CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY FRANCIS BACON speaks in two different works of Idola Fori, or phantoms of the market-place; by which we must suppose him to intend those names, expressions, habits, and modes of opinion, which inspire men with superstitious reverence, through their natural tendency to imitation and dread of singularity. Among these Idola is a certain accepted artificiality of language, especially in vogue among those educated classes of society which most despise education; it is a kind of badge of brotherhood. Many instances might be collected; but perhaps one of the most striking examples is the constant employment of the word divine, the effect of 1 Advancement of Learning, XIV, II, and Novum Organum, 1, 43. which, though not the intention, is to attribute even such things as dinners and dresses to the direct operation of the Spirit of the Universe. Even poetae minimi are great offenders in the use of this word, though they have the charming excuse of a handy rhyming syllable. as, Some of this vulgar contempt for precision of language is of journalistic origin; for instance, the reiteration in newspapers of the extremely technical term evolution, when all that is really intended is progress or merely progression. Current phraseology is, in fact, hostile to the exact expression of thought, and something of its inadequacy attaches to the common employment of the word Art; first, because in ordinary parlance, it does not include Poetry, which, in my estimation, is its principal part; and secondly, because many things are called artistic, which are mere artifice, or matter of taste and imitation; or else are merely distant derivatives of Architecture or Painting. For these reasons I should have preferred to have altogether avoided the use of the word in subsequent chapters. But it is impossible to banish large terms from the discussion of large subjects, and the word Art, however tiresome, is also indispensable. But when everything is included, Comparison is excluded, and here as everywhere, Comparison is our only guide. If all productions of taste and skill, in all departments of life, are to be comprised in the term Art, then some other designation must be found for Poetry, Music, Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting; for otherwise the term ceases to be of any service as an instrument of Thought. For purposes of lucid thought, Art ought to be held to imply only those forms of Sound, Shape, or Colour, which are capable of embodying an Idea or of transmitting the Image from the mind of the Maker (the meaning of the Greek word Poet) to the mind of the hearer or beholder. Thus, in strict terminology, we must hold that the word Art cannot include the Inter 1 |