the world, to a Christian travelling to the land of promise, be as it were a wilderness, yet that our shooes and vestments be less worn away while we sojourn in this wilderness, is to be esteemed a gift coming from the divine goodness," admonishes his reader" that the prolongation of life is to be expected only from working upon the spirits."-Upon this his favourite subject of vital spirit there is also a methodical disquisition in the second part of the Novum Organum, in the section entitled "Summoning or Citing Instances;" and, after having examined this interesting subject as a philosopher in his different works, he illustrates it, as a species of poetry, in one of his Fables of the Ancients.*

Such are the defects of the senses noticed in the Novum Organum. The defects of the judgment, or our tendencies either not to admit or to abandon truth, are more minutely investigated. At the entrance of his work, we are warned that there are certain idols and false notions of the mind, which take such root therein and so possess it, that truth can hardly find entrance, and even when it is entered, that they will again rise up, choak and destroy it; and that all hope of mental perfection is vain, unless they are first eradicated that, as the kingdom of heaven can be entered only in the condition of little children, so the kingdom of man, which is founded in the sciences, can be entered only by resisting those tendencies to which we all, great and little children, are exposed.

These idols are, he says, of four kinds: to us they appear to be reducible to two. The first species is what Bacon terms,

"Idols of the Tube, or Defects common to the whole Human Race.

"These are certain predispositions which beset the mind of man: certain idols which are constantly operating upon the mind and warping it from the truth; for the mind of man, drawn over and clouded with the sable pavilion of the body, is so far from being like a smooth, equal and clear glass, which might sincerely take and reflect the beams of things according to their true incidence, that it is rather like an enchanted glass full of superstitions, apparitions, and impostures."

Or, as Locke in his Conduct of the Understanding, framed, as it seems, upon Bacon's introduction, says: "Men do not look through glasses which represent images in their true forms and colours: for they put coloured spectacles before their eyes, and look on things through false glasses, and then think themselves

* See the "Fable of Proserpine."

excused in following the false appearances which they themselves put upon them."

That the pernicious tendency of these idols may be clearly understood, it may be well to remember, that a man of sound judgment is not diverted from the truth by the strength of immediate impression. He decides with unbiassed impartiality, never suffering any passion to interfere with the love of truth. He does not form a hasty opinion. He is not tenacious in retaining an opinion when formed.:" he is never ashamed of being wiser to day than he was yesterday:" he never wanders from the substance of the matter in judgment into useless subtlety and refinement.

In one of the most eloquent sermons in our language upon the text, "So God created man in his own image,' "there is a noble picture, by Dr. South,* of human perfection. In speaking of the understanding, he says: " And first for its noblest faculty, the understanding: it was the leading, controlling faculty; all the passions wore the colours of reason; it did not so much persuade, as command; it was not Consul, but Dictator. Discourse was then almost as quick as intuition; it was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could sooner determine than now it can dispute. Like the sun, it had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet, but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend, as irradiate the object; not so much find, as make things intelligible. It did arbitrate upon the several reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their verdict. In sum, it was vegete, quick, and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and spright

* We cannot refrain, in the hope of recommending this sermon to our readers, from subjoining the following description of the passion of joy." In the next place, for the lightsome passion of Joy. It was not that, which now often usurps this name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing, that only gilds the apprehension, and plays upon the surface of the soul. It was not the mere crackling of thorns, a sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was then masculine and a severe thing: the recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidities of truth, and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice, or undecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed; like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival, managed with the silence of contemplation."

liness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and a full view into all things, and was not only a window, but itself the prospect."

Such was Adam in Paradise. Speaking of fallen man, he says: "Take the picture of a man in the greenness and vivacity of his youth, and in the latter date and declensions of his drooping years, and you will scarce know it to belong to the same person: there would be more art to discern, than at first to draw it. The same and greater is the difference between man innocent and fallen, He is, as it were, a new kind or species; the plague of sin has even altered his nature, and eaten into his very essentials. The image of God is wiped out, the creatures have shook off his yoke, renounced his sovereignty and revolted from his dominion. Distempers and diseases have shattered the excellent frame of his body; and by a new dispensation, immortality is swallowed up of mortality. The same disaster and decay also has invaded his spirituals: the passions rebel, every faculty would usurp and rule; and there are so many governors, that there can be no government. The light within us is become darkness; and the understanding, that should be eyes to the blind faculty of the will, is blind itself, and so brings all the inconveniences, that attend a blind follower under the conduct of a blind guide. He that would have a clear, ocular demonstration of this, let him reflect upon that numerous litter of strange, senseless, absurd opinions, that crawl about the world, to the disgrace of reason, and the unanswerable reproach of a broken intellect."

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To the operation of these idols, Bacon ascribes this mental degradation by which our judgments are diverted from the truth by the strength of immediate impression: by which we do not decide with unbiassed impartiality: we suffer passions to interfere with the love of truth: we form hasty opinions: we are tenacious in retaining opinions when formed and wander into endless inquiry.

We will subjoin in detached sentences, as a specimen both of the manner and substance of the Novum Organum, an illustration of some of these idols.

"The Mind is warped by the Strength of immediate Impression.

"1. As things escape the senses from preposition by another object; so a flood of light let in at once upon the mind is apt to dazzle and disorder it. It is warped by a strong heat.

"2. The human intellect is most moved by those things that strike and enter it all at once; so that whoever studies the nature of things should suspect whatever powerfully strikes and determines the mind, and use so much the greater caution to preserve his mind pure and equable in such kind of tenets.

"If Man is under the Influence of any Passion more powerful than the Love of Truth, he swerves from the Truth.

1. Man would contend that two and two did not make four, if his interests were affected by this position.

"2. The light of the understanding is not a dry and pure light but drenched in the will and affections, and the intellect forms the sciences accordingly. What men desire should be true they are most inclined to believe. The understanding, therefore, rejects things difficult as being impatient of enquiry: things just and solid, because they limit hope; and the deeper mysteries of nature through superstition: it rejects the light of experience through pride and haughtiness, as disdaining the mind should be meanly and waverly employed: it excludes paradoxes for fear of the vulgar: and thus the affections tinge and infect the understanding numberless ways, and sometimes imperceptibly.

3. Agnus was the only combination which the wolf, learning to spell, could make of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.

4. In the memoirs of Baron Grimm, he says, “Madame Geoffrin avait fait à M. de Rhulière des offres assez considérable pour l'engager à jeter au feu son Manuscrit sur la Russie. Il lui prouva très éloquemment que ce serait de sa part l'action la plus indigne et la plus lâche. A tout ce grand étalage d'honneur, de vertu, de sensibilité qu'elle avait paru écouter avec beaucoup de patience, elle ne lui répondit que ces deux mots: En voulezvous davantage?"

5. A certain English ambassador, who had a long time resided at the court of Rome, was on his return introduced at the levee of Queen Caroline. This lady asked him why in his absence he did not try to make a convert of the Pope to the Protestant religion? He answered, "Madam, the reason was, that I had nothing better to offer his Holiness than what he already has in his possession."

Man is tenacious in retaining his opinions.

1. Some men of genius are wrapped up in the admiration of antiquity; others spend themselves in a fondness for novelty; and few are so tempered as to hold a mean; but either quarrel with what was justly laid down by the ancients, or despise what is justly advanced by the moderns. And this is highly prejudicial to philosophy for truth is not to be derived from any felicity of times, which is an uncertain thing, but from the light of nature, which is eternal.

2. One man is muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect, and will not touch a book or enter into debate by which the opinions that to him are sacred may be questioned.

3. One man loaths all science but what is subject to the immediate observation of the senses,—of the eye, of the touch. To him there is nothing worth pursuit but that which he can handle: which he can measure with a two-foot rule; which he can tell upon ten fingers.

4. He says, if the wit and mind of man work upon matter which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, it worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby: but if it work upon itself as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, bringing forth, indeed, cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of their texture, but of no substance or profit.

5. Another man has such a reverence and adoration of the mind and understanding of man, that he withdraws himself from the contemplations of nature and the observations of experience, and tumbles up and down in his own speculations and conceits.

6. In the preface to the work of an enlightened philosopher, to whom the community is indebted for a valuable treatise on "Heat," he says, "I have found myself compelled to relinquish some preconceived notions: but I have not abandoned them hastily, nor, till after a warm and obstinate defence, I was driven from every post."

Man has a tendency to hasty generalization.

1. There is another haste that does often, and will mislead the mind if it be left to itself, and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, not only to learn its knowledge by variety, (which makes it skip over one to get speedily to another part of knowledge) but also eager to enlarge its views by running too fast into general observations and conclusions, without a due examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies not realities: such theories, built upon narrow foundations, stand but weakly, and if they fall not themselves, are at least very hard to be supported against the assault of opposition.

2. It is the nature of man, to the great prejudice of knowledge, to delight in the open fields of generals rather than in the woods and inclosures of particulars:-therefore nothing was found more acceptable and delightful than the mathematics; wherein that appetite of expatiating and meditating might be satisfied.

"3. The inferring a general position from a nude enumeration of particulars without an instance contradictory is vicious: nor doth such an induction infer more than a probable conjecture that there is no repugnant instance undiscovered. For who will take upon him, when the particulars which a man knows and which he hath mentioned appear only on one side, there may not lurk some particular which is altogether repugnant. As if Samuel should have rested in those sons