Page 9 - GALIET UNAPHORISMS and the 4 Idols: Bacon IV

can instruments for enlarging or sharpening the senses do much” (L, 53), and by our own desires for abstraction coupled with our innate ability to make the surreal real. The Idols of the Cave are those most peculiar to each of us: they arise out of our particular mental and corporal constitution, our education, our surrounding environment, our habits and our own particular circumstances. The Idols of the Market Place are those arising out of our relationships with other individuals. Since such relationships are governed by language, Bacon warns us of language’s deceiving nature for it is made up of ever-changing notions and words that in trying to give meaning to our experiences are bound to misrepresent reality. The Idols of the Theatre are those that have affected our souls by accepting illusive, fictional and superstitious philosophical systems and misrepresentations of demonstration which continue to play on the vast theater of life.
Therefore, when Bacon invites us to have a “clean slate” by purging these monstrous idols, he is asking us to revert to innocence: a pre-linguistic heaven of pure sensibility versus a Baconian theater of pure rationality. A tragic linguistic paradox. Example. After many ravishing experiences of temporary idillic journeys to Eden,1 it is evident that sense is
1 particular heightened state of in-being: the most beautiful and richest state of “all-and- all in-dwelling,” the highest sensory experience of pure electrifying in-ergy.
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