Man gives indifferent names to one and the same thing from the difference of their own passions; as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
I think there’s more to it than that. To label an opinion heresy is to claim that it deviates from the majority opinion, whether or not that is actually the case.
Sort of related: The Bolsheviks were clever to call themselves Bolsheviks; the Mensheviks probably outnumbered them at the time of the split, but failed to contest the nomenclature.
The Bolsheviks had a majority at the party congress where the split occurred. The Mensheviks were a loosely organized group of study circles. They included all sorts of “members” who weren’t actually active. They might have more members, but the defined “members” differently, and that definition was in fact the main basis for the original split with the Mensheviks.
--Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
I think there’s more to it than that. To label an opinion heresy is to claim that it deviates from the majority opinion, whether or not that is actually the case.
Sort of related: The Bolsheviks were clever to call themselves Bolsheviks; the Mensheviks probably outnumbered them at the time of the split, but failed to contest the nomenclature.
The Bolsheviks had a majority at the party congress where the split occurred. The Mensheviks were a loosely organized group of study circles. They included all sorts of “members” who weren’t actually active. They might have more members, but the defined “members” differently, and that definition was in fact the main basis for the original split with the Mensheviks.
I think that’s part of the meaning of “private opinion” in the quote. If someone agrees with the majority, they don’t have their own private opinion.