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at potential and unformed matter : and, again, they continue to divide 

 Nature, until they have arrived at the atom ; things which, even if 

 true, can be of little use in helping on the fortunes of men. 



Ixvii. The Intellect must also be cautioned against the intemper 

 ance of philosophers in granting or withholding consent ; because 

 intemperance of this kind seems to fix idola, and in a manner to render 

 them permanent, so as to prevent all approach for the purpose of 

 removing them. 



Now this excess is of two kinds : the first appears in those who 

 dogmatize promptly, and render the Sciences positive and magisterial ; 

 the second, in those who introduce Acatalepsy; and a vague and end 

 less inquiry. Of these, the former depresses the intellect, the latter 

 enervates it. For the Philosophy of Aristotle, having murdered the 

 other systems (as the Turks serve their brethren) with quarrelsome 

 confutations, has dogmatized on each separate point : and he himself 

 again introduces questions at his own will, and then despatches them, 

 that everything may be sure and determined ; a practice which obtains 

 and is in use among his successors. 



But it was the school of Plato that introduced Acatalepsy, first as if 

 in jest and irony, out of dislike for the old sophists, Protagoras, 

 Hippias, and the rest, who feared nothing so much as the appearance 

 of doubt on any subject. But the new Academy raised Acatalepsy 

 into a dogma, and held it as a doctrine. And though this method of 

 proceeding be more honest than the licence of dogmatizing, since they 

 profess that they are far from confounding inquiry, as Pyrrho and the 

 Ephectics did, but have something to follow as probable, though they 

 have nothing to retain as true ; still, when the human mind has once 

 despaired of finding truth, its action on everything around it becomes 

 more languid ; whence it happens that men turn aside to agreeable 

 controversies and discourses, and wander, as it were, from one thing 

 to another, rather than sustain any severe injury. But as we said in 

 the beginning, and are continually urging, we must not deprive the 

 human senses and understanding, infirm though they be, of their 

 authority, but must provide aids for them. 



Ixviii. And now we have spoken of the several kinds of idola, and 

 their belongings ; all of which must be renounced and abjured with a 

 constant and solemn determination, and the Intellect entirely freed 

 and purged from them, so that the approach to the Kingdom of Man, 

 which is founded on the Sciences, may be like that to the Kingdom of 

 Heaven, into which none may enter save in the character of a little 

 child. 



Ixix. But faulty demonstrations are, as it were, the strongholds and 

 defences of idola; and those which we have in Logic come little short 

 of making over the universe in bondage to human thoughts, and of 

 giving thoughts in bondage to words. But demonstrations are, in 

 their potentiality, the Philosophies themselves, and the Sciences. For 

 such as they arc, and as they arc rightly or wrongly constituted, such 

 are the resulting Philosophies and Contemplations. But those which 

 we employ in the whole of that process, which leads from sense and 



