THE GENESIS, DEFINITION, AND CLASSIFICATION OF BACON'S IDOLS Walter H. OBriant University of Georgia

In assessing the thought of Sir Francis Bacon, John M. Robertson writes:

Without fully compassing any important new truths, and without recognizing many of those reached by other men, he yet saw and stated, with a vividness never surpassed, the intellectual vices which incapacitated most men for either discovering or appreciating truth.'

These intellectual vices are formulated in Bacon's doctrine of the Idols of the mind or more precisely of the human mind since there are no Idols in the case of the divine mind.'

While there appears to be a consensus that the doctrine of the Idols is central to the thought of Bacon, there has been and continues to be substantial disagreement about Bacon's understanding of the Idols and the role which they have in his work, particularly in the Novurn Organum.

It is to the resolution of these issues that I wish to turn in this essay. First, let us look briefly at the chronological development of the doctrine.

I

The Idols are first mentioned in an early work The Masculine Birth of Time, but they do not receive detailed treatment until 1603 in Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature, with Annotations of Hermes Stella.

Of the internal and profound errors and superstitions in the nature of the mind and of the four sorts of idols or fictions which offer themselves to the understanding in the inquisition of knowledge; being the 16th chapter, and this a small fragment thereof, being a preface to the inward elenches of the mind. . . . .

I do find therefore in this enchanted glass [i.e. the mind] four Idols or false appearances of several and distinct sorts, every sort comprehening 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,

Walter H. OBriant received his Ph.D. from Emory University and is currenily Associaie Professor of Philosophy at the University of Georgia. His main interest is the history of modern philosophy. He received the Hoepfner h i r e for the best essay in the Southern Humanities Review in 1973, and attended the 1974 Institute on Eurly Modern Philosophy.

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What Bacon here calls “Idols of the Palace” are referred to in his other works as “Idols of the Forum” or “Idols of the Market-place”. It seems likely that “palace” is a scribe’s error for “place”.

Bacon next treats of the Idols in 1605 in The Advancement of Learning (English version in two books). But his discussion here is significantly different from that in Vuferius Terminus. He describes the Idols, but does not assign them names. Moreover he delineates only three kinds; what he later called “the Idols of the Theatre” are not mentioned.

Why this difference? While most of Valerius Terminus was composed in or by 1603, there were emendations to it made later by Bacon. Between the composition of the work and its transcription, for example, the order of the chapters was changed. It would have been convenient to replace “three” with “four” and to add “the Idols of the Theatre” at th: end of the sentence-the position it occupies in both of its occurrences.

Thus, the delineation in The Advancement of Learning represents a less developed stage in Bacon’s thought about the Idols despite the fact that it is on the whole chronologically later than Valerius Terminus.

In Outline and Argument of the Second Part of the Instauration, which dates from about 1607, Bacon again uses a threefold classifica- tion, but one quite different from that found in The Advancement of Learning. Instead of the Idols of the Tribe, the Cave, and the Market- place, Bacon delineates Idols of the Philosophies, the Demonstrations, and the Human Mind. We shall explore the basis for this shift later.

What has been commonly regarded as Bacon’s most detailed and developed statement about the Idols is found in the Novum Organum, a work in preparation from about 1609 and published in 1620. Particularly in aphorisms XXXVIII through LXVIII, Bacon spells out once again the doctrine of the Idols using the fourfold enumeration of Valerius Terminus.

Finally, there is De Augmentis Scientiarum, completed in 1622 and published in the fall of the following year. This is a Latin version of the earlier work The Advancement of Learning, but considerably expanded by adding to a Latin translation of the original Book I eight other books. Chapter IV of the Fifth Book contains a discussion of the doctrine of the Idols.

Thus we find Bacon using what seem to be two quite different classification schemes and a varying number of sub-divisions for one of those schemes. To determine why Bacon resorted to these various delineations and the significance for his thought, we need to consider this development in more detail.

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a. request for a clear statement of his method by asking:

In Chapter I of The Masculine Birth of Time’ Bacon responds to the

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Are you of the opinion when all the entrances and passages of all minds are filled and obstructed by the darkest idols-idols firmly rooted in place and fused there-that there are unadulterated sites in readiness available for the true and natural light of things?6

In this context, perhaps with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in the background, Bacon characterizes the Idols which inhabit men’s minds as very similar to those idols in the sense of false objects of worship which might be set up outside the entrance and along the approach to whatever is the true object of our desire and respect so as to distract and impede us in our search for knowledge. b. In The Advancement of Learning Bacon divides the Arts of Judgment into the way of direction and the way of caution, the latter having been “introduced for expedite use and assurance sake; discovering the more subtile forms of sophisms and illaqueations [snares] with their redargutions [refutations], which is that which is termed Elenches.” The Elenches in turn fall into three major sorts: “wise cautions against ambiguities of speech” (“the great sophism of all sophisms being equivocation or ambiguity of words and phrase”), “seducement that worketh by the strength of the impression and not by the subtilty of the illaqueation; not so much perplexing the reason as overruling it by power of the imagination,” and lastly “a much more important and profound kind of fallacies in the mind of man, . . . the force whereof is such, as it doth not dazzle or snare the understanding in some particulars, but doth more generally and inwardly infect and corrupt the state thereof.”’ As a consequence, “the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.”’

This is the first time Bacon has divided the Idols into different kinds: “the false appearances that are imposed upon us by the general nature of the mind”; “by every man’s own individual nature and custom,” and “by words, which are framed and applied according to our conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort.”’ This threefold division corresponds to what Bacon will later term Idols of the Tribe, Cave, and Market-place, respectively.

it is not possible to divorce ourselves from these fallacies and false appearances, because they are inseparable from our nature and condition of life; so yet nevertheless the caution of them (for all elenches, as was said, are but cautions) doth extremely import the true conduct of human judgment. The particular elenches or cautions against these three false appearances I find altogether deficient.”

c. In Valerius Terminus Bacon does not give the doctrine of the Idols further development except to introduce a fourfold division by adding Idols of the Theatre. The “imagery” of the human mind is compared to “reflexion from glasses,” the Idols are associated with “inherent and profound errors and superstitions,” and the human mind is termed “of an ill and corrupt tincture.””

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The conclusion to be drawn from this, says Bacon, is that

d. Outline and Argument of the Second Part of the Instauration would seem to represent a different understanding of the Idols, not only because of the division into Idols of the Philosophies, the Demonstrations, and the Human Mind, but also because the kinds of Idols are in turn divided into those which are either adventitious and immigrate into the mind or innate and inherent in the mind. Two kinds of adventitious Idols are delineated (Idols of the Philosophies and of the Demonstrations); and one innate, Idols of the Human Mind.

But upon more careful consideration we discover that there is little, if any, substantial difference between this classification and the earlier fourfold division in Valerius Terminus. It may be that Bacon had this distinction between adventitious and innate Idols in mind when he composed The Advancement of Learning as well as other works which also predate the Outline and Argument; we cannot from the evidence presently available settle this issue.12 However that may be, such a distinction is not inconsistent with the fourfold division and may well serve to point out a feature which up to this time Bacon had not given much attention, namely, whether the Idols are “inseparable from our nature and condition in life” or immigrants which can be deported. On this basis, what are elsewhere termed “Idols of the Theatre” are adventitious, and the current division into Idols of Philosophies and Idols of Demonstrations corresponds to sub-divisions (one referring to false theories, the other to spurious methods); all the other Idols-elsewhere divided into Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Tribe, and Idols of the Market-place-are innateI3 and here referred to without distinction as “Idols of the Human Mind.”

The position of Outline and Argument represents then a shift in emphasis with attendant new terminology, but not an essential departure from his earlier views. e. Novum Organum and De Augmentis Scientiarum are usually regarded as the authoritative statements of Bacon on the Idols because ( i ) they are later than the other works and so presumably represent his mature thought, ( i i ) they are relatively complete works with con- siderable detail, and ( i i i ) in the latter work Bacon himself says, “The full and subtle handling of these [Elenches, Idols]. . . I reserve for the Novum Organum, making here only a few general observations touching them.’’14

The treatment of the Idols in the Novum Organum takes the form of aphorisms and consequently it is not set forth in quite so ordered a fashion as in the earlier works. Nevertheless we do get a considerably more detailed statement of the nature of the Idols and numerous examples.

The classes of Idols are the same as those established in Valerius Terminus. Idols of the Tribe “have their foundation in human nature itself.” Idols of the Cave are due to one’s “proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books

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and . . . authority . . .; or to the differences of impression . . .”. Idols of the Market-place are formed “by the intercourse and association of men . . . by discourse.” Finally, Idols of the Theatre “have immigrated into men’s minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of dem~nstration.”’~

In the more detailed exposition which follows immediately upon these opening characterizations, Bacon says that the Idols of the Market-place are “the most troublesome of all.” They “have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names”; and when one attempts to raise his understanding from the level of the vulgar “words stand in the way and resist the change.”16

In contrast, “Idols of the Theatre are not innate, nor do they steal into the understanding secretly, but are plainly impressed and received into the mind from the play-books of philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demonstration.”” f. The passages in De Augmentis Scientiarum are fundamentally the same. Initially Bacon says that Idols are “imposed upon the mind, either by the nature of man in general; or by the individual nature of each man; or by words, or nature communicative.”’* These obviously correspond to the Idols of the Tribe, the Cave, and the Market-place, respectively. But, Bacon adds, there is also a fourth kind called “Idols of the Theatre” which is “superinduced by corrupt theories or systems of philosophy, and false laws of demonstration. But this kind may be rejected and got rid o f . . . . The others absolutely take possession of the mind, and cannot be wholly removed.”lg Again the Idols of the Market-place are said to be ”most troublesome”; they “have crept into the understanding through the tacit agreement of men concerning the imposition of words and things.”20 And he concludes by saying that this is called “the doctrine of the Idols of the Human Mind, native and adven- titious . . .9r.Z1

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It is clear from our survey that Bacon’s conception of the Idols underwent considerable modification of the classificatory scheme and development of the attendant details and examples. He first promulgated the doctrine by an analogy set forth in rather crudely materialistic terms without making a distinction among various sorts of Idols, but by the time of Novum Organum the Idols have been divided into four kinds, distinguished in terms of the adventitious and the innate, and set in a wider context whereby “the doctrine of Idols is to the Interpretation of Nature what the doctrine of the refutation of Sophisms is to the common

It will help us in defining Idols to clarify first the issues involved in Bacon’s classificatory schemes. Since I have already argued that the division into Idols of Philosophies, of Demonstrations and of the Human Mind does not constitute a departure except in emphasis from

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Bacon’s fourfold classification, I shall concentrate here upon the latter. Robert Leslie Ellis in his “Preface to the Novum Organum” in Bacon’s

Works claims that “the principle of classification which Bacon was guided by . . . [was] the division of idols according as they come from the mind itself or from without. In the Novum Organum two belong to the former class and two to the latter. . . .”23 And, Ellis adds, there is here perhaps “a trace of the dichotomizing principle of [Peter] Ramus. . . . rr24

In a somewhat later study of Bacon’s thought, Edwin A. Abbott seems to concur in this assessment of Bacon’s classification principle when he says that Bacon treats two Idols as “inherent in the mind, and two external” to the mind.25

Both these interpreters are mistaken, in part because they took Bacon’s terminology at face value, but more importantly because they paid sufficient attention to what Bacon himself said.

There would seem to be no problem in assuming that in his use of “adventitious”26 and “innate” Bacon fits into the traditional usage, that is, “that which is implanted within us by the senses” and “that which is already within us at birth,” respectively. It would seem then that the Idols of the Market-place and of the Theatre are adventitious, and the rest innate-although even here there is something of a problem with the Idols of the Cave since they are due sometimes to “education and conversation . . ., . . . reading of books, and . . . authority . . .”, and they do not seem to be innate in the usual sense.

But this is not the basis for Bacon’s distinction. Recall that in Aphorism LXI of Novum Organum, after discussing the genesis of the other three kinds of Idols, Bacon opens his characterization of the Idols of the Theatre by saying, “But the Idols of the Theatre are not innate, nor do they steal into the understanding secretly, but are plainly impressed and received into the mind . . .”. And in De Augmentis Scientiarum he writes

Now idols are imposed upon the mind, either by the nature of man in general; or by the individual nature of each man; or by words, or nature communicative. . . . There is also a fourth kind. . . . But this kind may be rejected and got rid o f . . . .*’

Given these remarks, the classificatory principle cannot be a dichotomizing one,” since Bacon clearly groups the first three Idols together and sets the Idols of the Theatre apart.

Now we seem to have encountered another problem: How can the Idols of the Market-place rightly belong with the Idols of the Tribe and of the Cave? If the distinction is that between adventitious and innate Idols, surely Idols which arise out of our use of language are adventitious, are they not?

But again this problem results from failure to understand Bacon’s viewpoint. To grasp this let us look again at what Bacon says in The Advancement of Learning about the first three Idols before he had introduced the Idols of the Theatre. “[Ilt is not possible to divorce

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ourselves from these fallacies and false appearances, because they are inseparable from our nature and condition of life. . .rr.29 Thus in calling the first three kinds of Idols “innate” Bacon is not saying that they are all inborn; he is rather claiming that whatever their origin we cannot, once infected by them, be rid of them again. The first two Idols are typically innate in the more usual sense, but the Idols of the Market-place are innate in a second sense which includes the first. Words are necessary for our association with our fellow human beings, but words are “commonly framed and applied according to the capacity of the vulgar” and this affects our understanding adversely.

This helps explain why Bacon regards the Idols of the Market-place as the most troublesome. Unlike the Idols of the Theatre, which are “plainly impressed and received into the mind”, the Idols of the Market- place “steal into the understanding secretly.” Moreover, having once crept in we can never remove them in contrast to the Idols of the Theatre which can be rooted out and gotten rid of.

The enlarging of the types of 1dol::y the addition of the Idols of the Theatre is not, as Ellis has claimed, to achieve a better balance (two adventitious and two innate), but to take account of an entirely new kind of Idol. At some point Bacon had recognized that if false views of the world and spurious methodologies cannot be uprooted and cast out then there can be no “Great Renewal of the Sciences” for under such strictures knowledge is impossible.

There is one further point to make in this connection. James Spedding has charged that, “in the Novum Organum itself the distinction between Adscititia [adventitious] and Innata disappears. And the fact probably is that when he [Bacon] came to describe the several Idols one by one, he became aware both of the logical inconsistency of classing the Idola Fori [of the Market-place] among the Innata, and of the practical inconvenience of classing them among the Adscititia, and therefore resolved to drop the dichotomy altogether and range them in four co- ordinate cla~ses.”~’

As we have already shown, the distinction between adventitious and innate does not disappear in the Novum Organum. Bacon explicitly refers to Idols of the Theatre as not innate in Aphorism LXI. And as we have seen there is no logical inconsistency involved in classifying the Idols of the Market-place as innate-unless we refuse to follow Bacon’s own definition!

How did Spedding get so far afield? Strangely enough, because he failed to heed his own caution! Only seven paragraphs earlier Spedding points out that

the argument is set forth in the Novum Organum less systematically than Bacon originally intended. . . . A succession of aphorisms, not formally connected with each other, was probably the most convenient form for setting forth all that was most important in those parts of his work which he had ready; for without binding him to exhibit them in regular and apparent connexion, it left him at liberty to make the connexion as perfect and

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apparent as he pleased. But i t has one disadvantage: thedivisions between aphorism and aphorism tend to conceal from the eye the larger divisions between subject and subject.

Spedding seemingly overlooked one of those connections. Finally, we must attempt to answer the question: What did Bacon

mean by an Idol? Despite the centrality of this notion to Bacon’s thought, his interpreters have more often avoided this question than faced it-and even when some attempt has been made it has been largely cast in terms of a list of Bacon’s characterizations piled one on top of the other from various sources.32

As we have seen, Bacon variously refers to the Idols as what fill and obstruct the entrances and passages of the mind, fictions, false appearances, fallacies, and empty dogmas. How can the Idols be all these things?

I believe we can begin to make better sense of this seeming hodgepodge of characterizations if we keep in mind that originally Bacon regarded all the Idols, i.e., what later became the first three kinds of Idols, as innate (in his sense). These Idols infected and thereby distorted our minds so that a true understanding of nature was impossible. How the Idols accomplish this is not spelled out in detail, but the comparison with religious idols in The Masculine Birth of Time suggests that Bacon understood this in terms of both distraction and physical imped iment .

Strictly speaking, these Idols are not themselves false appearances or fictions, but since they are the foundations for the appearances Bacon apparently disregarded or overlooked the distinction.

With the introduction of the Idols of the Theatre Bacon also introduced a second and quite different conception of an Idol. These Idols are implanted by our acceptance of false world-views and our use of spurious methodologies. As such, they most properly correspond to false notions and empty dogmas rather than false appearances. 34

There is then again a distinction between the first three kinds of Idols and the fourth. But these four species also have something in common; they are the source of human error. In consequence, I believe the definition of the Idols should be formulated as follows:

Idols: the basis of human error, those of the Tribe, Cave, and Market-place being constituted by our nature, and those of the Theatre by our beliefs.

IV

Rather than aiding in the accomplishment of the Great Instauration of the Sciences, the clarification of the doctrine of the kinds of Idols reveals a fundamental disharmony in Bacon’s thought.

Bacon undoubtedly held that the renovation of the sciences is to be accomplished by human effort. To use his comparison, it will be the work, not of spiders which spin their worlds out of their own substance

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nor of ants which scavenge only to store up goods, but of bees whichgo out into the world, gather selectively, and transform what they bring back into a finer and more useful substance. Justification by authority (either of the ancients or the Church), claims of intuitive insight, and appeals to magic or secret lore have no place in Bacon’s vision of the new sciences.

The notion of the Idols of the Theatre is consistent with this strain of Bacon’s philosophy. Our essential difficulty is that we have been misled by a false metaphysics and methodology. Once we have freed ourselves from this affliction, we shall see nature as it really is and thus secure control through our knowledge of nature. And Idols of this kind can be removed.

But another strain in Bacon yields a much darker view of human nature and consequently leads to pessimism about the possibility of attaining the new day in the sciences. On this view, which is reflected in the notions of the Idols of the Tribe, Cave, and Market-place, our minds are infected with various superstitions, falsities, and distortions in so far as we belong to the human race or have read books or conversed with others. These Idols are unavoidable, though they may differ in detail from person to person, and once having gained entry they cannot be removed. We can by careful attention become aware of these Idols within us and be on guard against them-but they cannot be exorcised.

Consequently, we cannot be sure that we ever see nature as it is. We may be affected by an Idol which we have not yet become aware of or we may not have been sufficiently on guard against a previously discovered Idol. Though we can reject all previous attempts to establish the sciences as infected with error, we cannot establish in their place a new science known to be free from such defects.

The doctrine of the Idols thus puts Bacon in a quandary: How can there be an instauration of the sciences if we are infected by Idols which cannot be removed?

It may be that Bacon never realized the enormity of the problem which he had generated by his doctrine of the Idols. But 1 am inclined to think that he had a glimmer of the difficulty and attempted a resolution, albeit one which is not entirely satisfactory.

As we have already established, Bacon introduced the Idols of the Theatre after the notions of the other three had been already largely worked out. While these latter are quite wide-ranging in their scope, the Idols of the Theatre seem to relate rather specifically to the project of a new instrument for the sciences, and because these Idols are removable (and replaceable) the construction of the new instrument for the sciences is possible.

But there remains the problem engendered by the more pernicious Idols. If these Idols are not removable, are their effects at least avoidable? I believe the attempt to resolve this difficulty provides the key to understanding Bacon’s use of the Tables of Presence, of Absence, etc.

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Bacon saw the filling in of these tables as a straightforward task which involved neither sophisticated observation nor finely tuned interpreta- tion. It is as if we have but to turn our eyes in the appropriate direction and we shall see what that aspect of nature is like. Once we have various tables filled in, we compare them with one another and by a process of exclusion arrive at the nature or essence of the phenomenon under investigation.

It is just this simplistic and mechanical character of the procedure which made it so appealing to Bacon. I contend he saw in it a way to vitiate the perniciousness of even those Idols which are innate, for how could there be any distortion when the path is so straight and narrow? With the substitution of such a method for those of the Aristotelians, alchemists, etc., the last hurdle toward the achievement of the Great Instauration would be overcome.

Yet the procedure leaves little or no room for hypothesis, experiment, and creative intellect-all of which Bacon recognized as fundamental to the advancement of science. This attempt to provide for creativity while avoiding the effects of the Idols constitutes one of the most fundamental tensions in Bacon’s thought. He was usually more concerned with avoiding error, and consequently the Baconian scientist is more the ant and less the bee than Bacon himself recognized.

NOTES

‘Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, reprinted from the texts and translations, with the notes and prefaces cif Ellis and Spedding, ed. with an introduction by John M. Robertson, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 (first published: 1905). p. xii. (Hereafter referred to as PW.)

’“There is a great difference between the idols of the human mind and the ideas of the divine. . . .” Novum Organum, PW, p. 261, Aphorism XXIII.

’Valerius Terminus, PW, p. 199. 4See James Spedding, “Note to Preface to Valerius Terminus”, PW, pp. 183-184. 5According to his outline, this work was to comprise three chapters. We do not have the

third, and since the second dates from a period significantly later than the first (Spedding suggests the summer of 1608 as the earliest possible date) our discussion here is limited to Chapter I. “The design and commencement of the work may . . . be safely referred to the time when Bacon revised the manuscript of Valerius Terminus.” See Spedding’s introductory essay, vol. 111, p. 523 in: The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, new edition, London: Longmans, 1870 re rinted, New York: Garrett Press, 1968).

( ‘The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 111, p. 529. (My own translation.) A translation of The Masculine Birth of Time can be found in: Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon, Liverpool Liverpool University Press, 1964, pp. 59-72. The passage cited ap ears on p. 62.

‘PW, p. 118. ‘Ibid. ‘Ibid., p. 119. “Ibid., p. 120. “Ibid., pp. 199, 201. ”Spedding claims that this distinction appears to be recognized (in the margin) in The

Advancement of Learning, but says it is not alluded to in Valerius Terminus and that the order of enumeration of the four kinds of Idols seems to belie such a division (since the first

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and third belong to one class, the second and fourth to another). See “Notes to the Preface of the Novum Organum”, PW, p. 239. I have been unable to discover the marginal material he refers to.

”The Idols of the Market-place are classified as innate because, whatever their origin, the use of words is “inseparable from our condition of life.” See PW, p. 239. We shall have more to say about this in our discussion later of the Idols in the Novum Organum.

I4PW, p. 516. ”Aphorisms XLI-XLIV. 16Aphorism LIX. ”Aphorism LXI. I8PW,’p. 516. I9Ibid.

’I Ibid. Ibid., p. 518.

Novum Organum, Aphorism XL.

20

22

23 PW, pp. 224-225. 241bid., p. 225.

Francis Bacon, London: Macmillan, 1885, pp. 380-38 I. A more literal rendering of Bacon’s Latin would be “adscititious”, but “adventitious”

PW, p. 516. At least in the sense of a division which creates two equal classes or branches. PW, p. 120.

”lbid, p. 225.

25

26

presents no difficulty as an alternative rendering. 27

28

29

Notes to the Preface to the Novum Organum”, PW, p. 240. I cite one example of the first approach, two of the second:

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3 2

a. Ellis says, “The word idolon is used by Bacon in antithesis to idea. He does not mean by it an idol or false object of worship.” (PW, p. 38, ftnt. 71.)

b. Karl R. Wallace in a recent study Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man; The Faculties of Man’s Soul writes: “In speaking of idols, Bacon doubtless had in mind a Greek word idola, meaning phantoms, phantasms, spectres. He also suggested by idol( 1) the firm hold that an idol or image may have on man, and (2) the misapprehension it carries. In De Augmenris, V, 4, Idols are called images, and in the Advancement of Learning, false appearances, that are imposed on man by the general nature of the mind.” (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967, pp. 124-125. Wallace erroneously attributes to Spedding instead of Ellis the claim that Bacon used idolon in antithesis to idea.)

c. F.H. Anderson, in his book The Philosophy of Francis Bacon, refers to the Idols as ‘false opinions,’ ‘ dogmas, ’ ‘errors,’ ‘superstitions’ ”. (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1948, p. 97). Maurice Cranston characterizes Anderson’s work as “the most up-to-date study available.” (“Francis Bacon,” The Encycbpedia of Philosophy, N5y York: Macmillan, 1967, I, 240.)

Perhaps the sense organs and nerves correspond to the entrances and passages, res ectively.

‘Bacon may have been somewhat aware of this distinction between the first three and the fourth kinds of Idols. Up until Novum Organum he typically speaks of false appearances with the exception of a passage in The Advancement of Learning where he characterizes the Idols as a kind of fallacy. In Novum Organum he speaks of false notions and empty dogmas, while in De Augmentis Scienriarum he refers to false appearances and fallacies. But since the fourth sort of Idol was introduced explicitly in Valerius Terminus and thus well before the date of these last two works, we cannot be assured that Bacon’s change in usage is not happenstance.

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