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BACON 



doctrine relates only to the path to be pursued. The lame (as 

 they say) in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and 

 it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not 

 in the right direction must increase his aberration. 



Our method of discovering the sciences is such as to leave 

 little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and indeed rather to 

 level wit and intellect. For as in the drawing of a straight line, 

 or accurate circle by the hand, much depends on its steadiness 

 and practice, but if a ruler or compass be employed there is 

 little occasion for either ; so it is with our method. Although, 

 however, we enter into no individual confutations, yet a little 

 must be said, first, of the sects and general divisions of these 

 species of theories ; secondly, something further to show that 

 there are external signs of their weakness ; and, lastly, we must 

 consider the causes of so great a misfortune, and so long and 

 general a unanimity in error, that we may thus render the ac- 

 cess to truth less difficult, and that the human understanding 

 may the more readily be purified, and brought to dismiss its 

 idols. 



62. The idols of the theatre, or of theories, are numerous, 

 and may, and perhaps will, be still more so. For unless men's 

 minds had been now occupied for many ages in religious and 

 theological considerations, and civil governments (especially 

 monarchies), had been averse to novelties of that nature even in 

 theory (so that men must apply to them with some risk and 

 injury to their own fortunes, and not only without reward, but 

 subject to contumely and envy), there is no doubt that many 

 other sects of philosophers and theorists would have been in- 

 troduced, like those which formerly flourished in such diversi- 

 fied abundance amongst the Greeks. For as many imaginary 

 theories of the heavens can be deduced from the phenomena of 

 the sky, so it is even more easy to found many dogmas upon 

 the phenomena of philosophy and the plot of this our theatre 

 resembles those of the poetical, where the plots which are in- 

 vented for the stage are more consistent, elegant, and pleasur- 

 able than those taken from real history. 



In general, men take for the groundwork of their philosophy 

 either too much from a few topics, or too little from many ; in 

 either case their philosophy is founded on too narrow a basis 

 of experiment and natural history, and decides on too scanty 

 grounds. For the theoretic philosopher seizes various com- 

 mon circumstances by experiment, without reducing them to 

 certainty or examining and frequently considering them, and 

 relies for the rest upon meditation and the activity of his wit. 



There are other philosophers who have diligently and accu- 

 rately attended to a few experiments, and have thence presumed 

 to^ deduce and invent systems of philosophy, forming every- 

 thing to conformity with them. 



