where the assent or not assenting is thought to draw consequences of moment after it, and good and evil to depend on choosing or refusing the right side, and the mind sets itself seriously to inquire and examine the probability:  there I think it is not in our choice to take which side we please, if manifest odds appear on either.  The greater probability, I think, in that case will determine the assent:  and a man can no more avoid assenting, or taking it to be true, where he perceives the greater probability, than he can avoid knowing it to be true, where he perceives the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas.

If this be so, the foundation of error will lie in wrong measures of probability; as the foundation of vice in wrong measures of good.

17.  IV.  Authority

The fourth and last wrong measure of probability I shall take notice of, and which keeps in ignorance or error more people than all the other together, is that which I have mentioned in the foregoing chapter:  I mean the giving up our assent to the common received opinions, either of our friends or party, neighbourhood or country.  How many men have no other ground for their tenets, than the supposed honesty, or learning, or number of those of the same profession?  As if honest or bookish men could not err; or truth were to be established by the vote of the multitude:  yet this with most men serves the turn.  The tenet has had the attestation of reverend antiquity; it comes to me with the passport of former ages, and therefore I am secure in the reception I give it:  other men have been and are of the same opinion, (for that is all is said,) and therefore it is reasonable for me to embrace it.  A man may more justifiably throw up cross and pile for his opinions, than take them up by such measures.  All men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.  If we could but see the secret motives that influenced the men of name and learning in the world, and the leaders of parties, we should not always find that it was the embracing of truth for its own sake, that made them espouse the doctrines they owned and maintained.  This at least is certain, there is not an opinion so absurd, which a man may not receive upon this ground.  There is no error to be named, which has not had its professors:  and a man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if he thinks that he is in the right way, wherever he has the footsteps of others to follow. 18.  Not so many men in Errors as is commonly supposed.