The ideal scientist, having suffered an initial experience, then forms a tentative hypothesis merely to direct his subsequent experiments, and never for an instant permits his enthusiasm for theory to warp his judgment regarding fact. But as there are no ideal scientists, what is to be done? Bacon thus notes what is to be expected: “The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down ... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet [the understanding] either does not observe, or despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.”[100] How highly fateful, then, must have been those first propositions which modern science laid down in its infancy. But man is not to be balked by his own infirmities. Since he cannot hope to abolish the worship of this particular Idol of the Tribe, cannot hope to be led by non-existent ideal scientists, he will make a virtue of his necessity and reap what good he may from his very shortcomings. Men will not abandon their fetishes and become reasonable. Very well, then, we will incorporate the Idol of the Tribe in our general method, and let abuses correct themselves. We will give them rope until they are hanged thereby. This is precisely what has been done. Bacon’s Idol of the Tribe, the human tendency to bend experience to suit theory, has been put upon a pedestal and crowned with the high-sounding name of a principle called “The Economy of Hypotheses.” Of two possible explanations of a phenomenon, that one is chosen which requires the fewer suppositions, the least departure from hypotheses already existing. This is nothing more nor less than the principle of conservatism, and probably, in the long run, it does more good than harm. It is a protection against wild and radical theories. It gives men a chance for that long and intense application which they will give to nothing but to the defense of old and cherished beliefs. But it makes the correction of a fundamental error a very slow business, and though a part of the now recognized methods of science, it is not scientific.