BACON'S IDOLS: A COMMENTARY. 793 



ment; that it does no more than this is due to the simple fact that 

 the personal bias is as varied as humanity itself, and that the de- 

 flecting impulses in any given case are to be referred to a complex 

 of factors almost eluding analysis. To follow this part of the sub- 

 ject into detail would, therefore, manifestly be impossible. But 

 certain of the larger and more widely influential of these disturb- 

 ing forces may be roughly marked out by way of illustration. 



In the first place, there is what we may call the professional bias. 

 Exclusive devotion to separate lines of activity, study, or thought 

 inevitably gives the mind a particular set or twist. Bacon com- 

 plains that Aristotle, primarily a logician, made his natural philoso- 

 phy the slave of his logic. Few specialists can escape the insula- 

 tion consequent upon living too continuously in a confined area of 

 problems and ideas. Their intellectual outlook is necessarily cir- 

 cumscribed, facts are seen by them out of proper perspective, and 

 one-sidedness of training and discipline renders their judgment of 

 things partial and incomplete. The lawyer carries his legal, the 

 theologian his theological, the scientist his scientific bent of mind 

 into every inquiry; with what grotesque results is only too fre- 

 quently apparent. Accustomed to move in a single narrow groove, 

 and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of certain isolated classes 

 of phenomena, they unconsciously allow their particular interests 

 to dominate their thought, and impose disastrous restrictions upon 

 their view of whatever lies outside their own chosen field. 



Secondly, we have the bias of nation, rank, party, sect. Here 

 the mental disturbances are too numerous to permit and too obvious 

 to require special exemplification. Intellectual provincialism of 

 any kind is fatal to large and fertile thought, alike by limiting the 

 range of our knowledge and sympathies and by inducing mental 

 habits and implanting prejudices which prevent us from seeing 

 things in wide relations and under a clear light. So long as our 

 point of view is simply that of our country, our class, our party, or 

 our church, so long, it is evident, our minds will lack the breadth 

 and flexibility necessary for free inquiry, fruitful comparisons, sane 

 and balanced judgments.* 



Finally, among the Idols of the Cave " which have most effect 

 in disturbing the clearness of the understanding," mention must 

 be made of the temperamental bias. Every man, it has been said, 

 is born Platonist or Aristotelian; it is certain that the great divi- 

 sions in thought religious, philosophical, political answer rough- 

 ly to fundamental differences in human nature, and that every one 

 not checked or turned aside by extraneous influences will sponta- 

 neously gravitate in one or another direction. Bacon is only re- 



* Cf. Spencer's Introduction to the Study of Sociology, chapters viii-xii. 



