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Updated: May 15, 2025
I had been discussing with "the Captain" my dissatisfaction at my failure to "get results" in an important case. A few weeks on the force had changed many a preconceived notion of police life.
Nor was he the proverbial mass of plastic clay to be molded into some preconceived form. Her wisdom and modernity interdicted such a conception of childhood as that. Rather, he was a growing plant, waiting for her skill to nurture him into blossom and fruitage. Some of his qualities she found good; others not.
The stiffness rather than firmness of mind, the surrender of all spontaneous action in the strait-waistcoat of a preconceived plan, to which we have before alluded, unfitted him for that rapid change of combinations on the great chess-board of battle which enabled General Rosecrans at Murfreesboro to turn defeat into victory, an achievement without parallel in the history of the war.
And moreover, which astonished me, I have seen men driven and hurried, as it were forced forward at their work, in a manner which, to an English workman, would be intolerable. This surprised me much, as it was at variance with our or perhaps I should say with my preconceived ideas as to American freedom.
We have had economists who set out with the preconceived idea of justifying the factory system. The world has recently begun to see through this kind of intellectual fraud.
No man is so formed that he can be left entirely to himself, to go his own ways; everyone needs to be guided by a preconceived plan, and to follow certain general rules.
In fact I do not see how the idea of a limited Atonement ever came to command the assent of intelligent men, except that it was found to be necessary as a part of a preconceived system of theology. Surely it was a great pity that men thought it necessary in bygone years to make their systems of theology so complete. Of course they are complete in the divine mind. But they cannot be so in ours.
The missionary ought to go out ready to part with every preconceived notion at the call of providential direction and the Spirit's guidance, prepared to do with all his might whatever he may have the opportunity of doing for the advancement of Christ's kingdom, however little may be his natural liking or supposed fitness for the work.
The ideas of John Bull upon the subject are often ludicrous in the extreme, as he finds it impossible to divest himself of the preconceived notions which he surely must have been born with when he pertinaciously imagines that all dark- coloured people have woolly heads and thick lips, and speak the broken English of the negro; nor has he the slightest conception of the relative position of great towns in India, or which States are independent; or who the Nizam is, or if his contingent is not some part of his dress; or whether the Taj is not the husband of the Begum mentioned in Pendennis.
On a countenance that we expected to have seen marked by all the dark and fiery passions of a Caesar Borgia, we beheld an expression of bonhomie a total absence of hauteur, still less of ferocity; in fact, so totally different was he in appearance from all that we had preconceived, that it was with some difficulty we could persuade ourselves that our cicerone was not practising upon our credulity.
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