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What is Property? by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon
page 66 of 595 (11%)

But it is a psychological fact none the less true, and one to
which the philosophers have paid too little attention, that
habit, like a second nature, has the power of fixing in the mind
new categorical forms derived from the appearances which impress
us, and by them usually stripped of objective reality, but whose
influence over our judgments is no less predetermining than that
of the original categories. Hence we reason by the ETERNAL and
ABSOLUTE laws of our mind, and at the same time by the
secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to us by
imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false
prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a
multitude of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is
so strong that often, even when we are fighting against a
principle which our mind thinks false, which is repugnant to our
reason, and which our conscience disapproves, we defend it
without knowing it, we reason in accordance with it, and we obey
it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle, our mind
revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within
us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers
us from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed.

Thus, we know to-day that, by the laws of a universal magnetism
whose cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle
intervening) tend to unite by an accelerated impelling force
which we call GRAVITATION. It is gravitation which causes
unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which gives them
weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live.
Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the
ancients from believing in the antipodes. "Can you not see,"
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