these only they vent, and so as they think distinguish themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncommon are not the marks to distinguish truth or falsehood, and therefore should not be any bias to us in our inquiries. We should not judge of things by men’s opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reason but ill, and therefore may be well suspected, and cannot be relied on, nor should be followed as a sure guide; but philosophers who have quitted the orthodoxy of the community and the popular doctrines of their countries have fallen into as extravagant and as absurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air or quench one’s thirst with water because the rabble use them to these purposes; and if there are conveniences of life which common use reaches not, it is not reason to reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the country, and every villager doth not know them.
Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance or something worse.
Another sort of partiality there is whereby men impose upon themselves, and by it make their reading little useful to themselves. I mean the making use of the opinions of writers and laying stress upon their authorities wherever they find them to favor their own opinions.
There is nothing almost has done more harm to men dedicated to letters than giving the name of study to reading, and making a man of great reading to be
