42 NOVUM ORGAN UM. 



often terminate in controversies about words and names, in 

 regard to which it would be better (imitating the caution 

 of mathematicians) to proceed more advisedly in the first 

 instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by 

 definitions. Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the 

 evil in natural and material objects, because they consist 

 themselves of words, and these words produce others; so 

 that we must necessarily have recourse to particular in 

 stances, and their regular series and arrangement, as we 

 shall mention when we come to the mode and scheme of 

 determining notions and axioms. 



60. The idols imposed upon the understanding by words 

 are of two kinds. They are either the names of things 

 which have no existence (for as some objects are from inat 

 tention left without a name, so names are formed by fanciful 

 imaginations which are without an object), or they are the 

 names of actual objects, but confused, badly defined, and 

 hastily and irregularly abstracted from things. Fortune, 

 the primum mobile, the planetary orbits, the element of 

 fire, and the like fictions, which owe their birth to futile 

 and false theories, are instances of the first kind. And 

 this species of idols is removed with greater facility, be 

 cause it can be exterminated by the constant refutation 

 or the desuetude of the theories themselves. The others, 

 which are created by vicious and unskilful abstraction, are 

 intricate and deeply rooted. Take some word for instance, 

 as moist ; and let us examine how far the different signifi 

 cations of this word are consistent. It will be found that 

 the word moist is nothing but a confused sign of different 

 actions admitting of no settled and defined uniformity. 

 For it means that which easily diffuses itself over another 

 body ; that which is indeterminable and cannot be brought 

 to a consistency; that which yields easily in every direction ; 

 that which is easily divided and dispersed ; that which is 

 easily united and collected ; that which easily flows and is 

 put in motion; that which easily adheres to and wets 

 another body; that which is easily reduced to a liquid state 

 though previously solid. When, therefore, you come to 

 predicate or impose this name, in one sense flame is moist, 

 in another air is not moist, in another fine powder is moist, 

 in another glass is moist ; so that it is quite clear that this 

 notion is hastily abstracted from water only, and common 

 ordinary liquors without any due verification of it. 



There are, however, different degrees of distortion and 

 mistake in words. One of the least faulty classes is that 



