The Bondage of “Deciding for Yourself”, by Anthony Esolen 

“No one can be relieved of the duty of forming his conscience,” said my interlocutor, who was a bit surprised when I said that no one can do that on his own, and no one should attempt it, since man’s capacity for self-deception is boundless.

“Other people and institutions can be deceived, too.”  He seemed to be well-read, so it was not entirely impossible that he had gotten the dictum from Kant, who says that it is all too comfortable for men to remain in a perpetual nonage, to have a spiritual advisor be their conscience, and governors to remind them all the time of the terrible dangers they run if they think for themselves. …