428 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



pugnant to fanciful and visionary speculations ; and 

 although we now and then can afford to smile at their 

 folly, we are much more frequently disposed to grieve 

 at the lamentable ignorance of which they are the 

 legitimate offspring. 



Whoever has carefully perused the works of that 

 great renovator of modern science, Lord Bacon, will 

 doubtless have appreciated the difficulties that he had 

 to encounter, not merely in the establishment of the 

 simplest principles of useful observation, but in the 

 far more difficult task of combating the errors and 

 falsehoods with which the student of nature was every- 

 where beset ; errors so deeply rooted, and falsehoods 

 so sanctioned by long toleration, that they had almost 

 assumed the importance of truth and sound argu- 

 ment. The Idols of the tribe, the Idols of the den, 

 the Idols of the market, and the Idols of the theatre, 

 which he had to tilt against, were by no means Quix- 

 otic windmills or empty phantoms, but stubborn and 

 obstinate antagonists, not easily to be overthrown ; the 

 dogmas of the schools were unassailable, and the false 

 facts of the existing philosophy held the position of 

 long-established data. It is almost impossible to be- 

 lieve, at the present day, how deeply implanted in the 

 minds, even of persons pretending to be votaries of 

 science, was the belief in fables more absurd and 

 monstrous than ever were penned for the amusement 

 of children in the wildest of nursery legends. Fancy 

 the venerable old Ambrose Pare, by way of experi- 

 ment poisoning four criminals in order to test the 

 virtues of the Unicorn's horn, and thereby vainly 

 attempting to convince his chivalric master, Henri 



