2 Select the correct answer from the drop-down menu.
Read the excerpt. Then choose the correct way to complete the sentence.
Thoreau reasons in this paragraph that a man isn't meant to blindly follow the majority's
rules because

adapted excerpt from On the Duty of
Civil Disobedience
by Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau wrote this influential essay in 1849
because he was disgusted with the US
government's refusal to end slavery and with its
participation in the Mexican-American War.
The practical reason why a majority are
permitted to rule is not because they are most
likely to be in the right, but because they are
physically the strongest. Can there not be a
government in which the majorities do not
decide right and wrong, but conscience?- in
which majorities decide only those questions to
which the rule of expediency is applicable'? Why
has every man a conscience, then? It is not
desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so
much as for the right. The only obligation I have
is to do at any time what I think right.
1. that is, only those issues that don't have moral
implications