BOOK I.] APHORISMa 395 



greater progress in penetrating nature tlian tlie rest-. It is beat 

 to consider matter, its conformation, and tlie changes of that 

 conformation, its own action,' and the law of this action or 

 motion ; for forms are a mere fiction of the human mind, unless 

 you will call the laws of action by that name.* 



LII. Such are the idols of the tribe, which arise either from 

 the uniformity of the constitution of man's spirit, or its preju- 

 dices, or its limited faculties or restless agitation, or from the 

 interference of the passions, or the incompetency of the senses, 

 or the mode of their impressions. 



LIII. The idols of the den derive their origin from the pecu- 

 liar nature of each individual's mind and body, and also from 

 education, habit, and accident ; and although they be various 

 and manifold, yet we will treat of some that require the greatest 

 caution, and exert the greatest power in polluting the under- 

 standing. 



LIV. Some men become attached to particular sciences and 

 contemplations, either from supposing themselves the authors 

 and inventors of them, or from having bestowed the greatest 

 pains upon such subjects, and thus become most habituated to 

 tiiem." If men of this description apply themselves to philoso- 

 phy and contemplations of an universal nature, they wrest and 

 corrupt them by their preconceived fancies, of which Aristotle 



mental philosophy, in the prosecution of which he was so ardent as to 

 declare that he would prefer the discovery of one of the causes of 

 natural phenomena, to the possession of the diadem of Persia. Democri- 

 tus imposed on the blind credulity of his contemporaries, and, like Roger 

 Bacon, astonished them by his inventions. Ed. 



* The Latin is actus puru^, another scholastic expression to denote 

 the action of the substance, which composes the essence of the body 

 apart from its accidental qualities. For an exposition of the various 

 kind 01 motions he contemplates, the reader may refer to the 48th 

 aphorism of the 2nd book. £d. 



' The scholastics after Aristotle distinguished in a subject three 

 modes of beings : viz., the power or faculty, the act, and the habitude, 

 or in other words that which is able to exist, what exists actually, and 

 what continues to exist. Bacon means that is necessary to fix our 

 attention not on that which can or ought to be, but on that which 

 actually is ; not on the right, but on the fact. Ed. 



" The inference to be drawn from this is to suspect that kind of evi- 

 dence which is most consonant to our inclinations, and not to admit any 

 notion as real except we can base it firmly upon that kind of demon- 

 stration which is peculiar to the subject, not to our impression. Some- 

 times the mode of proof may be consonant to our inclinations, and to 

 the subject at the same time, as in the case of Pythagoras, when he 

 applied his beloved numbers to the solution of astronomical phenomena ; 

 or in that ot Descartes, when he reasoned geometrically concerning the 

 naiurti of the soul. Such examples cannot be censured with ju.stice, 



