Practice free →
HomeGRE › Verbal Reasoning › Passage (John Stuart Mill, *On Liberty*, 1859, C…

Passage (John Stuart Mill, *On Liberty*, 1859, Ch. II, continued): "For while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of 'the world' in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society." In the sentence 'Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited **deference**, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions,' the word **deference** most nearly means:

Arespectful submission to another's wishes or judgment
Bopen opposition
Cmathematical precision
Dfinancial reward
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: A. respectful submission to another's wishes or judgment
Mill's point: princes (and others) who *always have their wishes respected* end up wrongly confident in their own opinions, since they are never contradicted. The blank-word *deference* must therefore mean **respectful yielding** — submission to another's judgment. - **B** is the opposite of deference. - **C** and **D** are unrelated. Latin root *deferre* = *to bring down or yield*. To *defer* to someone is to yield to their view.
Solve this in the app — GRE practice & 24k+ MCQs →
Related questions