in matters where they cannot, or ought not, to judge for themselves ; whereas unwise persons select unsound guides, who, from ignorance, inexperience, or weakness of judgment, are incapable of giving them good advice. Sometimes, indeed, the latter class of persons are so credulous that they fall into the hands of impostors, who intentionally mislead them for interested purposes.

In the choice of guides of opinion, a double option is exercised. First, a person decides whether he will judge for himself, or rely on the opinion of others; and secondly, having decided in favour of the latter alternative, he has an option as to the guide whom he will select. Even when he has made this selection, he may, if he think fit, reject the opinion of the person whom he has selected. Nothing, therefore, can be more exclusively a man's own act than the choice of his guides and the adoption of their opinion. But, partly because the mind, when the choice has once been made, is passive in following an opinion, and partly because the word authority sometimes signifies compulsory power, it seems to be believed that a deference to authority, in matters of opinion, implies some coercive influence on the understanding. If, however, such a belief is ever entertained, it is erroneous. The submission of the understanding to the opinion of another is purely voluntary, at more than one stage. The choice of a guide is as much a matter of free determination, as the adoption of an opinion on argumentative grounds. If I believe a truth in astronomy or optics because men of science believe it -if I adopt the advice of a physician or lawyer in a question of practice, my decision is as free and unconstrained as if I judged for myself without assistance, although I arrive at the conclusion by a different road.

§ 15. Hence, too, we may see that the opposition

which is sometimes made between Authority and Reason* rests on a confusion of thought. Authority is undoubtedly opposed to reasoning, if, by reasoning, we understand a process of appropriate inquiry conducted by the person himself. But between Authority and Reason there is no opposition, nor does the one exclude the other.

In the first place, as has been just remarked, a person who chooses his own guides, chooses them by the light of his own reason; he exercises a free and unconstrained choice; and although the process of reasoning through which he travels does not bear directly upon his conclusion, it bears directly upon the means of leading him safely to that conclusion. From the ultimate responsibility of this determination nothing can relieve him. A Roman Catholic, who relies implicitly upon the authority of his own church, must decide for himself to prefer that authority to the authority of other churches; or (what comes to the same,) to deny to other religious communions the appellation of churches. In the last result, he is driven of necessity to the exercise of private individual judgment. The appropriate grounds of decision may be removed from us a few steps by an intermediate process; but the selection of our authority, and our reliance upon it, must be the work of our own

reason.

In the second place, it cannot be presumed, generally, that an appropriate process of reasoning upon any subject is a better or wiser principle of judgment than a

*See, for example, Hume's Essay XVI., near the beginningWorks, vol. iii. p. 561; Whewell's Hist. of the Ind. Sciences, vol. i. p. 312; and the Pasquinade of Boileau, cited by him, vol. ii. p. 138.

recourse to the authority of others. Even in speculative subjects, a person whose time, or habits of thought and study, do not incline him to a particular department of knowledge, may reasonably adopt the views of persons who are conversant with it. In practice, however, where special attainments and experience are necessary for a safe decision, a man who prefers his own judgment to that of competent advisers certainly does not follow either a wise or a usual course. It surely cannot be laid down. as a general thesis, that a private individual is likely, in professional matters, to judge better than professional men. A person who thinks that in legal matters his own judgment is better than that of a lawyer, in medical matters better than that of a physician, in questions of building better than that of an architect, &c., is not likely to find that the rectitude of his practical decisions corresponds with the independence of his judgment. In such cases, (as we shall show more fully in a subsequent chapter,) reason does not forbid, but prescribes a reliance upon authority. Where a person is necessarily ignorant of the grounds of decision, to decide for himself is an act of suicidal folly. He ought to recur to a competent adviser, as a blind man relies upon a guide.

F

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE APPLICABILITY OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY TO QUESTIONS OF RELIGION.

§ 1. In the preceding chapter a description has been given of the process by which, in scientific matters, an agreement of the competent judges, and consequently a body of trustworthy authority, is gradually formed.*

In each subject, the first attempts at a scientific treatment are crude, imperfect, and alloyed with rash hypotheses; and there is much hasty induction from single facts or partial phenomena. Numerous discordant opinions thus arise, and there are rival schools and sects, each with its own set of distinctive tenets. But, by degrees, some system or body of doctrine acquires the ascendancy; there is an approach to agreement in important matters; a progressive improvement, a gradual advance, are visible; the controversies begin to turn chiefly on subordinate points, and peculiar opinions are no longer handed down in schools by a succession of masters and disciples. Certain doctrines cease to predominate in certain countries; they are no longer hereditary or local, but are common to the whole scientific world. They are diffused by the force of mere evidence and demonstration acting upon the reason of competent

* There is an Essay by Lord Bolingbroke concerning Authority in matters of Religion, vols. vi. and vii. of his Works; but its contents do not correspond with its title.

judges-not by persecution, or reward, or the influence of the civil government. A trustworthy authority is thus at length formed, to which a person, uninformed on the subject, may reasonably defer, satisfied that he adopts those opinions which, so far as existing researches and reflection have gone, are the most deserving of credit.

§ 2. This description, however, is not applicable to religion, or at least is only applicable to it within certain limits.

All mankind, at all times, and in all countries (with the exception, perhaps of some of the lowest tribes of savages) have agreed in recognising some form of religious belief. All nations have believed in the existence of some supernatural and supersensual beings, whose favour they have sought to obtain, and whose displeasure they have sought to avert, by sacrifices, prayers, and other ceremonies of worship. The argument of consensus gentium applies with peculiar force to the belief in a divine power, and accordingly it has always been placed in the front rank by writers on Natural Religion. Thus Cicero, speaking of the existence of a supreme God, says, "Quod nisi cognitum comprehensumque animis haberemus, non tam stabilis opinio permaneret, nec confirmaretur diuturnitate temporis, nec una cum sæculis ætatibusque hominum inveterare potuisset. Etenim videmus cæteras opiniones fictas atque vanas diuturnitate extabuisse. . . . . Opinionum enim commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat".* A passage from the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, a Greek philosopher who lived in the age of the Antonines, has

* De Nat. Deor. II. 2.