58 DISSERTATION SECOND. [part i. 



and active are ready to lay hold of the slightest resemblan- 

 ces. Each of these easily runs into excess ; the one by 

 catching continually at distinctions, the other at affinities. 



The studies, also, to which a man is addicted, have a 

 great effect in influencing his opinions. Bacon complains, 

 that the chemists of his time, from a few experiments with 

 the furnace and the crucible, thought that they were fur- 

 nished with principles sufficient to explain Ihe structure of 

 the universe ; and he censures Aristotle for having deprav- 

 ed his physicks so much with his dialecticks, as to render 

 the former entirely a science of words and controversy. In 

 like manner, he blames a philosopher of his own age, Gil- 

 bert, who had studied magnetism to good purpose, for hav- 

 ing proceeded to form out of it a general system of philoso- 

 phy. Such things have occurred in every period of sci- 

 ence. Thus electricity has been applied to explain the 

 motion of the heavenly bodies ; and, of late, galvanism and 

 electricity together have been held out as explaining, not 

 only the affinities of chemistry, but the phenomena of gravi- 

 tation, and the laws of vegetable and animal life. It were 

 a good caution for a man who studies nature, to distrust 

 those things with which he is particularly conversant, and 

 which he is accustomed to contemplate with pleasure. 



3. The idols of the forwn are those that arise out of the 

 commerce or intercourse of society, and especially from lan- 

 guage, or the means by which men communicate their 

 thoughts to one another. 



Men believe that their thoughts govern their words; but 

 it also happens, by a certain kind of reaction, that their 

 words frequently govern their thoughts. This is the more 

 pernicious, that words, being generally the work of the 

 multitude, divide things according to the lines most con- 

 picuous to vulgar apprehensions. Hence, when words are 

 examined, few instances are found in which, if at alJ ab- 



