We ought […] to take for granted, as first principles, things wherein we fid an universal agreement, among the learned and unlearned, in the different nations and ages of the world. A consent of ages and nations, of the learned and vulgar, ought, at least, to have great authority, unless we can show some prejudice, as universal as the consent is, which might be the cause of it. Truth is one, but error is infinite.

Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, London, 1785, essay 1, chap. 2, sect. 7