not grow up by itself; and for practical purposes it is well that
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