Authority: Its Influences on Opinion.

Now, though it may be true that men ordinarily engaged in other than intellectual pursuits, find it difficult or inconvenient to go through such a process deliberately, with regard to ordinary matters of opinion; still in affairs of importance, whether political, social, intellectual, or moral, a man must sometimes conduct such investigations for himself, if he wish to have an opinion which he can with any propriety call his own, and which he will be prepared at any time to vindicate.

No doubt, the greatest proportion of the opinions which any man can hold must be founded upon authority, that is upon the expressed opinions of others, as distinguished from conclusions deliberately arrived at by himself.

It is natural and necessary that those who have not time or the opportunity of access to proper materials, or the requisite power and page 10 habits of mind for forming opinions for themselves, upon subjects of importance, whether speculative or practical, should be content to adopt, without very eager scrutiny, the conclusions arrived at by men on whose competency of judgement they can rely, and whose acquirements, experiences, and character, have earned for them reputation among the best instructed in special branches of knowledge. Life would be too short—were its allotted span ten times the Psalmist's limit—for any one man to form opinions for himself on a very great variety of matters, and were to trust to his own reason only, and not accept the authority of others.

And yet when it becomes a man's duty to decide, for any practical purpose, between the conflicting opinions of persons nearly equal in respect of competency and personal trust-worthiness—which must sometimes happen in the affairs of life—he must strive his best to ascertain not only which of the conflicting authorities deserves the greatest deference in respect of acquired reputation, but even to weigh for himself the value of the evidence and the soundness of the reasoning on which they have professed to base their judgments.

Respecting this branch of the subject, the little treatise of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, "On the Influence of Authority upon Opinion," is a work which deserves much consideration, which I can recommend for your perusal.