[203] Introduction to the Novum Organum, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Even Stewart seems to have fallen into the same error. “While these idols of the den maintain their authority, the cultivation of the philosophical spirit is impossible; or rather it is in a renunciation of his idolatry that the philosophical spirit essentially consists.” Dissertation, &c.--The observation is equally true, whatever sense we may give to _idol_. [204] In Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary this sense is not mentioned. But in that of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana we have these words: “An _idol_ or image is also opposed to a reality: thus Lord Bacon (see the quotation from him) speaks of idols or false appearances.” The quotation is from the translation of one of his short tracts, which is not made by himself. It is however a proof that the word _idol_ was once at least used in this sense. [205] Quisque ex phantasiæ suæ cellulis, tanquam ex specu Platonis, philosophatur; Historia Naturalis, in præfatione Coleridge has some fine lines in allusion to this hypothesis in that magnificent effusion of his genius, the introduction to the second book of Joan of Arc, but withdrawn, after the first edition, from that poem; where he describes us as “Placed with our backs to bright reality.” I am not however certain that Bacon meant this. See De Augmentis, lib. v. c. 4. |Second book of Novum Organum.|