THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

FRANCIS BACON IO i
"Having first determined the question according to his will, man then
resorts to experience; and bending her into conformity with his placets,
leads her about 83
like a captive in a procession." In short, "the human
understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and
affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one
would.' . . For what a man had rather were true, he more readily
believes." 84 Is it not so?
Bacon gives at this point a word of golden counsel. "In general let
every student of nature take this as a rule that whatever his mind seizes
and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction, is to be held in suspicion;
and that so much the more care is to be taken, in dealing with such
questions, to keep the understanding even and clear." 85 "The understanding
must not be allowed to jump and fly from particulars to remote
axioms and of almost the highest generality; ... it must not be supplied
with wings, but rather hung with weights to keep it from leaping and
flying." 86 The imagination may be the greatest enemy of the intellect,
whereas it should be only its tentative and experiment.
A second class of errors Bacon calls Idols of the Cave errors peculiar
to the individual man. "For every one . . . has a cave or den of his own,
which refracts and discolors the light of nature"; this is his character
as formed by nature and nurture, and by his mood or condition of body
and mind. Some minds, e. g., are constitutionally analytic, and see differ-
ences everywhere; others are constitutionally synthetic, and see resemblances;
so we have the scientist and the painter on the one hand, and
on the other hand the poet and the philosopher. Again, "some dispositions
evince an unbounded admiration for antiquity, others eagerly em-
brace novelty; only a few can preserve the just medium, and neither tear
up what the ancients have correctly established, nor despise the just
innovations of the moderns." 87 Truth knows no parties.
Thirdly, Idols of the Market-place,, arising "from the commerce and
association of men with one another. For men converse by means of
language; but words are imposed according to the understanding of the
crowd; and there arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a
wonderful obstruction to the mind." 88 Philosophers deal out infinites with
the careless assurance of grammarians handling infinitives; and yet does
any man know what this "infinite" is, or whether it has even taken the
precaution of existing? Philosophers talk about "first cause uncaused," or
"first mover unmoved"; but are not these again fig-leaf phrases used to
cover naked ignorance, and perhaps indicative of a guilty conscience in
the user? Every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be cause-
less, nor any mover unmoved. Perhaps the greatest reconstruction in
philosophy would be simply this that we should stop lying,
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