240 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



Nor indeed can the doctrine of idols be reduced to an art, 

 but can only be employed by means of a certain contem 

 plative prudence to prevent them. 



For the idols of the tribe, lo it is observable, that the 

 nature of the understanding is more affected with affirma 

 tives and actives than with negatives and privatives, though 

 in justness 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 superstition 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 acknowledge the divine power? an 

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

 that were shipwrecked, after having thus paid their vows. &quot; &quot; 

 And the case is the same, in the similar superstitions of 

 astrological predictions, dreams, omens, etc. Again, the 

 mind, being of itself an equal and uniform substance, pre 

 supposes a greater unanimity and uniformity in the nature 

 of things than there really is, as may be observed in astro 

 nomical mathematicians, who, rejecting spiral lines, assert 

 that the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles; 12 whence 

 our thoughts are continually drawing parallels, and sup 

 posing relations in many things that are truly different and 

 singular. Hence the chemists have fantastically imagined 

 their four principles corresponding to the heavens, air, earth, 

 and water; dreaming that the series of existences formed a 



10 These might otherwise be called partial idols, as owing to the partiality 

 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. Shaw. 



11 Cicero, Natur. Deor. v. 9. 



12 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 elliptical theory, are only 

 the apparent paths which the planets seem to follow when viewed by the naked 

 eye, and have long since, with the cumbersome machinery of Ptolemy, been 

 swept from the heavens. Ed. 



