But there are very many authorities who find respect with the mob, and if you have none that is quite suitable, you can take one that appears to be so; you may quote what some said in another sense or in other circumstances.  Authorities which your opponent fails to understand are those of which he generally thinks the most.  The unlearned entertain a peculiar respect for a Greek or a Latin flourish.  You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something which you have invented entirely yourself.  As a rule, your opponent has no books at hand, and could not use them if he had.  The finest illustration of this is furnished by the French cure, who, to avoid being compelled, like other citizens, to pave the street in front of his house, quoted a saying which he described as biblical:  paveant illi, ego non pavebo.  That was quite enough for the municipal officers.  A universal prejudice may also be used as an authority; for most people think with Aristotle that that may be said to exist which many believe.  There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.  Example affects their thought just as it affects their action.  They are like sheep following the bell-wether just as he leads them.  They would sooner die than think.  It is very curious that the universality of an opinion should have so much weight with people, as their own experience might tell them that its acceptance is an entirely thoughtless and merely imitative process.  But it tells them nothing of the kind, because they possess no self-knowledge whatever.  It is only the elect Who Say with Plato:  [Greek:  tois pollois polla dokei] which means that the public has a good many bees in its bonnet, and that it would be a long business to get at them.

But to speak seriously, the universality of an opinion is no proof, nay, it is not even a probability, that the opinion is right.  Those who maintain that it is so must assume (1) that length of time deprives a universal opinion of its demonstrative force, as otherwise all the old errors which were once universally held to be true would have to be recalled; for instance, the Ptolemaic system would have to be restored, or Catholicism re-established in all Protestant countries.  They must assume (2) that distance of space has the same effect; otherwise the respective universality of opinion among the adherents of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam will put them in a difficulty.

When we come to look into the matter, so-called universal opinion is the opinion of two or three persons; and we should be persuaded of this if we could see the way in which it really arises.