Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

On the Emotion of Conviction

April, 1871

"But when the conviction of any error is a strong passion, it leaves, like all other passions, a permanent mark on the mind."

1. That we should be very careful how we let ourselves believe that which may turn out to be error. Milton says that "error is but opinion," meaning true opinion, "in the making". But when the conviction of any error is a strong passion, it leaves, like all other passions, a permanent mark on the mind. We can never be as if we had never felt it. "Once a heretic, always a heretic," is thus far true, that a mind once given over to a passionate conviction is never as fit as it would otherwise have been to receive the truth on the same subject. Years after the passion may return upon him, and inevitably small recurrences of it will irritate his intelligence and disturb its calm. We cannot at once expel a familiar idea, and so long as the idea remains, its effect will remain too.

Impressions::Mark::Permanent Mark

Reading

William Bagehot, "On the Emotion of Conviction," from The Contemporary Review vol. 17 (1871): 32-40. <Link to Google Books>

Text from The Liberty Fund

01/23/2018