and what remains but to take it
ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

Since this is what happens, where is the value of the opinion even of
a hundred millions? It is no more established than an historical
fact reported by a hundred chroniclers who can be proved to have
plagiarised it from one another; the opinion in the end being
traceable to a single individual.[1] It is all what I say, what you
say, and, finally, what he says; and the whole of it is nothing but a
series of assertions:

[Footnote 1: See Bayle's _Pensees sur les Cometes_, i., p. 10.]

_Dico ego, tu dicis, sed denique dixit et ille;
Dictaque post toties, nil nisi dicta vides_.

Nevertheless, in a dispute with ordinary people, we may employ
universal opinion as an authority. For it will generally be found that
when two of them are fighting, that is the weapon which both of them
choose as a means of attack. If a man of the better sort has to deal
with them, it is most advisable for him to condescend to the use
of this weapon too, and to select such authorities as will make an
impression on his opponent's weak side. For, _ex hypoihesi_, he is as
insensible to all rational argument as a horny-hided Siegfried, dipped
in the flood of incapacity, and unable to think or judge. Before
a tribunal the dispute is one between authorities alone,--such
authoritative statements, I mean, as are laid down by legal experts;
and here the exercise of judgment consists in discovering what law or
authority applies to the case in question. There is, however, plenty
of room for Dialectic; for should the case in question and the law not
really fit each other, they can, if necessary, be twisted until they
appear to do so, or _vice versa_.

XXXI.

If you know that you have no reply to the arguments which your
opponent advances, you may, by a fine stroke of irony, declare
yourself to be an incompetent judge: "What you now say passes my
poor powers of comprehension; it may be all very true, but I can't
understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In
this way you insinuate to the bystanders, with whom you are in good
repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. Thus, when Kant's
_Kritik_ appeared, or, rather, when it began to make a noise in the
world, many professors of the old ecclectic school declared that they
failed to understand it, in the belief that their failure settled the
business. But when the adherents