INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 107 



a foundation and basis for inquiry, by subjecting to inves 

 tigation what the received logic admits as it were on the 

 credit of others, and in a blind submission to authority, 

 principles, primary notions, and the informations of the 

 senses ; and it reverses downright its order of demonstra 

 tion, by making propositions and axioms, in an unbroken 

 line, ascend and mount on a ladder of elevation, from re 

 corded facts and particular experiments to generic verities, 

 not by darting without a pause to principles and the higher 

 generalizations, and from them deducing and inferring in 

 termediate truths. Again, the end of this our scheme of 

 science is, that things and works, not reasonings and spe 

 culative probabilities, may be invented and brought to the 

 test. 



Such then is the scope of the second book. Let us now, 

 in like manner, set forth its arrangement. As in the gene 

 ration of light it is requisite that the body which is to 

 receive the rays be made smooth and clean, and then 

 planted in a position or conversion duly adapted to the illu 

 mination, before the light itself is introduced, even so we 

 must proceed now. For first the area of the mind must be 

 levelled out and cleared of those things which have hitherto 

 encumbered it ; next, there must be a turning of the mind 

 well and fittingly to the objects which are presented ; lastly, 

 information must be exhibited to the mind thus prepared 

 for its reception. 



Now the extirpating part is threefold, according to 

 the three several classes of idols which beset the mind. 

 For such idols are either adoptive, and that in two ways, 

 having invaded and established themselves in the mind 

 from the systems and sects of philosophy, or from an abuse 

 of the laws and methods of demonstration ; or secondly, 

 they are such as are inseparable from and indigenous in 

 the essence of the mind. For as an uneven and ill cut 

 mirror distorts the true rays of things according to its own 

 incurvation of surface; so, too, the mind, subjected to the 

 impression of objects through the senses, in performing its 

 operations, interchanges and mixes up its own nature with 

 that of its objects, so as it may not be implicitly trusted. 



Wherefore the first task imposed upon us is to disperse 

 utterly, and to expatriate all that army of theories which 

 has figured in so many well fought combats. To this we 

 add a second, the emancipation of the mind from the slavery 

 imposed on it by perverted laws of demonstration ; which 

 is followed by a third, namely, to master the seductive bias 



