making the mind pliant at any time to acquire any sort of knowledge. Bacon, however, contents himself with stating, that,

"Besides the general aberrations of human nature, we, every one of us, have our particular den or cavern, which refracts and corrupts the light of nature: either because every man has his respective temper, education, acquaintance, course of reading, and authorities, or from the difference of impressions, as they happen in a mind prejudiced or prepossessed, or in one that is calm, and equal."

Upon Inability at particular times to acquire knowledge, the Novum Organum does not contain any observations; and it is only casually remarked in his Advancement of Learning, where he

says,

"There is a kind of culture of the mind which is built upon this ground, that the minds of all mortals are at some times in a more perfect state: at other times in a more depraved state. The objects, therefore, of this culture are, the fixation of good times and the obliteration of bad times, that the good seasons may be cherished and the evil crossed and expunged out of the calendar; and to attain this two seasons are chiefly to be observed, the one when the mind is best disposed to a business, the other when it is worst; that by the one, we may be well forward on our way; by the latter we may, by a strenuous contention, work out the knots and stondes of the mind, and make it plain for other occasions."

Upon inability to acquire particular sorts of knowledge, there are some observations in the Novum Organum and in the Advancement of Learning, not only upon the causes and varieties of this sort of Idolatry, but upon its consequences and remedies.

"From the attachment, (he says,) of individuals to particular studies, either because they believe themselves to have been the authors and inventors, or because they have bestowed much thought upon them, or from other accidents of their lives, or from their natural conformation, they are so warped to particular truths, as to have a partial or total inability to acquire other sorts of knowledge."

From the infinite variety of this class of Idols, we shall sẹlect two specimens; and first:

Of ability to view either only the differences, or only the correspondencies of things.

Of which Bacon says,

"The great and radical difference of capacities as to philosophy and the sciences lies here, that some are stronger and fitter to observe the differences of things, and others to observe their correspondencies:

for a steady and sharp genius can fix its contemplations, and dwell and fasten upon all the subtlety of differences, whilst a sublime and ready genius perceives and compares the smallest and most general agreements of things.-Ingenia autem sublimia et discursiva etiam tenuissimas et catholicas rerum similitudines et agnoscunt et componunt.”

If this observation of Bacon's is well founded, no man ever existed to whom these epithets were more peculiarly applicable, than Bacon himself: for, of all the extraordinary properties of his wonderful mind, his constant observation of what, we, in common parlance, call trifles, appears to us to be one of the most extraordinary.

"See," he says, "the little cloud upon glass or gems or blades of swords, and mark well the discharge of that cloud, and you shall perceive that it ever breaks up first in the skirts, and last in the midst. May we not learn from this the force of union, even in the least quantities and weakest bodies, how much it conduceth to preservation of the present form and the resisting of a new. In like manner, icicles, if there be water to follow them, lengthen themselves out in a very slender thread, to prevent a discontinuity of the water; but if there be not a sufficient quantity to follow, the water then falls in round drops, which is the figure that best supports it against discontinuation; and at the very instant when the thread of water ends, and the falling in drops begins, the water recoils upwards to avoid being discontinued. So in metals, which are fluid upon fusion, though a little tenacious, some of the mettled mass frequently springs up in drops, and sticks in that form to the sides of the crucible. There is a like instance in the looking-glasses, commonly made of spittle by children, in a loop of rush or whalebone, where we find a consistent pellicule of water."

Possessing this peculiar property himself, Bacon constantly admonishes his readers of its importance.

"The eye of the understanding," (he says,)" is like the eye of the sense for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances."

And again :

"He who cannot contract the sight of his mind as well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty: and should consider, as an oracle, the saying of the poor woman to the haughty prince, who rejected her petition as a thing below his dignity to notice" then cease to reign:" for it is certain, that whoever will not attend to matters because they are too minute or trifling, shall never obtain command or rule over nature.

And again:

Certainly this may be averred for truth, that they be not the highest instances, that give the best and surest information. This is not unaptly exprest in the tale, so common, of the philosopher, that while he gazed upward to the starres fell into the water for if he had

lookt down, he might have seen the starres in the water: and therefore Aristotle notes well, that the nature of every thing is best seen in its smallest portions. For that cause he inquires the nature of a common-wealth, first in a family and the simple conjugations of society, man and wife; parents and children; master and servant, which are in every cottage. So we see that secret of nature (esteemed one of the great mysteries) of the turning of iron toucht with a loadstone towards the poles, was found out in needles of iron, not in barres of iron."

The next specimen which we select is,

Attachment to Antiquity or Novelty.

The nature of this Idol appears to us to be best stated in the Advancement of Learning, where Bacon says,

"Wherein the daughters of Time do take after the father; for as Time devoureth his children, so these, one of them seeketh to depress the other; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions; and novelty cannot be content to add things recent, but it must deface and reject the old. Surely the advice of the prophet is the true direction in this case. State super vias antiquas et videte quænam sit via recta et bona et ambulate in ea. Antiquity deserveth that reverence that men should make a stay awhile, and stand thereupon, and look about to discover which is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then not to rest there but cheerfully to make progression. Indeed to speak truly, Antiquitas sæculi, juventus Mundi, certainly our times are the ancient times, when the world is now ancient, and not those which we count ancient, ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from our own times."

We quit this Idol with Sir Henry Wotton's remark in his answer to Bacon; "of your Novum Organum, I shall speak more hereafter, but I have learnt thus much already by it, that we are extremely mistaken in the computation of Antiquity, by searching it back wards, because indeed the first times were the youngest."

Some of the most obvious consequences of this idolatry are the rejection of knowledge if it appear to differ from the favorite pursuit; as the Cambridge mathematician, who said that Milton's Paradise Lost proved nothing: or the lawyer, who refused to proceed in a most interesting novel, because the first chapter contained a bad will: and,-the infecting studies with the favorite pursuit; as the poet, who, when doomed to study law, turned Coke upon Littleton and his reports into verse; or the geometrician, who took no pleasure in the Æneid, but in tracing the voyage of Æneas.

Upon this topic, Bacon abounds with observations: we cannot however think it necessary to cite any of his illustrations, as it is scarcely possible to converse with a member of any profession without perceiving the effects of this idolatry.-The cure of

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diseases appears in the conversation of physicians; fractured limbs in the friendly intercourse of anatomists; and lawyers will put a case amidst the philosophy of Newton, and the imagination of Milton. Upon hearing the Witches in Macbeth say, we are doing a deed without a name," we do not forget our learned friend in the pit, who exclaimed, " then it's not worth a farthing;" nor do we forget that, after a high encomium by a late eminent lawyer, upon the powers displayed by Bacon in his reading on the statute of uses, he says, "what might we not have expected from the hands of such a master, if his vast mind had not so embraced within its compass the whole field of science, as very much to detach him from professional studies." We wish it was in our power to forget, that Sir Edward Coke, (or that his contracted mind ought to be forgotten,) in Lord Bacon's presentation copy to him of the Novum Organum, which is now at Holkham, wrote with his own hand, under the hand writing of Lord Bacon,

Auctori consilium.

Instaurare paras, veterum documenta sophisma,
Instaura legis, justitiamque prius;

and over the device of the ship, passing between Hercules' pillars:

"It deserveth not to be read in schools,

But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools."

We lament, that within the limits of a review, instead of a minute explanation of the various remedies which, in different parts of his works, Bacon has suggested for these defects, we are compelled to confine ourselves to a mere enumeration of his admonitions:

1. That the mind should not be fixed, but kept open to receive continual improvement, which, he says, is exceeding rare.

2. That the mind should be daily employed upon some subject from which it is averse, and that we should bear ever toward the contrary of that whereunto we are by nature inclined: like as when we row against the stream, or when we make a crooked wand straight, by bending it the contrary way.

3. That, if the mind is too discursive, the habit of fixedness should be formed by engaging in studies that will not admit mental aberration; and particularly in the study of the mathematics, of which he says, if a man be bird-witted, that is, quickly carried away, and hath not the patient faculty of attention, the mathematics give a remedy thereunto, wherein, if the wit be caught away but for a moment, the demonstration is new to begin.

"And, indeed, men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it if too wandering, they fix it: if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put into all postures; so in the mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and intended."

In his sentiments of the importance of the habit of intellectual fixedness, Bacon is not peculiar. Locke, in his Conduct

the Understanding, intimates that it is the cause upon which mental perfection chiefly depends. It was, we understand, a common observation of Newton's, that if there were any difference between him and other men, it consisted in his fixing his eye steadily on the object which he had in view, and waiting patiently for every idea as it presented itself, without wandering or hurrying; and Burke, we have been told, always read a book as if he never were to see it again.

but

"4. In general there is no stond or impediment in the wit, may be wrought out by fit studies. Like as diseases of the body may have appropriated exercises: bowling is good for the stone and reins shooting for the lungs and breast: gentle walking for the stomach riding for the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again: if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen : for they are Cymini sectores: if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt."

Such is the nature of these Idols of the Den, with some of their consequences and remedies,

"Of which Plato's cave is an excellent emblem: for certainly if a man were continued from his childhood to mature age in a grotto or dark and subterraneous cave, and then should come suddenly abroad and should behold the stately canopy of heaven and the furniture of the world, without doubt he would have many strange and absurd imaginations come into his mind and people his brain. So in like manner we live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits are enclosed in the caves of our bodies, complexions and customs, which must needs minister unto us infinite images of error and vain opinions, if they do seldom and for so short a time appear above ground out of their holes, and do not continually live under the contemplation of nature as in the open air."