In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and
revenging God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to
look on theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess
what is a vice and what a virtue.
There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are
ratified by judgment when one reasons.
Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A
mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love
him; she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through
prejudice that you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall
into a precipice, or be eaten by a beast.
But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain
clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you
that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing
whether he merits your respect; you grow in years and in knowledge; you
perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance,
self-interest and artifice; you despise what you revered, and the
prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the
fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that
the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of Adonis; when
you are twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty
you look on them as ingenious allegories.
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