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Thirdly, Idols of the Market-place, arising “from the commerce and association of men with one another.
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?
Every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be causeless, nor any mover unmoved.
Lastly, there are idols which have migrated into men’s minds from the various dogmas of philosophers, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theatre, because in my judgment all the received systems of philosophy are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion... And in the plays of this philosophic theater you may observe the same thing which is found in the theater of the poets,—that stories invented for the stage are more compact and elegant, and more as we would wish them to be, than true stories out of
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“if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties” (alas, it is not quite inevitable).
By this insistent accumulation and analysis of data we come, in Bacon’s phrase, to the form of the phenomenon which we study,—to its secret nature and its inner essence. The theory of forms in Bacon is very much like the theory of ideas in Plato: a metaphysics of science.
“When we speak of forms we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations of simple action which arrange and constitute any simple nature... The form of heat or the form of light, therefore, means no more than the law of heat or the law of light.”94
Of theory and of practice; one without the other is useless and perilous; knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
It is a government of the people and for the people by the selected best of the people; a government by technicians, architects, astronomers, geologists, biologists, physicians, chemists, economists, sociologists, psychologists and
philosophers. Complicated enough; but think of a government without politicians!
There is foreign trade, but of an unusual sort; the island produces what it consumes, and consumes what it produces; it does not go to war for foreign markets. “We maintain a trade, not of gold, silver, or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor for any other commodity or matter; but only for God’s first creature, which was light; to have light of the growth of all parts of the world.”
The dream of every thinker is to replace the politician by the scientist; why does it remain only a dream after so many incarnations?
Perhaps science has not yet merited the mastery of the world; and perhaps in a little while it will.
But is the formulation Bacon’s own? Is not the Socratic method inductive? Is not Aristotle’s biology inductive? Did not Roger Bacon practise as well as
preach the inductive method which Francis Bacon merely preached? Did not Galileo formulate better the procedure that science has actually used?
As Rawley puts it, Bacon “contemned no man’s observations, but would light his torch at every man’s candle.”
But Bacon acknowledges these debts: he refers to “that useful method of Hippocrates,”—so sending us at once to the real source of inductive logic among the Greeks; and “Plato,” he writes (where less accurately we write “Socrates”), “giveth good example of inquiry by induction and view of particulars; though in such a wandering manner as is of no force or fruit.”
But then again, is the Baconian method correct? Is it the method most fruitfully used in modern science? No: generally, science has used, with best result, not the accumulation of data (“natural history”) and their manipulation by the complicated tables of the Novum Organum, but the simpler method of hypothesis, deduction and experiment.
Bacon himself anticipated the superannuation of his method; the actual practice of science would discover better modes of investigation than could be worked out in the interludes of statesmanship. “These things require some ages for the ripening of them.”
Even a lover of the Baconian spirit must concede, too, that the great Chancellor, while laying down the law for science, failed to keep abreast of the science of his time. He rejected Copernicus and ignored Kepler and Tycho Brahe; he depreciated Gilbert and seemed unaware of Harvey. In truth, he loved discourse better than research; or perhaps he had no time for toilsome investigations.
Shakespeare lacks just that which distinguishes the lordly Chancellor—erudition and philosophy. Shakespeare has an impressive smattering of many sciences, and a mastery of none; in all of them he speaks with the eloquence of an amateur. He accepts astrology: “This huge state... whereon the stars in secret influence comment.” He is forever making mistakes which the learned Bacon could not possibly have made: his Hector quotes Aristotle and his Coriolanus alludes to Cato; he supposes the Lupercalia to be a hill; and he understands Cæsar about as profoundly as Cæsar is understood by H.G. Wells.
Carlyle calls Shakespeare the greatest of intellects; but he was rather the greatest of imaginations, and the keenest eye. He is an inescapable psychologist, but he is not a philosopher: he has no structure of thought unified by a purpose for his own life and for mankind.
King James, it is true, refused to accept his suggestion for the support of science, and said of the Novum Organum that “it was like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” But better men, in 1662, founding that Royal Society which was to become the greatest association of scientists in the world, named Bacon as their model and inspiration;
“If,” said Diderot in the Prospectus, “we have come of it successfully, we shall owe most to the Chancellor Bacon, who threw out the plan of an universal dictionary of sciences and arts, at a time when, so to say, neither arts nor sciences existed. That extraordinary genius, when it was impossible to write a history of what was known, wrote one of what it was necessary to learn.”
D’Alembert called Bacon “the greatest, the most universal, and the most eloquent of philosophers.”
He had written in his will these proud and characteristic words: “I bequeath my soul to God... My body to be buried obscurely. My name to the next ages
and to foreign nations.” The ages and the nations have accepted him.
The author has thought it better in this section to make no attempt to concentrate further the already compact thought of Bacon, and has preferred to put the philosopher’s wisdom in his own incomparable English rather than to take probably greater space to say the same things with less clarity, beauty, and force.
The cleverest defenders of a faith are its greatest enemies; for their subtleties engender doubt and stimulate the mind.
He seems to have studied Socrates and Plato and Aristotle; but he preferred to them the great atomists, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius; and the Stoics left their mark upon him ineffaceably.
He studied Bruno (1548–1600),
What a wealth of ideas there was in this romantic Italian! First of all the master idea of unity: all reality is one in substance, one in cause, one in
origin; and God and this reality are one.
Finally and above all, he was influenced by Descartes (1596–1650), father of the subjective and idealistic (as was Bacon of the objective and realistic) tradition in modern philosophy.
Have you examined all those religions, ancient and modern, which are taught here, and in India, and all the world over? And even supposing that you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best?
Finally, the Grand Monarch himself, Louis XIV, offered him a substantial pension, with the implied condition that Spinoza should dedicate his next book to the King. Spinoza courteously declined.
Nietzsche says somewhere that the last Christian died upon the cross. He had forgotten Spinoza.
It is unwise of an author to prove his point too thoroughly; his conclusions pass into the currency of all educated minds, and his works no longer have that mystery about them which draws us ever on. So it has been with Voltaire; and so with Spinoza’s treatise on religion and the state.
“Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion... Its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination.”
Interpreted on this principle, the Bible, says Spinoza, contains nothing contrary to reason. But interpreted literally, it is full of errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities—as that the Pentateuch was written by Moses.
But the philosopher knows that God and nature are one being, acting by necessity and according to invariable law; it is this majestic Law which he will reverence and obey. He knows that in the Scriptures “God is described as a law-giver or prince, and styled just, merciful, etc., merely in concession to the understanding of the people and their imperfect knowledge; that in reality God acts... by the necessity of his nature, and his decree... are eternal truths.”
Spinoza makes no separation between Old and New Testament, and looks upon the Jewish and the Christian religion as one, when popular hatred and misunderstandings are laid aside, and philosophical interpretation finds the hidden core and essence of the rival faiths.
The Jews have survived chiefly because of Christian hatred of them; persecution gave them the unity and solidarity necessary for continued racial existence; without persecution they might have mingled and married with the peoples of Europe, and been engulfed in the majorities with which they were everywhere surrounded.
Let improbable dogmas be withdrawn, and the Jews would soon recognize in Jesus the greatest and noblest of the prophets. Spinoza does not accept the divinity of Christ, but he puts him first among men.
The more the mind knows, the better it understands its forces and the order of nature; the more it understands its forces or strength, the better it will be able to direct itself and lay down the rules for itself; and the more it understands the order of nature, the more easily it will be able to liberate itself from useless things; this is the whole method.
Meanwhile, however, the philosopher must remain a man and a citizen; what shall be his mode of life during his pursuit of truth? Spinoza lays down a simple rule of conduct to which, so far as we know, his actual behavior thoroughly conformed: 1. To speak in a manner comprehensible to the people, and to do for them all things that do not prevent us from attaining our ends... 2. To enjoy only such pleasures, as are necessary for the preservation of health. 3. Finally, to seek only enough money... as is necessary for the maintenance of our life and health, and to comply with such customs as are
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We must distinguish carefully the various forms of knowledge, and trust only the best. First, then, there is hearsay knowledge, by which, for example, I know the day of my birth. Second, vague experience, “empirical” knowledge in the derogatory sense, as when a physician knows a cure not by any scientific formulation of experimental tests, but by a “general impression” that it has “usually” worked. Third, immediate deduction, or knowledge reached by reasoning, as when I conclude to the immensity of the sun from seeing that in the case of other objects distance decreases the apparent size.
Hence the highest kind of knowledge is the fourth form, which comes by immediate deduction and direct perception, as when we see at once that 6 is the missing number in the proportion, 2:4::3:x; or as when we perceive that the whole is greater than the part.
It must be noted that I do not understand here by the series of causes and real entities a series of individual mutable things, but rather the series of fixed and eternal things. For it would be impossible for human weakness to follow up the series of individual mutable things, not only because their number surpasses all count, but because of the many circumstances, in one and the same thing, each of which may be the cause of the thing’s existence. For indeed, the existence of particular things has no connection with their essence, and is not an eternal truth. However, there is no need that we
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Spinoza came to the suggestion with a mind trained in mathematics as the very basis of all rigorous scientific procedure, and impressed with the achievements of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo.
