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"In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Author

Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Work Title

The Masculine Birth of Time [Temporis Partus Masculus]

Date

c. 1603

Metaphor

"In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners."

Metaphor in Context

Now about those heads of schools you mentioned judgment is easy. Unity is the hall-mark of truth, and the variety of their opinions is proof of error. In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners. For the island of truth is lapped by a mighty ocean in which many intellects will still be wrecked by the gales of illusion. Nay, it was only yesterday that Bernardinus Telesius mounted the rostrum and staged a new comedy, which was neither well received nor well conceived. Then there are the ingenious contrivers of eccentrics and epicycles on the one hand, and those charioteers of the earth on the other. Do you not observe, son, how both sides delight to support their contrary opinions with the same phenomena? It is the same with the cosmologists. I will suggest a parallel which will explain the universal failure. Take a man who understands only his own vernacular. Put into his hands a writing in an unknown tongue. He picks out a few words here and there which sound like, or are spelled like, words in his own tongue. With complete confidence he jumps to the conclusion that their meaning is the same, though as a rule this is very far from true. Then, on the basis of this resemblance, he proceeds to guess the sense of the rest of the document with great mental exertion and equal licence. This is a true image of these interpreters of nature. For each man brings his own idols -- I am not now speaking of those of the stage, but particularly of those of the market-place and the cave -- and applies them, like his own vernacular, to the interpretation of nature, snatching at any facts which fit in with his preconceptions and forcing everything else into harmony with them.
(pp. 69-70)