“There is nothing against which we ought to be more on our guard than, like a flock of sheep, following the crowd of those who have preceded us--going, as we do, not where we ought to go, but where men have walked before. And yet there is nothing which involves us in greater evils than following and settling our faith upon authority--considering those dogmas or practices best which have been received heretofore with the greatest applause, and which have a multitude of great names. We live not according to reason, but according to mere fashion and tradition, from whence that enormous heap of bodies, which fall one over the other. It happens as in a great slaughter of men, when the crowd presses upon itself. Not one falls without dragging with him another. The first to fall are the cause of destruction to the succeeding ranks. It runs through the whole of human life. No-one’s error is limited to himself alone, but he is the author and cause of another’s error.... We shall recover our sound health if only we shall separate ourselves from the herd, for the crowd of mankind stands opposed to right reason--the defender of its own evils and miseries.[34] ... Human history is not so well conducted, that the better way is pleasing to the mass. The very fact of the approbation of the multitude is a proof of the badness of the opinion or practice. Let us ask what is _best_, not what is _most customary_; what may place us firmly in the possession of an everlasting felicity, not what has received the approbation of the vulgar--the worst interpreter of the truth. Now I call “the vulgar” _the common herd of all ranks and conditions_” (_Tam chlamydatos quam coronatos_).--(_De Vitâ Beatâ_ i. and ii.) Again:-- “I will do nothing for the sake of opinion; everything for the sake of conscience.” He repudiates the doctrines of Egoism for those of Altruism:-- “I will so live, as knowing myself to have come into the world for others.... I shall recognise the _world_ as my proper country. Whenever nature or reason shall demand my last breath I shall depart with the testimony that I have loved a good conscience, useful pursuits--that I have encroached upon the liberty of no one, least of all my own.” Very admirable are his rebukes of unjust and insensate anger in regard to the non-human species:--