Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.

Brontë likens prejudice to hardy weeds that thrive in poor, untilled ground: when a mind has not been “loosened or fertilized” by education, fixed ideas take root and become stubbornly resilient. The metaphor suggests education is not mere information but a cultivating force—opening the soil of the heart to complexity, empathy, and self-scrutiny. In this view, prejudice is not simply a moral failing but a product of intellectual and emotional stagnation; without the tools to question inherited assumptions, bias becomes the default growth. The image of “rocks” underscores how difficult removal can be once prejudice has embedded itself in an unprepared, resistant inner landscape.