Protestants, 157
million Animists, 137 million Buddhists, 115 million Orthodox
Christians--to speak only of the most important religions. Each group, and
they are rather large groups, believes its theory or its faith to be
infallible and all the others to be false.

Bacon seems a bit remote, but the idols and medieval fetishes which he so
masterfully describes are equally venerated to-day.

(_Novum Organum_, by Francis Bacon.)

34. "Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for
distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first
Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols
of the Market, the fourth Idols of the Theatre.

40. "The information of notions and axioms on the foundation of
true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off
and expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point
them out; for the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the
interpretation of nature as that of the confutation of sophisms
does to common logic.

41. "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the
very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to
be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions
both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to
the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors
which impart their own properties to different objects, from which
rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.

42. "The idols of the den are those of each individual; for
everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man)
has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and
corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and
singular disposition, or from his education and intercourse with
others, or from his reading, and the authority acquired by those
whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impressions
produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied and
predisposed, or equable and tranquil, and the like; so that the
spirit of man (according to its several dispositions), is
variable, confused, and, as it were, actuated by chance; and
Heraclitus said well that men search for knowledge in lesser
worlds, and not in the greater or common world.

43. "There are also idols formed by the reciprocal intercourse and