15 Feb y 1813

Church II Topics Ch.6.

9 §.1. Abstract fitness

Part 5. Power over

Authority to

this purpose

(1) special & (2) general.

1. Special when its

effect is owing

to the character

of the person by

2 When general

the persuasion

operates as the

rest of the persons

in whom persuasion

is

supposed to exist.

The lowest special

authority is

where the man

is but one degree

above an

average man. -

The highest is so

great as to

outweigh any

general d o. Locke

would with an

Englishman have

more weight on a

point of metaphysics

than all

the Chinese empire.

Authority — intellectual authority — may to this purpose be distinguished into

special and general. Special it may be termed, in

so far as it by the consideration of the particular

character of the person by whose

understanding the influence is exercised that the effect

is produced on [the mind of] the person on whose understanding

the influence is exercised. In so far

as it is but general the persuasive force with which it

operates is susceptible of mathematical measurement:

it is in the exact ratio of the numbers

of the persons by the consideration of whose persuasion,

indigenous or adoptive, the adoptive persuasion in question is

produced. In the case Of special authority the lowest degree of

persuasive force with which it operates is that which is stands next above

the degree of persuasive force with which, in the way of general authority the authority

of an individual unknown and taken at random

would operate operates. The highest degree is so great high that

no assignable mass of general authority can be found assigned

so great, as that, in an intelligent mind, a single

atom of special authority may not be powerful

enough to surmount it. To this case among others

applies the adage - pendere non numero. In the

mind of a literally educated inhabitant of Great Britain,

on a question belonging to the department of metaphysics,

as it is so commonly called — of logic, as it ought rather

to be called — the special authority of Mr Locke will suffice

to outweigh the general authority of the whole Chinese

empire: to which may be added all the other oriental ones.