As to the special motives in question, they will in every case be found to consist of good or evil: profit for instance, or loss, presenting themselves as even- tually likely to befall the person in question; profit or other good in case of the correctness of his opi- nion; loss or other evil in the event of its incorrect- ness.
In proportion to the force with which a man's will Sect. 1.] FALLACIES OF AUrilORITY. S5 is operated upon by the motives in question, is the degree of attention employed in looking out for the nieans of information, and the use made of them in the way of reflection towards the formation of his opinion.
Thus in the case of every occupation which a man engages in with a view to profit, the hope of gaining his livelihood, and the fear of not gaining it, are the motives by which he is urged to apply his attention to the collection of whatsoever information may contri- bute to the correctness of the several opinions which he may have occasion to form, respecting the most advantageous method of carrying on the several ope- rations, by which such profit may be obtained.
1. The legitimately persuasive force of professional authority, being taken as the highest term in the scale, the following may be noticed as expressive of so many other species of authority, occupying so many inferior degrees in the same scale: 2. Authority derived from pozver. The greater the quantity of power a man has, no matter in what shape, the nearer the authority of his opinion comes to professional authority, in respect of the facility of obtaining the means conducive to correctness of de- cision.
3. Authority derived from opulence. Opulence — being an instrument of power, and, to a consider- able extent, applicable in a direct way to many or most of the purposes to which power is applicable, — seems to stand next after power in the scale of instru- ments of facility as above, 4. Authority derived from reputation, considered as among the efficient causes of respect. By reputa- tion, understand, on this occasion, general reputation, not special and relative reputation, which would rank the species of authority under the head of professional authority as above.
Note, that of all these four species of authority it is only in the case of the first that the presumable ad- vantage, which is the efficient cause of its legitimately persuasive force, extends to the article of motives as well as means. By having the motives that tend to correctness of information, the professional man has the means likewise; since it is to the force of the mo- tives under the stimulus of which he acts that he is indebted for whatever means he acquires. It is from his having the motives that it follows that he has the means.
But in those other cases, whatsoever be the means which a man's situation places within his reach, it follows not that he has the motives, — that he is ac- tually under the impulse of any motive sufficient to the full action of that desire and that energy by which alone he can be in an adequate degree put in possession of the means.
On the contrary, in proportion as in the scale of power the man in question rises above the ordinary level, in that same proportion, in respect of motives Sect. ].] lALLAClKS OF AUTHORITY. 37 for exertion (be the line of action wliat it may), he is apt to sink below the same level: because the greater the quantum of the share of the general mass of ob- jects of desire that a man is already in possession of, the greater is the amount of that portion of his desires which is already in a state of saturation, and conse- quently the less the amount of that portion which, re- maining unsatiated, is left free to operate upon his mind in the character of a motive.
Under Oriental despotism, the person at whose command the means of information exist in a larger proportion than they do in the instance of any other person whatever, is the despot; but necessary motives being wanting, no use is made by him of these means, and the general result is a state of almost infantine imbecility and ignorance.
Such in kind, varying only in degree, is the case with every hand in which power is lodged, unincum- bered with obligation; or, in other words, with sense of eventual danger.
In England the king, the peer, the opulent borough- holding or county-holding country gentleman, should, on the above principle, present an instance of the sort of double scale in question, in which, while means de- crease, motives rise.
But so long as he takes any part at all in public affairs, the sense of that weak kind of eventual respon- sibility to which, notwithstanding the prevailing habits of idolatry, the monarch, as such, stands at all times exposed, suffices to keep his intellectual faculties at a 38 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [Ch. 1.
point more or less above the point of utter ignorance; whereas, short of provable idiotism, there is no degree of imbecility that in either of those two other situa- tions can suffice to render it matter of danger or in- convenience to the possessor, either to leave alto- gether unexercised the power annexed to such situa- tion, or, without the smallest regard for the public welfare, to exercise it in whatever manner may be most agreeable or convenient to himself.
All this while, it is only on the supposition of per- fect relative probity, viz. of that branch of probity that consists of sincerity, as well as absence of all such sources of delusion as to the person in question are liable to produce the effects of insincerity, — in a word, it is only on the supposition of the absence of exposure to the action of any sinister interest, operating in such direction as to tend to produce either erroneous opi- nion or misrepresentation of a man's opinion on the sub- ject in question, that, in so far as it depends on the in- formation necessary to correctness of opinion, the title of a man's authority to regard bears any proportion either to motives or to means of information as above.
On the contrary, if either immediately, or through the medium of the will, a man's understanding be ex- posed to the dominion of sinister interest, the more complete as well as correct the mass of relative in- formation is which he possesses, the more completely destitute of all title to regard, i.e. to confidence, un- less it be in the opposite direction, will the authority, or pretended or real opinion, be.
Sect. 1.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. 39 Hence it is that on the question, What is the system of remuneration best adapted to the purpose of ob- taining the highest degree of official aptitude through- out the whole field of official service? — the authority of any person who here or elsewhere, now or formerly, was in possession or expectation of any such situation as that of minister of state, so far from being greater than that of an average man, is not equal to 0, but in the mathematical sense negative, or so muchbelow 0: i. e. so far as it affiards a reason for looking upon the opposite opinion as the right and true one.
So again as to this question — What, in so far as concerns cognoscibility, or economy and expedition in procedure, the state of the law ought to bo? — in the instance of any person who here or elsewhere, recently or formerly, but more particularly in this country, was in possession or expectation of any situation, profes- sional or official, the profitableness of which, in the shape of pecuniary emolument, or in any other shape (such as power, reputation, ease, and occasionally vengeance), depended upon the incognoscibility, the expensiveness, the dilatoriness, the vexatiousness of the system of judicial procedure, — the weight of the authority, — the strength of its title to credit on the part of those understandings to which the force of it is applied, — is not merely equal to 0, but in the mathe- matical sense negative, or so much below 0.
Note, that where, as above, the weight or probative force of the authority in question is spoken of as being not positive but negative (being rendered so by sinister 40 FALLACIES OF AUTHORETV. [C/i. 1.
interest), what is taken for granted is, that the direc- tion in which the authority is offered is tlie same as that in which the sinister interest acts; for if, the di- rection in which the sinister interest acts l^'ing one way, the direction in which the opinion acts lies the other way, in such case the title of the opinion to credit on the part of the understandings to which it is proposed, so far from being destroyed or weakened, is much increased, because the grounds for correctness of opinion, the motives and the means which in that case lead to correctness being more completely within the reach of, and according to probability present to, the minds of this class of men, the forces that tend to promote aberration having by this supposition spent themselves in vain, the chance for correctness is there- by greater.
Accordant with this, and surely enough accordant with experience and common sense, is one of the few rational rules that as yet have received admittance among the technically established rules of evidence. In a man's own favour his own testimony is the weakest, — in his disfavour, the strongest, evidence.
It is on this account that, wherever a man is in a superior degree furnished as above with means of, and motives for, obtaining relevant information, the stronger the force of the sinister interest under the action of which his opinion is delivered, the stronger is his title to attention. In the way of direct and relevant argument applying to the question in hand in a direct and specific way, if the question be suscep- SecL 1.] FALLACIES OF AUIHOKITY. 41 tible of any such arguments, in proportion to the effi- ciency of the motives and means he has for the acqui- sition of such relevant information is the probability of his bringing such information to view. If, then, instead of bringing to view any such relevant informa- tion, or by way of supplement and support to such relevant information (when weak and insufficient), the arguments which he brings to view are of the irrelevant sort, the addition of such bad arguments aftbrds a sort of circumstantial evidence, and that of no mean de- gree of probative force, of the inability of the side thus advocated to furnish any good ones.
Closeness of the relation between the immediate subject in hand and the subject of the supposed opi- nion of which the authority is composed, has been mentioned as the third circumstance necessary to be considered in estimating the credit due to authority: — of this, it is evident enough, there cannot be any common and generally applicable measure. It is that sort of quantity of the amount of which a judgment can only be pronounced in each individual case.
As to the fourth, — fidelity of the medium through which the opinion constitutive of the authority in ques- tion has been, or is supposed to have been, transmitted, — it is only pro memoria that this topic is here brought to view in the list of the circumstances from which the legitimately persuasive force of an opinion con- stitutive of authority is liable to experience decrease: of its admission into this list the propriety is; on the 42 FALLACIES OF AUTHOIUTV. \Ch. 1.
bare mention, as manifest as it is in the power of rea- soning to make it. In this respect the rule and mea- sure as well as cause of such decrease stand exactly on the same ground as the rule with respect to any other evidence; authority being to the purpose in question neither more nor less than an article of cir- cumstantial evidence. » The need for the legitimately persuasive force of authority, i. e. probability of comparatively superior information on the one hand, is in the inverse ratio of information on the part of the person on whom it is, designed to operate, on the other. The less the de- gree in which each man is qualified to form a judg- ment on any subject on the ground of specific and re- levant information, — on the ground of direct evidence, — the more cogent the necessity he is under of trusting, with a degree of confidence more or less implicit, to that species of circumstantial evidence: and in pro- portion to the number of the persons who possess, each within himself, the means of forming an opi- nion on any given subject on the ground of such direct evidence, the greater the number of the per- sons to whom it ouglit to be matter of shame to frame and pronounce their respective decision, on no better ground than that of such inconclusive and ne- cessarily fallacious evidence.
Of the truth of this observation, men belonging to the several classes, whose situation in the community has given to them in conjunction, with efficient power.
Sect. 1.] FALLACIES OF AUTHOIUTY. 43 a separate and sinister interest opposite to that of the community in general, have seldom failed to be in a sufficient degree percipient.
In this perception, in the instance of the fraternity of lawyers, may be seen one cause, though not the only one, of the anxiety betrayed, and pains taken, to keep the rule of action in a state of as complete in- cognoscibility as possible on the part of those whose conduct is professed to be directed by it, and whose fate is in fact disposed of by it.
In this same perception, in the instance of the clergy of old times in the Romish church, may be seen in like manner the cause, or at least one cause, of the pains taken to keep in the same state of incog- noscibility the acknowledged rule of action in matters of sacred and supernatural law.
In this same perception, in the instance of the En- glish clergy of times posterior to those of the Romish church, — in this same perception, — may be seen one cause of the exertions made by so large a proportion of the governing classes of that hierarchy to keep back and if possible render abortive the system of invention, which has for its object the giving to the exercise of the art of reading the highest degree of universality possible.
To return. Be the subject matter what it may, to the account of fallacies cannot be placed any mention made of an opinion to such or such an effect, as having been delivered or intimated by such or such a person by name, when the sole object of the reference is to 44 FALLACIES OF AUTHOlilTY. {Ch. 1.
point out a place where relevant arguments adduced on a given occasion may be found in a more complete or perspicuous state than they are on the occasion on which they are adduced.
In the case thus supposed there is no irrelevancy. The arguments referred to are, by the supposition, relevant ones; such as, if the person by whom they have been presented to view were altogether unknown, would not lose any thing of their weight: the opinion is not presented as constitutive of authority, as carry- ing any weight of itself, and independently of the con- siderations which he has brought to view.
Neither is there any fallacy in making reference to the opinion of this or that professional person, in a case to such a degree professional or scientific, with relation to the hearers or readers, that the forming a correct judgment on such relevant and specific argu- ments as belong to it, is beyond their competence. In matters touching medical science, chemistry, astro- nomy, the mechanical arts, the various branches of the art of war, &c., no other course could be pursued.
Sect. Q. Appeal to authority, in what cases fallacious^.
The case in which reference to authority is open to the imputation of fallacy, is where, in the course of a debate touching a subject lying in such sort within * " An unquestionable maxim " (it is said) is this: — " Reason and notauthoritysliould determine the judgement:" said? and by whom? even by a bishop; and by what bishop? even Bishop Warburton: and Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. 45 the comprehension of the debaters, that argument bearing the closest relation to it would be perfectly within the sphere of their comprehension, — authority (a sort of argument in the case here in question not relevant) is employed in the place of such relevant arguments as might have been adduced on one side, or, in opposition to irrelevant ones, adduced on the other side.
But the case in which the practice of adducing au- thority in the character of an argument is in the highest degree exposed to the itnputation of fallacy, is, where the situation of the debaters being such that the form- ing a correct conception of, and judgment on, such relevant arguments as the subject admits is not beyond their competency, the opinion, real or supposed, of any person who, from his profession or other particular situation, derives an interest opposite to that of the public, is adduced in the character of an argument, in lieu of such relevant arguments as the question ought to furnish. (In an appendix to this chapter will be given examples of persons whose declared opinions, on a question of legislation, are in a peculiar degree liable to be tinged with falsity by the action of sinister interest.)
He who, on a question concerning the propriety of any law or established practice with reference to the time being, refers to authority as decisive of the questhis not in one work only, but in two. The above words are from his Div. Legat, 2, 302; and in his AUiance, &c. is a passage to the same effect; here then we have authority aeainst authority.
46 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [C/t. 1.
tion, assumes the truth of one or other of two posi- tions: viz. that the principle of utility, i. e. that the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is not at the time in question the proper standard for judging of the merits of the question, or that the practice of other and former times, or the opinion of other persons, ought to be regarded in all cases as conclusive evi- dence of the nature and tendency of the practice: — conclusive evidence, superseding the necessity and propriety of any recourse to reason or present expe- rience.
In the first case, being really an enemy to the com- munity, that he should be esteemed as such by all to whom the happiness of the community is an object of regard, is no more than right and reasonable, no more than what, if men acted consistently, would uniformly take place.
In the other case, what he does, is, virtually to ac- knowledge himself not to possess any powers of rea- soning which he himself can venture to think it safe to trust to: incapable of forming for himself any judgment by which he looks upon it as safe to be determined, he betakes himself for safety to some other man, or set of men, of whom he knows little or nothing, except that they lived so many years ago; that the period of their existence was by so much an- terior to his own time; by so much anterior, and consequently possessing for its guidance so much the less experience.
But when a man gives this account of himself,-^ Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITV. 4/^ when he represents his own mind as labouring under this kind and degree of imbecility, — what can be more reasonable than that he should be taken at his word? that he should be considered as a person labouring under a general and incurable imbecility, from whom nothing relevant can reasonably be expected?
He who, in place of reasoning, deduced (if the sub- ject be of a practical nature) from the consideration of the end in view, employs authority, makes no se- cret of the opinion he entertains of his hearers or his readers: he assumes that those to whom he addresses himself are incapable, each of them, of forming a judgment of their own. If they submit to this insult, may it not be presumed that they acknowledge the justice of it?
Of imbecility, at any rate of self-conscious and self- avowed imbecility, proportionable humility ought na- turally to be the result; On the contrary, so far from humility, — of this spe- cies of idolatry, — of this worshipping of dead men's bones, all the passions the most opposite to humility, — pride, anger, obstinacy, and overbearingness, — are the frequent, not to say the constant accompaniments. With the utmost strength of mind that can be dis- played in the field of reasoning, no reasonable man ever manifests so much heat, assumes so much, or exhibits himself disposed to bear so little, as these men, whose title to regard and notice is thus given up by themselves.
Whence this inconsistency? Whence this violence?
48 FALLACIES OF AUTIIOIltTY. [Cll. 1.
From this alone, that having some abuse to defend, some abuse in which they have an interest and a profit, and finding it on the ground of present public interest indefensible, they fly for refuge to the only sort of ar- gument, in which so much as the pretension of being sincere in error can find countenance.
By authority, support, the strength of which is pro- portioned to the number of the persons joining in it, is given to systems of opinions, at once absurd and pernicious — to the religion of Buddh, of Brama, of Foh, of Mahomet.
And hence it may be inferred that the probative force of authority is no| increased by the number of those who may have professed a given opinion, unless indeed it could be proved that each individual of the multitudes who professed the opinion, possessed in the highest degree the means and motives for ensuring its correctness. Even in such a case it would not warrant the substitution of the authority for such di- rect evidence and arguments as any case in debate might be able to supply, supposing the debaters capa- ble of comprehending such direct evidence and argu- ments; but that, in ordinary cases, no such circum- stantial evidence should possess any such legitimately probative force as to warrant the addition, much less the substitution of it, to that sort of information which belongs to direct evidence, will, it is supposed, be rendered sufficiently apparent by the following consi- derations; 1. If in theory any tlie minutest degree of force Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHOlJfTV. 4p were ascribed to the elementary monade of the body of authority thus composed, and this theory were fol- lowed up in practice, the consequence would be, the utter subversion of the existing state of things: — as for example, — If distance in point of time were not sufficient to destroy the probative force of such autho- rity, the Catholic religion would in England be to be restored to the exclusive dominion it possessed and exercised for so many centuries: the Toleration laws would be to be repealed, and persecution to the length of extirpation would be to be substituted to whatever liberty in conduct and discourse is enjoyed at present; — and in this way, after the abolished religion had thus been triumphantly restored, an inexorable door would be shut against every imaginable change in it, and thence against every imaginable reform or im- provement in it, through all future ages: 2. If distance in point of place were not understood to have the same effect, some other religion than the Christian, — the religion of Mahomet for example, or the way of thinking in matters of religion, prevalent in China, — would have to be substituted by law to the Christian religion.
In authority, defence, such as it is, has been found for every imperfection, for every abuse, for every the most pernicious and most execrable abomination that the most corrupt system of government has ever hus- banded in its bosom: — And here may be seen the mischief necessarily at- £ 50 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [Ch. 1.
tached to the course of him whose footsteps are regu- lated by the finger of this blind guide.
What is more, from hence may inferences be de- duced— nor those ill-grounded ones — respecting the probity or improbity, the sincerity or insincerity, of him who, standing in a public situation, blushes not to look to this blind guide, to the exclusion of, or in preference to, reason — the only guide that does not begin with shutting his own eyes, for the purpose of closing the eyes of his followers.
As the world grows older, if at the same time it grows wiser, (which it will do unless the period shall have arrived at which experience, the mother of wis- dom, shall have become barren,) the influence of au- thority will in each situation, and particularly in Par- liament, become less and less.
Take any part of the field of moral science, private morality, constitutional law, private law, — go back a few centuries, and you will find argument consisting of reference to authority, not exclusively, but in as large a proportion as possible. As experience has increased, authority has been gradually set aside, and reasoning, drawn from facts and guided by reference to the end in view, true or false, has taken its place.
Of the enormous mass of Roman law heaped up in the school of Justinian, — a mass, the perusal of which would employ several lives occupied by nothing else, — materials of this description constitute by far the greater part. A. throws out at random some loose Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. 51 thought: B., catching it up, tells you what A. thinks — at least, what A. said: C. tells you what has been said by A. and B.; and thus like an avalanche the mass rolls on.
Happily it is only in matters of law and religion that endeavours are made, by the favour shown and currency given to this fallacy, to limit and debilitate the exercise of the right of private inquiry in as great a degree as possible, though at this time of day the exercise of this essential right can no longer be sup- pressed in a complete and direct way by legal punish- ment.
In mechanics, in astronomy, in mathematics, in the new-born science of chemistry, — no one has at this time of day either effrontery or folly enough to avow, or so much as to insinuate, that the most desirable state of these branches of useful knowledge, the most rational and eligible course, is to substitute decision on the ground of authority, to decision on the ground of direct and specific evidence.
In every branch of physical art and science, the folly of this substitution or preference is matter of demonstration, — is matter of intuition, and as such is universally acknowledged. In the moral branch of science, religion not excluded, the folly of the like receipt for correctness of opinion would not be less universally recognised, if the wealth, the ease, and the dignity attached to and supported by the maintenance of the opposite opinion, did not so steadily resist such recognition.
52 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [CIl. 1.
Causes of the employment and prevalence of this fal- lacy.
It is obvious that this fallacy, in all its branches, is so frequently resorted to by those who are interested in the support of abuses, or of institutions pernicious to the great body of the people, with the intention of suppressing all exercise of reason. A foolish or un- tenable proposition resting on its own support, or the mere credit of the utterer, could not fail speedily to encounter detection and exposure; — the same proposi- tion extracted from a page of Blackstone, or from the page or mouth of any other person to whom the idle and unthinking are in the habit of unconditionally sur- rendering their understandings, shall disarm all oppo- sition.
Blind obsequiousness, ignorance, idleness, irrespon- sibility, anticonstitutional dependence, anticonstitu- tional independence, are the causes which enable this fallacy to maintain such an ascendancy in the govern- ing assemblies of the British empire.
First, In this situation one man is on each occasion ready to borrow an opinion of another, because through ignorance and imbecility he feels himself unable, or through want of solicitude unwilling, to form one for himself; and he is thus ignorant, if natural talent does not fail him, because he is so idle. Knowledge, espe- cially in so wide and exten&ive a field, requires study; — study, labour of mind bestowed with more or less energy, for a greater or less length of time.
But, Secondly, In a situation for which the strongest talents would not be more than adequate, there is fre- quently a failure of natural talent; because, in so many instances admission to that situation depends either on the person admitted, or on others to whom, whether he has or has not the requisite talents is a matter of indifference, that no degree of intellectual deficiency, short of palpable idiocy, can have the effect of ex- cluding a man from occupying it.
Thirdly, The sense of responsibility is in the instance of a large proportion of the members wanting altoge- ther; because in so small a proportion are they at any time in any degree of dependence on the people whose fate is in their hands, and because in the in- stance of the few who are in any degree so dependent, the efficient cause and consequently the feeling of such dependence endures during so small a proportion of the time for which they enjoy their situations: be- cause also, while so few are dependent on those on whom they ought to be dependent, so many are de- pendent on those who ought to be dependent on them, — those servants of the crown, on whose conduct they are commissioned by their constituents to act as judges. What share of knowledge, intelligence and natural talent is in the house, is thus divided between those who are, and their rivals who hope to be, ser- vants of the crown. The consequence is, that, those excepted in whom knowledge, intelligence and talent are worse than useless, the house is composed of men the furniture of whose minds is made up of discordant 54 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. {Ch. 1.
prejudices, of which on each occasion they follow that by which the interest or passion of the moment is most promoted.