in each household there should be a little Pope, whose dicta on all topics shall be unquestionable.  It saves what is to many people the painful effort of making up their mind what they are to do or to think.  It enables them to think or act with much greater decision and confidence.  Most men have always a lurking distrust of their own judgment, unless they find it confirmed by that of somebody else.  There are very many decent commonplace people who, if they had been reading a book or article and had been thinking it very fine, would, if you were resolutely and loudly to declare in their hearing that it was wretched trash, begin to think that it was wretched trash too.

The primary vulgar error, then, is to regard as an oracle one whom we esteem as wise; and the secondary, the Charybdis opposite to this Scylla, is, to entertain an excessive dread of being too much led by one whom we esteem as wise.  I mean an honest candid dread.  I do not mean a petted, wrong-headed, pragmatical determination to let him see that you can think for yourself.  You see, rny friend, I don’t suppose you to be a self-conceited fool.  You remember how Presumption, in the Pilgrim’s Progress, on being offered some good advice, cut his kind adviser short by declaring that Every tub must stand on its own bottom.  We have all known men, young and old, who, upon being advised to do something which they knew they ought to do, would, out of pure perversity and a wrong-headed independence, go and do just the opposite thing.  The secondary error of which I am now thinking is that of the man who honestly dreads making too much of the judgment of any mortal:  and who, acting from a good intention, probably goes wrong in the same direction as the wrong-headed conceited man.  Now, don’t you know that to such an extent does this morbid fear of trusting too much to any mortal go in some men, that in their practical belief you would think that the fact of any man being very wise was a reason why his judgment should be set aside as unworthy of consideration; and more particularly, that the fact of any man being supposed to be a powerful reasoner, was quite enough to show that all he says is to go for nothing?  You are quite aware how jauntily some people use this last consideration, to sweep away at once all the reasons given by an able and ingenious speaker or writer.  And it cuts the ground effectually from under his feet.  You state an opinion, somewhat opposed to that commonly received.  An honest, stupid person meets it with a surprised stare.  You tell him (I am recording what I have myself witnessed) that you have been reading a work on the subject by a certain prelate:  you state as well as you can the arguments which are set forth by the distinguished prelate.  These arguments seem of great weight.  They deserve at least to be carefully considered.  They seem to prove the novel opinion to be just:  they assuredly call on candid minds to ponder the whole matter well before