208 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK V. 



rejected and laid aside ; but the others seize the mind 

 strongly, and cannot be totally eradicated. Therefore no 

 art of analytics can be expected here, but the doctrine of the 

 confutation of idols is the primary doctrine of idols. Nor 

 indeed can the doctrine of idols be reduced to an art, but 

 can only be employed by means of a certain contemplative 

 prudence to prevent them. 



For the idols of the tribe, k it is observable, that the nature 

 of the understanding is more affected with affirmatives and 

 actives than with negatives and privatives, though in just 

 ness it should be equally affected with them both ; but if 

 things fall out right, or keep their course, the mind receives 

 a stronger impression of this than of a much greater number 

 of failures, or contrary events, which is the root of all super 

 stition and credulity. Hence Diagoras, being shown in 

 Neptune s temple many votive pictures of such as had 

 escaped shipwreck, and thereupon asked by his guide, if he 

 did not now acknowledge the divine power? answered 

 wisely, &quot; But first show me where those are painted that were 

 shipwrecked, after having thus paid their vows.&quot; 1 And the 

 case is the same, in the similar superstitions of astrological 

 predictions, dreams, omens, &c. Again, the mind, being of 

 itself an equal and uniform substance, presupposes a greater 

 unanimity and uniformity in the nature of things than there 

 really is, as may be observed in astronomical mathematicians, 

 who, rejecting spiral lines, assert that the heavenly bodies 

 move in perfect circles , m whence our thoughts are continually 

 drawing parallels, and supposing relations in many things 

 that are truly different and singular. Hence the chemists 

 have fantastically imagined their four principles correspond- 



k These might otherwise be called partial idols, as owing to the par 

 tiality or obliquity of the mind, which has its particular bent, and 

 admits of some things more readily than others, without a manifest 

 reason assigned for it to the understanding. However this be, they 

 manifestly belong to the tribe of mankind. haw. 



1 Cicero, Natur. Deor. v. 9. 



m The observations of Bradley and Molyneux directly establish the 

 elliptical orbit, in which the earth performs its yearly revolution. The 

 spiral lines, which Bacon suggests in place of the concentric and ellip 

 tical theory, are only the apparent paths -which the planets seem to 

 follow when viewed by the naked eye, and have long since, with 

 the cumbercme machinery oi Ptolemy, been swept iron* U he*ve::s tt 



