Valerius Terminus [13]
but for a meaner and baser sort; as a dubline is more like a perfect ruby than a spinel, and a counterfeit angel is made more like a true angel than if it were an angel coined of China gold; in like manner the direction carrieth a resemblance of a true direction in verity and liberty which indeed is no direction at all. For though your direction seem to be certain and free by pointing you to a nature that is unseparable from the nature you inquire upon, yet if it do not carry you on a degree or remove nearer to action, operation, or light to make or produce, it is but superficial and counterfeit. Wherefore to secure and warrant what is a true direction, though that general note I have given be perspicuous in itself (for a man shall soon cast with himself whether he be ever the nearer to effect and operate or no, or whether he have won but an abstract or varied notion) yet for better instruction I will deliver three particular notes of caution. The first is that the nature discovered be more original than the nature supposed, and not more secondary or of the like degree; as to make a stone bright or to make it smooth it is a good direction to say, make it even; but to make a stone even it is no good direction to say, make it bright or make it smooth; for the rule is that the disposition of any thing referring to the state of it in itself or the parts, is more original than that which is relative or transitive towards another thing. So evenness is the disposition of the stone in itself, but smooth is to the hand and bright to the eye, and yet nevertheless they all cluster and concur; and yet the direction is more unperfect, if it do appoint you to such a relative as is in the same kind and not in a diverse. For in the direction to produce brightness by smoothness, although properly it win no degree, and will never teach you any new particulars before unknown; yet by way of suggestion or bringing to mind it may draw your consideration to some particulars known but not remembered; as you shall sooner remember some practical means of making smoothness, than if you had fixed your consideration only upon brightness by making reflexion, as thus, make it such as you may see your face in it, this is merely secondary, and helpeth neither by way of informing nor by way of suggestion. So if in the inquiry of whiteness you were directed to make such a colour as should be seen furthest in a dark light; here you are advanced nothing at all. For these kinds of natures are but proprieties, effects, circumstances, concurrences, or what else you shall like to call them, and not radical and formative natures towards the nature supposed. The second caution is that the nature inquired be collected by division before composition, or to speak more properly, by composition subaltern before you ascend to composition absolute, etc.
OF THE INTERNAL AND PROFOUND ERRORS AND SUPERSTITIONS IN THE NATURE OF THE MIND, AND OF THE FOUR SORTS OF IDOLS OR FICTIONS WHICH OFFER THEMSELVES TO THE UNDERSTANDING IN THE INQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE; BEING THE 16TH CHAPTER, AND THIS A SMALL FRAGMENT THEREOF, BEING A PREFACE TO THE INWARD ELENCHES OF THE MIND.
The opinion of Epicurus that the gods were of human shape, was rather justly derided than seriously confuted by the other sects, demanding whether every kind of sensible creatures did not think their own figure fairest, as the horse, the bull, and the like, which found no beauty but in their own forms, as in appetite of lust appeared. And the heresy of the Anthropomorphites was ever censured for a gross conceit bred in the obscure cells of solitary monks that never looked abroad. Again the fable so well known of QUIS PINXIT LEONEM, doth set forth well that there is an error of pride and partiality, as well as of custom and familiarity. The reflexion also from glasses so usually resembled to the imagery of the mind, every man knoweth to receive error and variety both in colour, magnitude, and shape, according to the quality of the glass. But yet no use hath been made of these and many the like observations,
OF THE INTERNAL AND PROFOUND ERRORS AND SUPERSTITIONS IN THE NATURE OF THE MIND, AND OF THE FOUR SORTS OF IDOLS OR FICTIONS WHICH OFFER THEMSELVES TO THE UNDERSTANDING IN THE INQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE; BEING THE 16TH CHAPTER, AND THIS A SMALL FRAGMENT THEREOF, BEING A PREFACE TO THE INWARD ELENCHES OF THE MIND.
The opinion of Epicurus that the gods were of human shape, was rather justly derided than seriously confuted by the other sects, demanding whether every kind of sensible creatures did not think their own figure fairest, as the horse, the bull, and the like, which found no beauty but in their own forms, as in appetite of lust appeared. And the heresy of the Anthropomorphites was ever censured for a gross conceit bred in the obscure cells of solitary monks that never looked abroad. Again the fable so well known of QUIS PINXIT LEONEM, doth set forth well that there is an error of pride and partiality, as well as of custom and familiarity. The reflexion also from glasses so usually resembled to the imagery of the mind, every man knoweth to receive error and variety both in colour, magnitude, and shape, according to the quality of the glass. But yet no use hath been made of these and many the like observations,