BOOK I.] APHORISMS. 397 



LVII. Til© contemplation of nature and of bodies in their 

 individual form distracts and weakens the understanding ; but 

 the contemplation of nature and of bodies in their general com- 

 position and formation stupifies and relaxes it. "We have a good 

 instance of this in the school of Leucippus and Democritus com- 

 pared with others, for they applied themselves so much to parti- 

 culars as almost to neglect the general structure of things, whilst 

 the others were so astounded whilst gazing on the structure that 

 they did not penetrate the simplicity of nature. These two . 

 species of contemplation must, therefore, be interchanged, and / 

 each employed in its turn, in order to render the understanding^ 

 at once penetrating and capacious, and to avoid the inconve- \ 

 niences we have mentioned, and the idols that result from them. 



LVIII. Let such, therefore, be our precautions in contempla- 

 tion, that we may ward off and expel the idols of the den, which 

 mostly owe their birth either to some predominant pursuit, or, 

 secondly, to an excess in synthesis and analysis, or, thirdly, to a 

 party zeal in favour of certain ages, or, fourthly, to the extent 

 or narrowness of the subject. In general, he who contemplates 

 nature should suspect whatever particularly takes and fixes his 

 understanding, and should use so much the more caution to pre- 

 serve it equable and unprejudiced. 



LIX. The idols of the market are the most troublesome of 

 all, those namely which have entwined themselves round the un- 

 derstanding from the associations of words and names. For men 

 imagine that their reason governs words, whilst, in fact, words 

 re-act upon the understanding ; and this has rendered philosopliy 

 and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Words are generally 

 formed in a popular sense, and define things by those broad 

 lines which are most obvious to the vulgar mind ; but when a 

 more acute understanding, or more diligent observation is 

 anxious to vary those lines, and to adapt them more accurately 

 to nature, words oppose it. Hence the great and solemn dis- 

 putes of learned men often terminate in controversies about 

 words and names, in regard to which it would be better (imitating 

 the caution of mathematicians) to proceed more advisedly in the 

 first instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by 

 definitions. Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil in 

 natural and material objects, because they consist themselves of 

 words, and these words produce others J so that we must neces- 



y The Latin text adds "without end ;" but Bacon is scarcely right in 

 supposing that the descent from complex ideas and propositions to 

 those of simple nature, involve the analyst in a series of continuous 

 and interminable definitions. For in the gradual and analytical scale, 

 there is a bar beyond which we cannot go, as there is a summit bounded 

 py the limite'1 variations of our conceptions. Logical definitions, to 

 fulfil their c^scUtiops, or indeed to be of any avail, must be given in 



