... "We are dressed up like a scarecrow to gratify, on a large scale, the passions of curiosity, fright, and hatred. Something or other men must fear, men must loathe, men must suspect, even if it be to turn away their minds from their own inward miseries.... A calumny against us first appeared in 1836, it still thrives and flourishes in 1851. I have made inquiries, and I am told I may safely say that in the course of the fifteen years that it has lasted, from 200,000 to 250,000 copies have been put into circulation in America and England. A vast number of copies has been sold at a cheap rate, and given away by persons who ought to have known that it was a mere fiction. I hear rumours concerning some of the distributors, which, from the respect which I wish to entertain towards their names, I do not know how to credit." ... "The perpetual talk against us does not become truer because it is incessant; but it continually deepens the impression, in the minds of those who hear it, that we are impostors. There is no increase of logical cogency; a lie is a lie just as much the tenth time it is told as the first; or rather more, it is ten lies instead of one; but it gains in rhetorical influence.... Thus the meetings and preachings which are ever going on against us on all sides, though they may have no argumentative force whatever, are still immense factories for the creation of prejudice." ... "The Prejudiced Man takes it for granted that we, who differ from him, are universally impostors, tyrants, hypocrites, cowards, and slaves. If he meets with any story against us, on any or no authority, which does but fall in with this notion of us, he eagerly catches at it. Authority goes for nothing; likelihood, as he considers it, does instead of testimony; what he is now told is just what he expected. Perhaps it is a random report, put into circulation merely because it had a chance of succeeding, or thrown like a straw to the wind; perhaps it is a mere publisher's speculation, who thinks that a narrative of horrors will pay well for the printing: it matters not, he is equally convinced of its truth: he knows all about it beforehand; it is just what he always has said; it is the old tale over again a hundred times. Accordingly he buys it by the thousand, and sends it about with all speed in every direction, to his circle of friends and acquaintance, to the newspapers, to the great speakers at public meetings.... Next comes an absolute, explicit, total denial or refutation of the precious calumny, whatever it may be, on unimpeachable authority. The Prejudiced Man simply discredits this denial, and puts it aside, not receiving any impression from it at all, or paying it the slightest attention. This, if he can: if he cannot, if it is urged upon him by some friend, or brought up against him by some