Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITV. 51 — another, that if he does, he has been deceived into it by sinister interest and the authority of co-professional men, in like manner deceivers or deceived: in other words, it is the result of interest-begotten prejudice. In the case of every other body of men, it is generally expected that their conduct and language will be for the most part directed by their own interest, that is, by their own view of it. In the case of the lawyer, the ground of this persuasion, so far from being weaker, is stronger than in any other case. His evidence being thus interested evidence, according to his own rules his declaration of opinion on the subject here pointed out would not be so much as bearable. It is true, were those rules consistently observed, judicature would be useless, and society dissolved: accordingly they are not so observed, but observed or broken pretty much at pleasure; but they are not the less among the number of those rules, the excellence and inviolability of which the lawyer is never tired of trumpeting. But on any point, such as those in question, nothing could be more unreasonable, nothing more inconsistent with what has been said above, than to refuse him a hearing. On every such point, his habits and experience afford him facilities not possessed by any one else for finding relevant and specific arguments, when the nature of the case affords any; but the surer he is of being able to find such arguments, if any such are to be found, the stronger the reason for treating his naked declaration of opinion as unworthy of all regard: accompanied by specific arguments, it is useless; desti- 6'2 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [Ch. 1.
tute of them, it amounts to a virtual confession of their non-existence.
So matters stand on thequestion whdLtought to be law.
On the question what the law is, so long as the rule of action is kept in tlie state of common, alias unwritten, alias imaginary law, authority, though next to nothing, is every thing. The question is, what on a given occasion A. (the judge) is likely to think: wait till your fortune has been spent in the inquiry, and you will know; but, forasmuch as it is naturally a man's wish to be able to give a guess what the result will eventually be, before he has spent his fortune, in the view if possible to avoid spending his fortune and getting nothing in return for it_, he applies through the medium of B. (an attorney) for an opinion to C. (a counsel), who, considering what D. (a former judge) has, on a subject supposed to be more or less analogous to the one in question, said or been supposed to say, deduces therefore his guess as to what, when the time comes. Judge A., he thinks, will say, and gives it you. A shorter way would be to put the question at once to A.; but, for obvious reasons, this is not permitted.
On many cases, again, as well-grounded a guess might be had of an astrologer for five shillings, as of a counsel for twice or thrice as many guineas, but that the lawyer considers the astrologer as a smuggler, and puts him down.
But Packwood's opinion on the goodness of his own razors would be a safer guide forjudging of their good- Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY, 6S ness, than a judge's opinion on the goodness of a proposed law: it is Packwood's interest that his razors be as good as possible; — the judge's, that the law be as bad, yet thought to be as good, as possible. It would not be the judge's interest that his commodity should be thus bad, if, as in the case of Packwood, the customer had other shops to go to; but in this case, even when there are two shops to go to, the shops being in confederacy, the commodity is equally bad in both; and the worse the commodity, the better it is said to be. In the case of the judge's commodity, no experience suffices to undeceive men; the bad quality of it is referred to any cause but the true one.
Examples. Churchmen; oppositeness of their interest to the universal interest.
In the lawyer's case it has been shown that on the question, what on such or such a point ought to be law, to refer to a lawyer's opinion given without or against specific reasons, is a fallacy; its tendency, in proportion to the regard paid to it, deceptions; — the cause of this deceptions tendency, sinister interest, to the action of which all advocates and (being made from advocates) all judges stand exposed. To the churchman's case the same reasoning applies: as, in the lawyer's case the objection does not arise on the question, what law is, but what ought to be law, — so in the churchman's case it does not arise as to what in matters of religion is law, but as to what in those matters ought to be law. On a question not connected 64 TALLACIKS OF AUTHORITY. [Ch. 1.
with religion, reference to a churchman's opinion as suchy as authority, can scarcely be considered as a fallacy, such opinion not being likely to be considered as constitutive of authority. To understand how great would be the probability of deception, if on the question, what in matters of religion ought to be law, the unsupported opinion of a churchman were to be regarded as authority, we must develop the nature and form of the sinister interest, by which any declaration of opinion from such a quarter is divested of all title to regard. The sources of a churchman's sinister interest are as follows: — 1. On entering into the profession, as condition precedent to advantage from it in the shape of subsistence and all other shapes, he makes of necessity a solemn and recorded declaration of his belief in the truth of 39 articles, framed 262 years ago, the date of which, the ignorance and violence of the time considered, should suffice to satisfy a reflecting mind of the impossibility of their being all of them really believed by any person at present: 2. In this declaration is generally understood to be included an engagement or undertaking, in case of original belief and subsequent change, never to declare, but, if questioned, to deny such change: 3. In the institution thus established, he beholds shame and punishment attached to sincerity, rewards in the largest quantity to absurdity and insincerity. Now the presumptions resulting from such an application of reward and punishment to engage men to declare assent to given propositions are, 1st, That the proposition is not beheved by the proposer; 2nd, Thence, that it is not true; 3rd, Thence, that it is not believed by the acceptor. It is impossible by reward or punishment to produce real and immediate belief: but the following effects may certainly be produced: 1st, The abstaining from any declaration of disbelief; 'ind, Declaration of belief; 3rd, The turning aside from all considerations tending to produce disbelief; 4th, The looking out for, and fastening exclusive attention to, all considerations tending to produce belief, authority especially, by which a sort of vague and indistmct belief of the most absurd propositions has every where been produced.
On no other part of the field of knowledge are reward or punishment now-a-days considered as fit instruments for the production of assent or dissent. A schoolmaster would not be looked upon as sane, who, instead of putting Euclid's Demonstrations into the hands of his scholar, should, without the Demonstrations, put the Propositions into his hand, and give him a guinea for signing a paper declarative of his belief in them, or lock him up for a couple of days without food on his refusal to sign it. And so in chemistry, mechanics, husbandry, astronomy, or any other branch of knowledge. It is true, that in those parts of knowledge in which assent and dissent are left free, the importance of truth may be esteemed not so great as here, where it is thus influenced; but the more important the truth, the more flagrant the absurdity and F 66 FALLACIES OF AUTIIOIIITY. [67/. 1.
tyranny of employing, for the propagation of it, instruments, the employment of which has a stronger tendency to propagate error than truth.
4. For teaching such religious truths as men are allowed to teach, together with such religious error as they are thus forced to teach, the churchman sees rewards allotted in larger quantities than are allotted to the most useful services. Of much of the matter of reward thus hestowed, the disposal is in the king's hands, with the power of applying it, and motives for applying it, to the purpose of parliamentary service, paying for habitual breach of trust, and keeping in corrupt and secret dependence on his agents, those agents of the people whose duty it is to sit as judges over the agents of the king. In Ireland, of nine-tenths of those on pretence of instructing whom this vast mass of reward is extorted, it is known, that, being by conscience precluded from hearing, it is impossible that they should derive any benefit from such instruction.
In Scotland, where Government reward is not employed in giving support to it, Church-of-Englandism is reduced to next to nothing.
The opinions which, in this state of things, interest engages a churchman to support, are — 1st, That reward to the highest extent has no tendency to promote insincerity, even where practicable, to an unlimited extent, and without chance of detection; 2nd, Or that money given in case of compliance, refused in case of non-compliance, is not reward for compliance; 3rd, Or that punishment, applied in case of Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OP AUTHORITY. 67 non-compliance, withheld in case of compliance, is not punishment; 4th, Or that insincerity is not vice but virtue, and as such ought to be promoted; 5th, That it is not merely consistent with, but requisite to, good government to extort money from poor and rich to be applied as reward for doing nothing, or for doing but a small part of that which is done by others for a small proportion of the same reward, and this on pretence of rendering service, which nine-tenths of the people refuse to receive.
It is the interest of the persons thus engaged in a course of insincerity, that by the same means perseverance in the same course should be universal and perpetual; for suppose, in case of the reward being withheld, the number annually making the same declaration should be reduced to half: this would be presumptive evidence of insincerity on the part of half of those who made it before.
The more flagrant the absurdity, the stronger is each man's interest in engaging as many as possible in joining with him in the profession of assent to it; for the greater the number of such co-declarants, the greater the number of those of whose professions the elements of authority are composed; and of those who stand precluded from casting on the rest the imputation of insincerity.
The following, then, are the abuses in the defence of which all churchmen are enlisted: 1st. Perpetuation of immorality in the shape of insincerity; 2. Of absurdity in subjects of the highest importance; 68 FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [Cfl. 1.
3. Extortion inflicted on the many for the benefit of the few; 4. Reward bestowed on idleness and incapacity to the exclusion of labour and ability; 5. The matter of corruption applied to the purposes of corruption in a constant stream; 6. In one of these kingdoms a vast majority of the people kept in degradation avowedly for no other than the above purposes. But whoever is engaged by interest in the support of any one Government abuse, is engaged in the support of all, each giving to the others his support in exchange.
It being the characteristic of abuse to need and receive support from fallacy, it is the interest of every man who derives profit from abuse in any shape to give the utmost currency to fallacy in every shape, viz. as well those which render more particular service to others' abuses as those which render such service to his own. It being the interest of each person so situated to give the utmost support to abuse, and the utmost currency to fallacy in every shape, it is also his interest to give the utmost efficiency to the system of education by which men are most effectually divested both of the power and will to detect and expose fallacies, and thence to suppress every system of education in proportion as it has a contrary tendency: lastly, the stronger the interest by which a man is urged to give currency to fallacy, and thus to propagate deception, the more likely is it that such will be his endeavour: the l^s fit, therefore, will his opinion be to serve in the character of authority, as a standard and model for the opinions of others.
CHAPTER II.
The wisdom of our ancestors; or Chinese argument.
Ad verecundiam.
This argument consists in stating a supposed repugnancy between the proposed measure and the opinions of men by whom the country of those who are discussing the measure was inhabited in former times; these opinions being collected either from the express words of some writer living at the period of time in question, or from laws or institutions that were then in existence.
Our wise ancestors — the wisdom bjour ancestoj^s — the wisdom of ages — venerable antiquity — wisdom of old times — Such are the leading terms and phrases of propositions the object of which is to cause the alleged repugnance to be regarded as a sufficient reason for the rejection of the proposed measure.
Sect. 2. E.vposure.
This fallacy affords one of the most striking of the numerous instances in which, under the conciliatory influence of custom, that is of prejudice, opinions the most repugnant to one another are capable of maintaining their ground in the same intellect.
This fallacy, prevalent as it is in matters of law, is directly repugnant to a principle or maxim universally admitted in almost every other department of human intelligence, and which is the foundation of all useful knowledge and of all rational conduct.
" Experience is the mother of wisdom," is among the maxims handed down to the present and all future ages, by the wisdom, such as it has been, of past ages.
No! says this fallacy, the true mother of wisdom is, not e.vperience, but ine.vperience.
An absurdity so glaring carries in itself its own refutation; and all that we can do is, to trace the causes which have contributed to give to this fallacy such an ascendancy in matters of legislation.
Among the several branches of the fallacies of authority, the cause of delusion is more impressive in this than in any other.
1st, From inaccuracy of conception arises incorrectness of expression; from which expression, conception, being produced again, error, from having been a momentary cause, comes to be a permanent effect.
In the very denomination commonly employed to signify the portion of time to which the fallacy refers, is virtually involved a false and deceptious proposition, which, from its being employed by every mouth, is at length, without examination, received as true.
What in common language is called old time, ought (with reference to any period at which the fallacy in question is employed) to be called young or early time.
As between individual and individual living at the same time and in the same situation, he who is old, possesses, as such, more experience than he who is young; — as between generation and generation, the reverse of this is true, if, as in ordinary language, a preceding generation be, with reference to a succeeding generation, called old; — the old or preceding generation could not have had so much experience as the succeeding. With respect to such of the materials or sources of wisdom which have come under the cognisance of their own senses, the two are on a par; — with respect to such of those materials and sources of wisdom as are derived from the reports of others, the later of the two possesses an indisputable advantage.
In giving the name of old or elder to the earlier generation of the two, the misrepresentation is not less gross, nor the folly of it less incontestable, than if the name of old man or old woman were aiven to the infant in its cradle.
What then is the wisdom of the times called old? Is it the wisdom of gray hairs? No. — It is the ivisdom of the cradle *.
The learned and honourable gentlemen of Thibet * No one will deny that preceding ages have produced men eminently distinguished by benevolence and genius; it is to them that we owe in succession all the advances which have hitherto been made in the career of human improvement: but as their talents could only be developed in proportion to the state of knowledge at the period in which they lived, and could only have been called into action with a view to then-existing circumstances, it is absurd to rely on their authority, at a period and under a state of things altogether different.
7'i FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [Ch. 2.
do homage to superior wisdom — superiority raised to the degree of divinity— in the person of an infant lying and squalling in his cradle.
The learned and honourable gendemen of Westminster set down as impostors the lamas of Tur-BET, and laugh at the folly of the deluded people on whom such imposture passes for sincerity and wisdom.
But the worship paid at Thibet to the infant body of the present day, is, if not the exact counterpart, the type at least of the homage paid at Westminster to the infant minds of those who have lived in earlier ages.
Sndly, Another cause of delusion which promotes the employment of this fallacy, is the reigning prejudice in favour of the dead; — a prejudice which, in former times, contributed, more than any thing else, to the practice of idolatry: the dead were speedily elevated to the rank of divinities; the superstitious invoked them, and ascribed a miraculous efficacy to their relics.
This prejudice, when examined, will be seen to be no less indefensible than pernicious — no less pernicious than indefensible.
By propagating this mischievous notion, and acting accordingly, the man of selfishness and malice obtains the praise of humanity and social virtue. With this jargon in his mouth, he is permitted to sacrifice the real interests of the living to the imaginary interests of the dead. Thus imposture, in this shape, finds ' Sect. 2.] FALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. 7^ the folly or improbity of mankind a never-failing fund of encouragement and reward.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum; — with all its absurdity, the adage is but too frequently received as a leading principle of morals. Of two attacks, which is the more barbarous, on a man that does feel it, or on a man that does not? On the man that does feel it, says the principle of utility: On the man that does not, says the principle of caprice and prejudice — the principle of sentimentalism — the principle in which imagination is the sole mover — the principle in and by which feelings are disregarded as not worth notice.
The same man who bepraises you when dead, would have plagued you without mercy when living.
Thus as betvveen Pitt and Fox. While both were living, the friends of each reckoned so many adversaries in the friends of the other. On the death of him who died first, his adversaries were converted into friends. At what price this friendship was paid for by the people is no secret ^: see the Statute Book, see the debates of the time, and see Defence of Economy against Burke and Rose.
The cause of this so extensively-prevalent and extensively-pernicious propensity lies not very deep.
A dead man has no rivals, — to nobody is he an object of envy, — in whosesoever way he may have stood when living, when dead he no longer stands in any * For the payment of Mr. Pitt's creditors was votfid 40,000/. of the public money; — to Mr, Fox's widow, 1500/. a year.
body's way. If he was a man of genius, those who denied him any merit during his life, even his very enemies, changing their tone all at once, assume an air of justice and kindness, which costs them nothing, and enables them, under pretence of respect for the dead, to gratify their malignity towards the living.
Another class of persons habitually exalts the past for the express purpose of depressing and discouraging the present generation.
It is characteristic of the same sort of persons, as well as of the same system of politics, to idolize, under the name of wisdom of our ancestors, the wisdom of untaught inexperienced generations, and to undervalue and cover with every expression of contempt that the language of pride can furnish, the supposed ignorance and folly of the great body of the people *'^ So long as they keep to vague generalities, — so long as the two objects of comparison are each of them taken in the lump, — wise ancestors in one lump, ignorant and foolish mob of modern times in the other, — the weakness of the fallacy may escape detection. Let them but assign for the period of superior wisdom any determinate period whatsoever, not only will the groundlessness of the notion be apparent (class being compared with class in that period and the present one), but, unless the antecedent period be comparatively speaking a very modern one, so wide will be the disparity, and to such an amount in favour of modern * A "Burdett mol)," (or example.
times, that, in comparison of the lowest class of the people in modern times (always supposing them proficients in the art of reading, and their proficiency employed in the reading of newspapers), the very highest and best informed class of these wise ancestors will turn out to be grossly ignorant.
Take for example any year in the reign of Henry the Eighth, from 1509 to 1546. At that time the House of Lords would probably have been in possession of by far the larger proportion of what little instruction the age afforded: in the House of Lords, among the laity, it might even then be a question whether without exception their lordships were all of them able so much as to read. But even supposing them all in the fullest possession of that useful art, political science being the science in question, what instruction on the subject could they meet with at that time of day?
On no one branch of legislation was any book extant from which, with regard to the circumstances of the then present times, any useful instruction could be derived: distributive law, penal law, international law, political economy, so far from existing as sciences, had scarcely obtained a name: in all those departments, under the head o^ quid faciendum, a mere blank: the whole literature of the age consisted of a meagre chronicle or two, containing short memorandums of the usual occurrences of war and peace, battles, sieges, executions, revels, deaths, births, processions, ceremonies, and other external events; but with scarce a speech or an incident that could enter into the composition of any such work as a history of tlie human mind, — with scarce an attempt at investigation into causes, characters, or the state of the people at large. Even when at last, little by little, a scrap or two of political instruction came to be obtainable, the proportion of error and mischievous doctrine mixed up with it was so great, that whether a blank unfilled might not have been less prejudicial than a blank thus filled, may reasonably be matter of doubt.
If we come down to the reign of James the First, we shall find that Solomon of his time, eminently eloquent as well as learned, not only among crowned but among uncrowned heads, marking out for prohibition and punishment the practices of devils and witches, and without any the slightest objection on the part of the great characters of that day in their high situations, consigning men to death and torment for the misfortune of not being so well acquainted as he was with the composition of the Godhead.
Passing on to the days of Charles the Second, even after Bacon had laid the foundations of a sound philosophy, we shall find Lord Chief Justice Hale (to the present hour chief god of the man of law's idolatry) unable to tell (so he says himself) what theft was; but knowing at the same time too well what witchcraft was, hanging men with the most perfect complacency for both crimes, amidst the applauses of all who were wise and learned in that blessed age.
Under the name of Exorcism the Catholic liturgy contains a form of procedure for driving out devils: — even with the help of this instrument, the operation cannot be performed with the desired success but by an operator quaHfied by holy orders for the working of this as well as so many other wonders.
In our days and in our country the same object is attained, and beyond comparison more effectually, by so cheap an instrument as a common newspaper: before this talisman, not only devils but ghosts, vampires, witches, and all their kindred tribes, are driven out of the land, never to return again; the touch of holy water is not so intolerable to them as the bare smell of printers' ink.
If it is absurd to rely on the wisdom of our ancestors, it is not less so to vaunt their probity: they were as much inferior to us in that point as in all others; and the further we look back, the more abuses we shall discover in every department of Government: — nothing but the enormity of those abuses has produced that degree of comparative amendment on which at present we value ourselves so highly. Till the human race was rescued from that absolute slavery under which nine-tenths of every nation groaned, not a single step could be made in the career of improvement; and take what period we will in the lapse of preceding ages, there is not one which presents such a state of things as any rational man would wish to see entirely re-established.
Undoubtedly, the history of past ages is not wanting in some splendid instances of probity and self-de- 78 TALLACIES OF AUTHORITY. [67/. 2.
votion; but in the admiration which these excite, we commonly overrate tlieir amount, and become the dupes of an illusion occasioned by the very nature of an extensive retrospect. Such a retrospect is often made by a single glance of the mind; in this glance the splendid actions of several ages (as if for the very purpose of conveying a false estimate of their number and contiguity) present themselves, as it were, in a lump, leaving the intervals between them altogether unnoticed. Thus groves of trees, which at a distance present the appearance of thick and impenetrable masses, turn out on nearer approach to consist of trunks widely separated from each other.
Would you then have us speak and act as if we had never had any ancestors? Would you, because recorded experience, and, along with it, wisdom, increases from year to year, annually change the whole body of our laws? By no means: such a mode of reasoning and acting would be more absurd even than that which has just been exposed; and provisional adherence to existing establishments is grounded on considerations much more rational than a reliance on the wisdom of our ancestors. Though the opinions of our ancestors are as such of little value, their practice is not the less worth attending to; that is, in so far as their practice forms part of our own experience. However, it is not so much from what they did, as from what they underwent (good included as well as evil), that our instruction comes. Independently of consequences, what they did is no more than evidence of what they thought; nor yet, in legislation, is it evidence of what they thought best for the whole community, but only of what the rulers thought would be best for themselves in periods when every species of abuse prevailed unmitigated, by the existence of either public press or public opinion. From the facts of their times, much information may be derived: — from the opinions, little or none. As to opinions, it is rather from those which were foolish than from those which were well grounded, that any instruction can be derived. From foolish opinions comes foolish conduct; from the most foolish conduct, the severest disaster; and from the severest disaster, the most useful warning. It is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of our ancestors that we have so much to learn; and yet it is to their wisdom, and not to their folly, that the fallacy under consideration sends us for instruction.
It seems, then, that our ancestors, considering the disadvantages under which they laboured, could not have been capable of exercising so sound a judgment on their interests as we on ours: but as a knowledge of the facts on which a judgment is to be pronounced is an indispensable preliminary to the arriving at just conclusions, and as the relevant facts of the later period must all of them individually, and most of them specifically, have been unknown to the man of the earlier period, it is clear that any judgment derived from the authority of our ancestors, and applied to existing affairs, must be a judgment pronounced without evidence; and this is the judgment which the fallacy in question calls on us to abide by, to the exclusion of a judgment formed on thecompletest evidence that the nature of each case may admit.
Causes of the Propejisity to be influenced by this Fallacy.
Wisdom of ancestors being the most impressive of all arguments that can be employed in defence of established abuses and imperfections, persons interested in this or that particular abuse are most forward to employ it.
But their exertions would be of little avail, were it not for the propensity which they find on the part of their antagonists to attribute to this argument nearly the same weight as those by whom it is relied on.
This propensity may be traced to two intimatelyconnected causes: — 1. Both parties having been trained up alike in the school of the English lawyers, headed by Blackstone; and, 2. Their consequent inability, for want of practice, to draw from the principle of general utility the justificative reason of every thing that is susceptible of justification.
In the hands of a defender of abuse, authority answers a double purpose, by affording an argument in favour of any particular abuse which may happen to call for protection, and by causing men to regard with a mingled emotion of hatred and terror the principle of general utility, in which alone the true standard and measure of right and wrong is to be found.
In no other department of the field of knowledge and wisdom (unless that which regards religion be an exception) do leading men of the present times recommend to us this receipt for thinking and acting wisely. By no gentleman, honourable or right honourable, are we sent at this tinje of day to the wisdom of our ancestors for the best mode of marshalling armies, navigating ships, attacking or defending towns; for the best modes of cultivating and improving land, and preparing and preserving its products for the purposes of food, clothing, artificial light and heat; for the promptest and most commodious means of conveyance of ourselves and goods from one portion of the earth's surface to another; for the best modes of curing, alleviating or preventing disorders in our own bodies and those of the animals which we contrive to apply to our use.
Why this difference? Only because in any other part of the field of knowledge, legislation excepted, (and religion, in so far as it has been taken for the subject of legislation,) leading men are not affected with that sinister interest which is so unhappily combined with power in the persons of those leading men who conduct Governments as they are generally at present established.