Why People Prefer to follow authority

Studious persons are the most subject to error

The differences found in men’s manners of living are almost infinite. There is a very great number of different conditions, different employments, different offices, different communities. These differences cause almost all men to act for entirely different purposes, and to reason on different principles. It would even be rather difficult to find several persons who had entirely the same views in the same community, in which individuals should have only one spirit and the same designs. Their different employments and their different connections necessarily put some difference in the turn and manner they wish to take, in order to execute even the things about which they agree.

This clearly shows that it would be undertaking the impossible to wish to explain in detail the moral causes of error; but it would also be rather useless to do so here. One wishes only to speak of those manners of living that lead to a greater number of errors, and to errors of greater importance. When these have been explained, one will have given enough opening to the mind to go further; and each person will be able to see at a single glance, and with great ease, the very hidden causes of several particular errors, which could be explained only with much time and trouble. When the mind sees clearly, it delights in running toward truth, and it runs there with a speed that cannot be expressed.

Why one prefers to follow authority rather than to make use of one’s own mind.

The employment of which it seems most necessary to speak here, because it produces in men’s imagination more considerable changes and leads more to error, is the employment of studious persons, who make more use of their memory than of their mind. For experience has always shown that those who have applied themselves with more ardor to the reading of books and to the search for truth are precisely those who have thrown us into a greater number of errors.

It is the same with those who study as with those who travel. When a traveler has unfortunately taken one road for another, the more he advances, the more he moves away from the place where he wishes to go. He goes astray all the more as he is more diligent and hastens more to arrive at the place he desires. Thus these ardent desires that men have for truth cause them to throw themselves into the reading of books where they believe they will find it; or else they form for themselves a chimerical system of the things they wish to know, to which they become attached; and they even make vain efforts of mind to make others relish it, in order to receive the honor ordinarily rendered to inventors of systems. Let us explain these two defects.

It is rather difficult to understand how it can happen that men of intelligence prefer to make use of the mind of others in the search for truth, rather than of that which God has given them. There is without doubt infinitely more pleasure and more honor in guiding oneself by one’s own eyes than by those of others; and a man who has good eyes never thought of closing them, or of tearing them out, in the hope of having a guide. Sapientis oculi in capite ejus, stultus in tenebris ambulat. [The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.] Why does the fool walk in darkness? It is because he sees only through the eyes of others, and to see only in this manner, properly speaking, is to see nothing. The use of the mind is to the use of the eyes as the mind is to the eyes; and just as the mind is infinitely above the eyes, the use of the mind is accompanied by satisfactions far more solid, and which content it far otherwise than light and colors content the sight. Men, however, always use their eyes to guide themselves, and they almost never use their mind to discover truth.

There are several causes that contribute to this disorder of mind.

1. The natural laziness of men, who do not wish to give themselves the trouble of meditating.

2. The incapacity to meditate, into which one has fallen for not having applied oneself in youth, when the fibers of the brain were capable of all sorts of inflections.

3. The little love one has for abstract truths, which are the foundation of all that one can know here below.

Fourth, the satisfaction one receives in the knowledge of probabilities, which are very agreeable and very touching, because they are supported by sensible notions.

Fifth, the foolish vanity that makes us wish to be esteemed learned, for those who have the most reading are called learned. Knowledge of opinions is much more useful for conversation and for dazzling common minds than the knowledge of true philosophy, which is learned by meditating.

Sixth, because one imagines without reason that the ancients were more enlightened than we can be, and that there is nothing to do where they have not succeeded.

Seventh, because a false respect mingled with foolish curiosity makes one admire more the things most distant from us, the oldest things, those that come from furthest away, or from more unknown countries, and even the most obscure books. Thus Heraclitus was formerly esteemed for his obscurity. Ancient medals are sought after, although eaten away by rust; and the lantern and slipper of some ancient are carefully preserved, although worm-eaten; their antiquity makes their value. Some people apply themselves to the reading of the rabbis, because they have written in a very corrupt and very obscure foreign language. The oldest opinions are esteemed more, because they are furthest from us. And without doubt, if Nimrod had written the history of his reign, all the finest politics, and even all the other sciences, would be contained in it, just as some find that Homer and Virgil had a perfect knowledge of nature. One must respect antiquity, it is said. What! Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus — these great men would have been mistaken? One does not consider that Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus were men like us, and of the same species as us; and moreover, that in the time in which we live, the world is older by two thousand years, that it has more experience, that it ought to be more enlightened, and that it is the old age of the world and experience that cause truth to be discovered.

Eighth, because when one esteems a new opinion and a contemporary author, it seems that their glory effaces ours, because it is too close to it; but one fears nothing similar from the honor one renders to the ancients.

Ninth, because truth and novelty cannot be found together in matters of faith; for men, not wishing to make a distinction between truths that depend on reason and those that depend on tradition, do not consider that they must be learned in entirely different ways; they confound novelty with error and antiquity with truth. Luther, Calvin, and the others innovated, and they erred. Therefore Galileo, Harvey, Descartes are mistaken in what they say that is new. Luther’s impanation is new, and it is false: therefore Harvey’s circulation is false, since it is new. It is for this reason also that they indiscriminately call heretics and new philosophers by the odious name of innovators. The ideas and words of truth and antiquity, of falsity and novelty, have been linked to one another: it is done; common men no longer separate them, and even men of intelligence feel some difficulty in separating them properly.

Tenth, because one is in a time in which the knowledge of ancient opinions is still in vogue, and only those who make use of their mind can, by the force of their reason, place themselves above bad customs. When one is in the press and in the crowd, it is difficult not to yield to the torrent that carries one away.

Lastly, because men act only from interest; and this is what causes even those who are undeceived and who recognize the vanity of these sorts of studies nevertheless to apply themselves to them, because honors, dignities, and even benefices are attached to them, and those who excel in them have them always sooner than those who are ignorant of them.

All these reasons, it seems to me, make it sufficiently understandable why men blindly follow ancient opinions as true, and why they reject without discernment all new ones as false; finally, why they make no, or almost no, use of their mind. There are without doubt a very great number of other more particular reasons that contribute to this; but if one considers with attention those we have related, one will have no reason to be surprised to see the obstinacy of certain people for the authority of the ancients.