Sir Francis Bacon, whose contribution to utopian social thought has been indicated in the foregoing chapter, placed all social and sociological thinkers under deep obligations by his emphasis upon inductive reasoning. He helped to free the individual from control by dogma and superstition. He provided the individual with a technique for securing a new sense of individual freedom. In freeing himself the individual discards his irrational pre-judgments, whether socially inherited or individually developed. He protects himself from anthropomorphic judgments, i. e., from judgments which he makes because he looks upon life and the universe through human eyes. These pre-judgments are common to all mankind--they are “the idols of the tribe.” On the other hand, the individual avoids purely personal preferences, which he is likely to hold because of his own peculiar experiences, and which thus place him outside the pale of common experience--these are “the idols of the cave.” Then there are “the idols of the forum,” which cause the individual to give undue dependence to words and language. “The idols of the theater” are traditional systems of thought. Bacon’s dictum has been stated as follows: Get as little of yourself and of other selves as possible in the way of the thing which you wish to see. Having eliminated human predispositions, the individual is ready to gather facts, arrange them in groups, draw conclusions from them, and act according to the resultant laws. Knowledge gives power.[XI-4] Social knowledge gives power to improve human conditions and makes possible wise social control. Thus, Bacon opened the road to individual freedom. Too much individual freedom, however, destroys government and the social order. If each individual is a law unto himself, anarchy reigns and progress is prevented. Consequently, the question arises: How can individually free persons unite in a society without giving up their freedom? The answer to this question took the form of a controversy on the subject of the social contract, i. e., the contract or agreement of individuals, as units, to form and maintain societies. This controversy arose in the seventeenth century and was waged vigorously in the eighteenth century.