our opinions by the feeling of Personal Dignity. Of sources of bias,
prejudices, "Idola," "fallacies _a priori_" this may be allowed
precedence. For example, the maxim has been enunciated by some
philosophers, that, of two differing opinions, preference is to be given
(not to what is true, but) to what ennobles and dignifies human nature.
One of the objections seriously entertained against Darwin's theory is
that it humbles our ancestral pride. So, to ascribe to our mental powers
a material foundation is held to be degrading to our nobler part. Again,
a philosopher of our own day--Sir W. Hamilton--has placed on the
title-page of his principal work this piece of rhetoric: "On earth,
there is nothing great but man; in man, there is nothing great but
mind". Now one would suppose that there are on earth many things besides
man deserving the appellation of "great"; and that the mechanism of the
body is, in any view, quite as remarkable a piece of work as the
mechanism of the mind. There was one step more that Hamilton, as an
Aristotelian, should have made: "In mind, there is nothing great but
intellect". Doubtless, we ought not to dissect an epigram; but epigrams
brought into a perverting contact with science are not harmless. Such
gross pandering to human vanity must be held as disfiguring a work on
philosophy.

The sentiment of dignity has much to answer for in the doctrine of
Free-will. In Aristotle, the question had not assumed its modern
perplexity; but the vicious element of factitious personal importance
had already peeped out, it being one of the few points wherein the bias
of the feelings operated decidedly in his well-balanced mind. In
maintaining the doctrine that vice is voluntary, he argues, that if
virtue is voluntary, vice (its opposite) must also be voluntary; now to
assert virtue not to be voluntary would be to cast an _indignity_ upon
it. This is the earliest association of the feeling of personal dignity