That custom, habits of thought and practice, affect belief, is generally acknowledged and accepted, though the strength and wide reach of the bias are seldom realized. Very simple cases of unreasoning prejudice were adduced by John Locke, who was the first to suggest a general explanation of them in the “Association of Ideas.” There is, for instance, the fear that overcomes many people when alone in the dark. In vain reason tells them that there is no real danger; they have a certain tremor of apprehension that they cannot get rid of because darkness is inseparably connected in their minds with images of horror. Similarly, we contract unreasonable dislikes to places where painful things have happened to us. Equally unreasoning, if not unreasonable, is our attachment to customary doctrines or practices, and our invincible antipathy to those who do not observe them.

Words are very common vehicles for the currency of this kind of prejudice, good or bad meanings being attached to them by custom. The power of words in this way is recognized in the proverb: “Give a dog a bad name, and then hang him.” These verbal prejudices are Bacon’s Idola Fori, illusions of conversation. Each of us is brought up in a certain sect or party and accustomed to respect or dishonor certain sectarian or party names, Whig, Tory, Radical, Socialist, Evolutionist, Broad, Low, or High Church. We may meet a man without knowing under what label he walks and be charmed with his company: meet him again when his name is known, and all is changed. Such errors are called Fallacies of Association to point to the psychological explanation. This is that by force of association certain ideas are brought into the mind and that once they are there, we cannot help giving them objective reality.

But why is it that a man cannot get rid of an idea? Why does it force itself upon him as a belief? Association, custom, explains how it got there, but not why it persists in staying. To explain this, we must call in our first fallacious principle, the Impatience of Doubt or Delay, the imperative inward need for a belief of some sort. And this leads to another remark, that though for convenience of exposition, we separate these various influences, they are not separated in practice. They may and often do act altogether, the Inner Sophist concentrating his forces. The persistence of such an idea leads to an illusion, just as there is nothing in the dark, the inability of some to set such a notion down leads to the illusion that there is something there. But it must be noted that illusion may not always be understood negatively, at least for some.

It may be asked whether, seeing that illusions are the offspring of such highly respectable qualities as excess of energy, excess of feeling, excess of docility, it is a good thing for man to be disillusioned. The rose-color that lies over the world for youth is projected from the abundant energy and feeling within. Disillusion comes with failing energies when hope is “unwilling to be fed.” The preceding exposition would be egregiously wrong if the majority of humankind did not resent the intrusion of Reason and its organizing lieutenant Logic. But really there is no danger that this intrusion succeeds to the extent of paralyzing action and destroying feeling and uprooting custom. The utmost that Logic can do is to modify the excess of these good qualities by setting forth the conditions of rational belief. The student who masters those conditions will soon see the practical wisdom of applying his knowledge only in cases where the grounds of rational belief are within his reach. To apply it to the consequences of every action would be to yield to that bias of incontinent activity which is, perhaps, our most fruitful source of error.

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