, of thought and of feeling, is to be the inseparable bond of their union.

But again, wherever governments have become, in any degree, assimilated to our high ideal of perfection, there are, within the national

body, and acting upon the individuals of which it is composed, two grand causes, working together for the emancipation of the mind from prejudice and its ally ignorance. Universal education and freedom of thought united are carrying on this crusade.

These give free scope to the action and development of the mind; they discipline, while they enlarge its capacity; they act upon it in early life, before it has been subjected to the control of any permanent principles and habits of thought and action-so that truth and liberty seem as natural and indispensable to the man as the air he breathes; and he is thus formed at their hands, or rather suffered to form himself as God and nature intended.

Man thus acquires character, and is no longer a mere machine in the hands of an established authority, or a bubble "light as air" left to the mercy of the fickle winds of opinion. Character thus becomes real and permanent; not through ignorance and therefore exposed to constant weakness and change; nor yet perverted in its nature, stubborn in error, and stationary under unreasonable and immovable prejudices-but fixed, real and permanent, and yet progressive, under the genial sway of truth and reason. To bring these two great influences into full and successful operation, will be the enfranchisement of a world, and one of the noblest achievements and proudest boasts of enlightened patriotism and philanthropy.