THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

ioo THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
clouds. No wonder that philosophy has advanced so little since Aristotle's
day; it has been using Aristotle's methods. "To go beyond Aristotle by the
light of Aristotle is to think that a borrowed light can increase the original
light from which it is taken." 79 Now, after two thousand years of logic-
has fallen
chopping with the machinery invented by Aristotle, philosophy
so low that none will do her reverence. All these medieval theories, theorems
and disputations must be cast out and forgotten; to renew herself
philosophy must begin again with a clean slate and a cleansed mind.
The first step, therefore, is the Expurgation of the Intellect. We must
become as little children, innocent of isms and abstractions, washed clear
of prejudices and preconceptions. We must destroy the Idols of the mind.
An idol, as Bacon uses the word (reflecting perhaps the Protestant re-
jection of image-worship), is a picture taken for a reality, a thought mistaken
for a thing. Errors come under this head; and the first problem
of logic is to trace and dam the sources of these errors. Bacon proceeds
now to a justly famous analysis of fallacies; "no man," said Condillac,
"has better known than Bacon the causes of human error."
These errors are, first, Idols of the Tribe, fallacies natural to humanity
in general. "For man's sense is falsely asserted" (by Protagoras' "Man
is the measure of all things") "to be the standard of things: on the con-
trary, all the perceptions, both of the senses and the mind, bear reference
to man and not to the universe; and the human mind resembles those
uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects
. . . and distort and disfigure them." 80 Our thoughts are pictures rather
of ourselves than of their objects. For example,
"the human under-
standing, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of
order and regularity in things than it really finds. . . . Hence the fiction
that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles." 81
Again,
the human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down
(either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords),
forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although
most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either
does not observe, or despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some
distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the
authority of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was
shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the
peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognize
the power of the gods. . . . "But where are the portraits of those that have
perished in spite of their vows?" All superstition is much the same, whether
it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in
all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but
neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common. 82
^Valerius Terminus. *Nov. Orgy, i, 41.
*Ibid., i, 45. ""Ibid., i, 46.