met him?" says A. "No, and I don't want to, but I know quite enough
about him."

"But what do you know against him?"

"Well, I know that E told D, who told me, that he was black through and
through, and a bad man."

A few weeks afterwards C sits next B at dinner; finds him an excellent
sort of man to talk to and to do business with, and henceforward goes
about chanting his praises. Thus is personal prejudice disproved by the
actual fact. It is a curious freak of circumstance, not easily
accounted for, that men who possess that fascination of personality
which makes them firm friends and violent enemies are most liable to be
adversely judged out of that lack of knowledge which is called
prejudice.

There is another form of the error which is found in the business world.
Men of affairs conceive quite irrational dislikes for certain types of
securities or transactions. They are given, perhaps, an excellent offer,
out of which they might make a considerable profit. They turn the matter
down without further consideration. Their ostensible reason is that they
are not accustomed to deal in that particular class of security. Their
real reason for refusing is that they are the victims of their own
environment, and that they have not the intellectual courage or force to
break away from it even when every argument proves that it would be to
their advantage to do so. Their intellects have become musclebound by
habit or tradition.

The fourth and, perhaps, the most violent form of prejudice, outside the