BACON'S IDOLS: A COMMENTARY. 799 



ery to a worthy priest. ' My son/ replied the priest, ' I have read 

 Aristotle many times, and I assure you that there is nothing of the 

 kind mentioned by him. Go rest in peace, and be certain that the 

 spots which you have seen are in your eyes, and not in the sun.' " * 

 Such an incident forms an admirable commentary on the saying 

 of the witty Fontenelle that Aristotle had never made a true phi- 

 losopher, but he had spoiled a great many. The position assumed is 

 simple enough : Aristotle must be right, therefore whatever does not 

 agree with the doctrines of the Stagirite must be wrong. Are your 

 facts against him, then revise your facts. Come what may of it, 

 you must quadrate knowledge with accepted system. Here is the 

 theological method in a nutshell. And the theological method has 

 only too often been the method also of the established philosophic 

 schools. 



In our own relations with these Idols of the Theater the first 

 and last thing to remember is that all systems are necessarily partial 

 and provisional. " They have their day and cease to be," and at 

 the best they only mark a gradual progress toward the truth. There 

 can be no finality, no closing word authoritatively uttered. Our 

 attitude toward the systems of the past and the present, toward 

 long-accepted traditions, and dogmatically enunciated conclusions, 

 must be an attitude of firm and steady of respectful, it may be, 

 but still firm and steady independence. We must resist the tend- 

 ency to passive acquiescence, and endeavor to combine with gen- 

 erous hospitality to all ideas the habit of not accepting anything 

 merely because it is stated ex cathedra, or is backed by an influen- 

 tial name, or can " plead a course of long observance for its use." 

 Perhaps to wean ourselves from this particular form of idolatry 

 there is nothing so helpful as a wide and constant study of the his- 

 tory of thought. The pathway of intellectual development is 

 strewn with outgrown dogmas and exploded systems. How fatu- 

 ous, then, to accept, whole and untested, the doctrine of any master, 

 new or old, believing that his word will give us complete and undi- 

 luted truth ! 



So much, then, we may say with Bacon " concerning the sev- 

 eral classes of Idols and their equipage, all of which must be re- 

 nounced and put away with a fixed and solemn determination, and 

 the understanding thoroughly freed and cleansed; the entrance 

 into the kingdom of man, founded on the sciences, being not much 

 other than the kingdom of heaven, whereinto none may enter ex- 

 cept as a little child." It may perhaps be urged that the result of 

 such a survey as we have taken of the obstacles to clear thought is 



* History of Philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 95, 96. 



