And it is this breadth of inquiry--directed to subjective as well as objective knowledge--which made Bacon so great a benefactor. The defect in Macaulay's criticism is that he makes Bacon interested in mere outward phenomena, or matters of practical utility,--a worldly utilitarian of whom Epicureans may be proud. In reality he soared to the realm of Plato as well as of Aristotle. Take, for instance, his _Idola Mentis Humanae_, or "Phantoms of the Human Mind," which compose the best-known part of the "Novum Organum." "The Idols of the Tribe" would show the folly of attempting to penetrate further than the limits of the human faculties permit, as also "the liability of the intellect to be warped by the will and affections, and the like." The "Idols of the Den" have reference to "the tendency to notice differences rather than resemblances, or resemblances rather than differences, in the attachment to antiquity or novelty, in the partiality to minute or comprehensive investigations." "The Idols of the Market-Place" have reference to the tendency to confound words with things, which has ever marked controversialists in their learned disputations. In what he here says about the necessity for accurate definitions, he reminds us of Socrates rather than a modern scientist; this necessity for accuracy applies to metaphysics as much as it does to physics. "The Idols of the Theatre" have reference to perverse laws of demonstration which are the strongholds of error. This school deals in speculations and experiments confined to a narrow compass, like those of the alchemists,--too imperfect to elicit the light which should guide. Bacon having completed his discussion of the _Idola_, then proceeds to point out the weakness of the old philosophies, which produced leaves rather than fruit, and were stationary in their character. Here he would seem to lean towards utilitarianism, were it not that he is as severe on men of experiment as on men of dogma. "The men of experiment are," says he, "like ants,--they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers the material from the flowers, but digests it by a power of its own.... So true philosophy neither chiefly relies on the powers of the mind, nor takes the matter which it gathers and lays it up in the memory, whole as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding, to be transformed and digested." Here he simply points out the laws by which true knowledge is to be attained. He does not extol physical science alone, though doubtless he had a preference for it over metaphysical inquiries. He was an Englishman, and the English mind is objective rather than subjective, and is prone to over-value the outward and the seen, above the inward and unseen; and perhaps for the same reason that the Old Testament seems to make prosperity the greatest blessing, while adversity seems to be the blessing of the New Testament.