Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/219

Rh appoint you to such a relative, as is in the same kind, and not in a diverse. For in the direction, to produce brightness by smoothness, although properly it win no degree, and will never teach you any new particulars before unknown, yet by way of suggestion, or bringing to mind, it may draw your consideration to some particulars known but not remembered; as you shall sooner remember some practical means of making smoothness, than if you had fixed your consideration only upon brightness; but if the direction had been to make brightness, by making reflection, as thus, make it such as you may see your face in it; this is merely secondary, and helpeth neither by way of informing, nor by way of suggesting. So if in the inquiry of whiteness you were directed to make such a colour as should be seen furthest in a dark light; here you are advanced nothing at all. For these kinds of natures are but proprieties, effects, circumstances, concurrences, or what else you shall like to call them, and not radical and formative natures towards the nature supposed. The second caution is, that the nature inquired be collected by division before composition, or to speak more properly, by composition subaltern, before you ascend to composition absolute, &c.

opinion of Epicurus, that the gods were of human shape, was rather justly derided than seriously confuted by the other sects, demanding whether every kind of sensible creature did not think their own figure fairest, as the horse, the bull, and the like, which found no beauty but in their own forms, as in appetite of lust appeared. And the heresy of the Anthropomorphites was ever censured for a gross conceit, bred in the obscure cells of solitary monks that never looked abroad. Again, the fable so well known of "Quis pinxit leonem," doth set forth well, that there is an error of pride and partiality, as well as of custom and familiarity. The reflection also from glasses so usually resembled to the imagery of the mind, every man knoweth to receive error and variety both in colour, magnitude, and shape, according to the quality of the glass. But yet no use hath been made of these and many the like observations to move men to search out, and upon search to give true cautions of the native and inherent errors in the mind of man, which have coloured and corrupted all his notions and impressions.

I do find therefore in this enchanted glass four idols, or false appearances of several and distinct sorts, every sort comprehending many subdivisions: the first sort, I call idols of the nation or tribe; the second, idols of the palace; the third, idols of the cave; and the fourth, idols of the theatre, &c.

in deciding and determining of the truth of knowledge, men have put themselves upon trials not competent. That antiquity and authority, common and confessed notions, the natural and yielding consent of the mind, the harmony and coherence of a knowledge in itself, the establishing of principles with the touch and reduction of other propositions unto them, inductions without instances contradictory and the report of the senses, are none of them absolute and infallible evidence of truth; and bring no security sufficient for effects and operations. That the discovery of new works or active directions not known before, is the only trial to be accepted of; and yet not that neither, in case where one particular giveth light to another; but where particulars induce an axiom or observation, which axiom found out discovereth and designeth new particulars. That the nature of this trial is not only upon the point, whether the knowledge be profitable or no, but even upon the points whether the knowledge be true or no. Not because you may always conclude, that the axiom which discovereth new instances is true; but contrariwise you may safely conclude, that if it discover not any new instance, it is in vain and untrue. That by new instances are not always to be understood new recipes, but new assignations; and of the diversity between these two. That the subtilty of words, arguments, notions, yea of the senses themselves, is but rude and gross in comparison of the subtilty of things. And of the slothful and flattering opinions of those which pretend to honour the mind of man in withdrawing and abstracting it from particulars; and of the inducements and motives whereupon such opinions have been conceived and received.

the error in propounding chiefly the search of causes and productions of things concrete, which are infinite and transitory; and not of abstract natures, which are few and permanent. That these natures areas the alphabet or simple letters, whereof the variety of things consisteth; or as the colours mingled in the painter's shell, where with he is able to make infinite variety of faces or shapes. An enumeration of them according to popular note. That, at the first, one would conceive that in the schools by natural philosophy were meant the knowledge of the efficients ot things