ting to the depth
of any truth, or of grappling his mind indissolubly to any conviction.
His intellect would be at once independent and powerless. He must
therefore make his choice from amongst the various objects of human
belief, and he must adopt many opinions without discussion, in order
to search the better into that smaller number which he sets apart for
investigation. It is true that whoever receives an opinion on the word
of another, does so far enslave his mind; but it is a salutary servitude
which allows him to make a good use of freedom.

A principle of authority must then always occur, under all
circumstances, in some part or other of the moral and intellectual
world. Its place is variable, but a place it necessarily has. The
independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be less:
unbounded it cannot be. Thus the question is, not to know whether any
intellectual authority exists in the ages of democracy, but simply where
it resides and by what standard it is to be measured.

I have shown in the preceding chapter how the equality of conditions
leads men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the
supernatural, and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of the
human understanding. The men who live at a period of social equality are
not therefore easily led to place that intellectual authority to which
they bow either beyond or above humanity. They commonly seek for the
sources of truth in themselves, or in those who are like themselves.
This would be enough to prove that at such periods no new religion could
be established, and that all schemes for such a purpose would be not
only impious but absurd and irrational. It may be foreseen that a
democratic people will not easily give credence to divine missions; that
they will turn modern prophets to a ready jest; and they that will seek
to discover the chief arbiter of their belief within, and not beyond,
the limits of their kind.

When the ranks of society are unequal, and men unlike each other in
condition, there are some individuals invested with all the power of
superior intelligence, learning, and enlightenment, whilst the multitude
is sunk in ignorance and prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic
periods are therefore naturally induced to shape their opinions by the
superior standard of a person or a class of persons, whilst they are
averse to recognize the infallibility of the mass of the people.

The contrary takes place in