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Updated: May 3, 2025
Of course the strange thing is that we men should find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end; sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure; and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows gracious, can we hope to triumph.
Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like "nigger" dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He dared accost no one with questions. The impression the people gave him jarred altogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man's faith in Ostrog.
She had none of the Ariadne's bright-work, as the polished teak was always called on that ship. Her rails and deck-houses had been painted in green and white, and I made out the remains of stencilled ornamentation in the corners of panels. No doubt my father had his preconceptions regarding the derelict of which he had thought so much in the past week.
The old interest in China is transferred to its worthier neighbor; for, in spite of all Celestial and Flowery preconceptions, it is impossible to view with any sincere interest a nation so palsied, so corrupt, so wretchedly degraded, and so enfeebled by misgovernment, as to be already more than half sunk in decay; while, on the other hand, the real vigor, thrift, and intelligence of Japan, its great and still advancing power, and the rich promise of its future are such as to reward the most attentive study.
Of these notions some are axiomatic, as Duehring claims, that is they are propositions which are self evident to Herr Duehring but which will not stand investigation. Others again are untrue and are preconceptions so far as they are out of harmony with established facts.
My preconceptions of the evil now appeared to have fallen short of the truth. The dangers into which I was rushing seemed more numerous and imminent than I had previously imagined. I wavered not in my purpose. A panic crept to my heart, which more vehement exertions were necessary to subdue or control; but I harboured not a momentary doubt that the course which I had taken was prescribed by duty.
He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have approved.
Well, I come here, and everything is different ideals of beauty, people absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example numbers, language, institutions, everything. Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's." "Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not "
And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply alien. They are aroused by small signs, which may vary from a true index to a vague analogy.
Caricatures, luridly tragic or gaily comic, in which the misconceptions of the author blend with the preconceptions of the reader and achieve success, are, of course, common enough. And then consider the sort of people who pronounce judgments on the moral and intellectual capacity of the negro, the Malay, or the Chinaman.
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