The St. Louis Republic., 1901-11-25
THE BAC0NIAN IDOLS
OF THE TRIBE AND CAVE"
Rabbi Leon Harrison Warns His
Congregation Against False No
tions and Idolatrv.

Rabbi Leon Harrison at Temple Israel
yes ;sestsgrIay g,y spoke on The Baconian Idols of
tne TRIBE and Cave" He said in part:
truth Is one, but falsehood various: for
every coin there are many cOunterfeits; and
Tor every ideal, innumerable idols
Il have undertaken 10 consider TODAY
fouowlng the classification of Lord Bacon
IN MS Novum Organum, The Idols of the
Tide, OF the Cave, of the AIarketpaace and
OF the Theater.'
We must not understand Idols I'm our
Enslish sense OF the word. but rather in the
Greek sense Of Plato as opposed to ideas,
false notions as Bacon has ii, that beset
Ine human mind, SO that truth can hardly
md entrance there.
Some OF these hindrances are innate.
some take their rise without ourselves.
They control man variousy and strongly.
We err In believing ourselves quite free and
uhinnuenced save as We will it. The free
thinker, himself, so called, does not think
autocratio We are We drift. We are car
rted hither and thither. our dispositions
ana seutude are fashioned for us. We have
alone.
Now, the first class, the idols Of the
Tribe. Is of paramount scientific interest
pretation simply popular delusions They
are In the main the following propositions.
The human understanding is prone to i'm
pose upon the world more order and sim
plicity than it really finds. Further, the
human understanding, when 1t has once
adopted an opinion, prefers rather TO listen
TO Its proof than its disproof And thus
the understanding is infected by the Will
and the affections. For what man desires
TO be true, he more readily believes
These cardinal principals are of great
weight and value TO US. They show at once
how natural and how fruitless vague the
or1zing is. They all seek to impose upou
the universe an order and a simplicity that
are nonexistent. But It is far from nv
purpose or province TO speculate at large on
these generalizatiOns.
In politics this stationary attitude has
made party loyalty n passion. and the par
~ fetish. Political reform. purity, change,
are treachery IL not recommended by the
party. Every political fact is pigeonholed,
The individual is labeled. his leaders think
for him. He need not. he does not, consider
tiresome and disturbing evidence. He sub
sides into acquiscence. He becomes a spoke
in wheel of political machine.
Improvement is made difficult by the
idols of the Cave or Den. Everyone has a
cave or den of his own that refracts or dis
colors the light Of truth. It IS what astron-
omers call the personal equation. The in
gradients in each individual vary. We differ
in inherited qualities, in environment, in
habit, education, standpoint. And as a re-
sultant of these individual peculiarities, We
have bias; We have sympathies and an
The idols of the cave are mighty idols
They are ruling many men to-day. They
have their worth and their unwOrth
with cur teeming populations and our
huge uniformities of occupation interests,
Drill the danger is rot that We miss the
Idols of the Tribe, the great movements the
tidal waves OF influence on whose crests
We are as drops, the stolidity of massive
constituencies, the danger is rather the
neglect of the individual element that goes
allied and seeks to realize itself. We need
both the centraliZing and the decentral-
izing influence. both the centrifugal and the
centripetal: alike the mass and the MOLE
cule.
'They are, after all. but preliminaries.
They are pedagogues to lead us to a higher
level where we shall advance to loftier
thoughts. to nobler teachers and come back
from the show to the substance, from the
idols to the great eternal ideals"