great patience and learning it may prove inadequate, even disastrously misleading. How utterly unsafe, then, may a philosophy be which has grown up as a mere blind result, so to speak, out of a narrow range of petty experiences!
Often particular correlations of ideas which are formed in an uncritical manner in some field of experience petrify, so to speak, and, for one reason or another, persist in a remarkable way, lying in the mind as flinty formations which resist the reflective, rationalizing process. Some popular beliefs of a quasi-superstitious character are of this sort, and probably have their origin in hasty, unreflective thinking. For instance, the notion that when the visible Moon has a certain shape it indicates rain or dry weather; that potatoes should be planted during a certain phase of the moon's changes; that the number 13 is unlucky: or that an enterprise begun on Friday will turn out badly, all such notions are probably crude and hasty generalizations of experience. Perhaps some coincidence, occurring under striking circumstances, was observed and related by some personage of importance; was spread by suggestion among an uncritical populace; became itself a selective influence directing attention to its accidental recurrences, while its failures to recur passed without notice; was handed down to succeeding generations, as a traditional saying supposed to have its basis in generations of cumulative experience; and thus came to have a great prestige with uncritical minds, clinging even to many minds accustomed in some measure to the practice of critical reflection. The persistence of these beliefs even in circles of average culture is a striking indication of the fact that the mental systems of most men are very largely of the unreflective type.
Individual personal prejudices also result from the hardening of hasty and unreflective judgments, when they become associated with deep feelings. For instance, one "gets an impression" of some person as a result of casual acquaintance. It may be wrong; but becoming linked up at once with a feeling of aversion or attraction, it persists as
