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PERSONAL DUTIES.

[Part IV.

occasion, like Nestor, to praise the times that are past, and insiststhat every thing has changed for the worse since he was a youngman. It is all the effect of prejudice. Youth is a season of joyand delight, the sensibilities are active, the affections warm, theimagination buoyant and creative, all the powers of body andmind are fresh and elastic, want and anxiety have not begun todistress us, — and, more than all, hope sheds its bright illusions onour path, and gilds all our prospects with its rays. No wonder,then, that the reminiscences of youth are, as age advances, ex-tremely pleasant, and that the old man believes every thing haschanged, since he was young, for the worse ; when, in truth, theessential change has been in himself.

Again, we have prejudices in favor of our country, its institu-tions, and even its customs and fashions. A just attachment toour native country and its institutions is an important duty ; butthis is quite different from a blind and bigoted attachment to everything of native origin and growth, and is quite consistent with aliberal feeling and enlightened judgment respecting foreign coun-tries, their inhabitants, and their institutions. Such prejudicesoften do much mischief. They are seen in the feelings, opinions,and sentiments, which the English, French, Spaniards, Italians,and Germans mutually entertain for one another. The existenceof such feelings cannot be denied, and their influence in perplex-ing our judgments of men and things is extensively felt. Thereis great diversity among nations in respect to fashions of dress,and forms of civility and polite intercourse ; and these are the sub-ject of many prejudices. Unless they encroach upon health, mor-als, religion, or something else involving considerations of moralduty, they are essentially a matter of indifference, and every wiseman, wherever he is, will pay a suitable respect to them. Theyform no reason why one nation, or one age, should ridicule anddespise another, or arrogate to itself any superiority over another.Custom and fashion have a rightful jurisdiction in things whichnature has left indifferent ; but in every particular that can be de-nominated proper or improper , right or wrong, the principle ofduty takes precedence of every other ; custom and fashion havelittle authority, and ought to have none.*

* Karnes’s Elements of Criticism, Chap. XIV. pp. 130, 131.