Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/26

 or false) of which I became convinced yesterday, will be able to overturn all my previous habits, and prejudices, but whether ideas of this kind may not be made the foundation of inveterate prejudices themselves and the strongest principles of action. The ideas concerning religion are of a sufficiently abstract nature: and yet it will not be disputed that early impressions of this kind have some influence on a man's future conduct in life. Two persons accidentally meeting together, and who had never seen one another before shall conceive a more violent antipathy to each other in consequence of a dispute on religion or politics than they might have done from having been personally at variance half their lives. It is objected that this proceeds from wounded vanity. But why is our vanity more easily irritated upon these subjects than upon any other but from the importance attached to them by the understanding? Questions of morality do not always excite the same violent animosity; and this I think is because they do not so properly admit of dispute in themselves, or are so often made the instruments of cabal and power, and therefore depend less on opinion, or the number of votes, and because every one appealing to his own breast for the truth of his opinion attributes the continuance of the contest not to any want of force in his own arguments, but to a want of proper feelings in his opponent.—I will add here a remark in some measure connected with the last mentioned observation, that the reason why men are generally more anxious about the opinion entertained of their understanding than of their honesty is not so much that they really think this last of less consequence, as that a man always believes himself to be the best judge of what passes in his own breast. He therefore thinks very little the better of himself for the good opinion of others. Indeed he considers their suffrages in this respect as a sort of impertinence at best, as implying some doubt upon the subject; and as to their direct censures, he will always find some feelings, or motives in his own mind, or some circumstances with which they are not acquainted, which will in his opinion make a total difference in the case. With respect to manners, and those moral qualities which are denominated pleasing, these again depend on the judgment of others; and we find the same jealousy of the his nature is originally and essentially disinterested; that as a voluntary agent, he must be a disinterested one; that