Chapter IV: Part III: (concluded) (1)

The universal and admitted failure of the general property tax to attain good results and the great difficulty, indeed the impossibility, of reducing it to a form in which it can operate with efficiency and an approach to justice, must lead to its abolition and the gradual substitution of other and more simple taxes. However well adapted to a community in which the taxable property was in evidence and easily assessed for purposes of taxation, it becomes antiquated, unequal, and inquisitorial in a people where credit and credit investments have been highly developed, and where the greater social activities, whether in commerce or industry, transportation or production, are conducted by corporations issuing various kinds of securities, none of which can easily be reached by a taxing authority away from the center of incorporation. To undertake to include these securities, evidences of debt, or obligations in a general property tax is to invite evasion, put a heavy inducement on concealment, and, whenever effective, to give rise to shocking inequalities of burden. The widow and orphan, whose property is in the hands of a trustee, pay the full tax; in any other direction the holder of stocks or bonds, money or notes, escapes according to the elasticity of his conscience. The very exemptions recognized by law give an opportunity for new evasions, based upon analogy or upon some technicality under which the business is conducted. Bonds of the United States, the legal-tender notes, or money are beyond the reach of State authorities for the purpose of taxation. In the same category come also all imported goods in original packages, in the possession of the importers, and all property in transit. These exemptions alone amount to thousands of millions of dollars, and the tendency has been to increase the number of items exempted. But every such exception under the law adds to the burdens of the honest taxpayer, and every evasion of taxation also renders his charge the greater. Here is not distributive justice, but concentrated injustice.

Another large proportion of the personal property owned by the citizens of the State is of the most intangible character, and in great part invisible and incorporeal, such, for instance, as negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, State, municipal, and corporate bonds, and, if actually situated in other States, exempt from taxation where they are held; acknowledgments of individual indebtedness, and a number of similar matters. All property of this character is, through a great variety of circumstances, constantly fluctuating in value; is offset by indebtedness which may never be the same one hour with another; is easy to transfer, and by simple delivery is, in fact, transferred continually from one locality to another, and from the protection and laws of one State to the sovereignty and jurisdiction of some other. It is not to be wondered, therefore, that all attempts to value and assess this description of property have proved exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that nearly every civilized community, with the exception of the States of the Federal Union, have long ago abandoned the project as something wholly inexpedient and impracticable.

The differences among the States in the interpretation of residence, of the _situs_ of the property taxed, are also an objection to this system and an obstacle to its application. The want of uniformity can not be abolished by enactments of law, because absolute uniformity of laws would not insure as uniform interpretation of their provisions. The rules for assessment are uniform for the officers of a State, but the returns made involve such differences in the application of the rules that one is forced to the conclusion that a misunderstanding of the spirit of the law exists, coloring differently the view of each returning officer. Discrimination against the county or municipality and discrimination against the individual are to be met at every turn. No wording of the law can eliminate this personal judgment of each assessing authority, and the supervision of the returns by State boards of equalization has introduced an even greater departure from justice, as a majority, based upon selfish interests, may be had, and its decision may readily be defended as based upon good and sufficient reasons. An appeal to the last resort, the higher courts, may produce redress against unjust assessments, but each case must be decided upon its merits, and only under very exceptional circumstances--as in the recent case at Tarrytown, New York, where striking and general, even personal, spite had been shown in the tax levy--can a number of taxpayers find it their interest to combine and carry the question into the courts for adjudication.

Imperfect in theory, the machinery of the general property tax is imperfect. With at present fully two thirds of the personal property of the State exempted from taxation by law or by circumstances growing out of its condition, or the natural depravity and selfishness of the average taxpayer, and with a large part of the other third exempted by competing nations or neighboring States, what becomes of the theory so generally accepted in the United States that in order to tax equitably it is necessary to tax everything? A very slight examination leads to the conclusion that it is the most imperfect system of taxation that ever existed; that, with the exception of moneyed corporations, it is a mere voluntary assessment, which may be diminished at any time by an offset of indebtedness which the law invites the taxpayers to increase _ad infinitum_, borrowing on pledge of corporate stocks, United States bonds, legal-tender notes, etc., all exempt from taxation; that its administration in respect to justice and equity is a farce and more uncertain and hazardous than the chances of the gaming table; and that its continuance is more provocative of immorality and more obstructive of material development than any one agency that can possibly be mentioned. A stringent enforcement only leads to greater perversions and a wider evasion. A lax enforcement does not reduce its inequalities and general want of application to actual conditions.[10]

[Footnote 10: The commissioners "have no confidence in any system
of inquisition or system which requires assessors to be
clairvoyants; to ascertain things impossible to be ascertained by
the agencies provided in the law; to ascertain the indebtedness
of the taxpayer; to ascertain or know who is the owner of
property at a given time that can be and is transferred hourly
from owner to owner by telegraph or lightning, and that may be
transported into or out of the jurisdiction of the assessor with
the rapidity of steam, or that requires assessors or taxpayers to
make assessments on evidence not admissible in any court, civil
or criminal, in any civilized country where witches are not tried
and condemned by caprice or malice on village or neighborhood
gossip."]

The problem, then, is what taxes to introduce in place of this confessed failure of the general property tax.

There can be little doubt that the desire for greater simplicity in taxation is generally felt, and in part put into practice. The mass of various kinds of imposts, added without any system or real connection or relation one to another, has often resulted in so large a number of charges on Government account as to defeat itself. The French taxes at the end of the last century, with their added fault of inequality and injustice in distribution, led naturally to the theory of a single tax--the _impôt unique_ of the physiocrats--which did not become a fact, yet registered the protest against the multiplicity and crying oppressiveness of the remains of feudal dues and fiscal experiments undertaken under the stress of an empty treasury. So it has been noted at the present time that where an opportunity has offered there is a tendency in European countries to simplify their taxes, and, as in the case of Switzerland, prepare the way for income and property taxes. It is a greater dependence on such direct taxes in place of indirect taxes that has distinguished the great fiscal changes in recent years. Germany may have wished to establish a brandy monopoly, and Russia may resort to a monopoly of the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits. But England increases her death duties, France and the United States seek to frame acceptable taxes on income, and Switzerland succeeds in modifying her system in the line of direct taxes.

There is an earnest movement in favor of a single tax on the value of land, exclusive of other real property connected with it. As involving a question of abstract justice the proposition has much in its favor, but it can not be denied that practical obstacles oppose its adoption. The recent commission on taxation in Massachusetts thus treats of it: "It proposes virtually a radical change in the ownership of land, and therefore a revolution in the entire social body. In this form of taxation all revenue from land alone is to be appropriated--that is, the beneficial ownership of land is to cease. Whether or not this system, if it had been adopted at the outset and had since been maintained, would have been to the public advantage may be an open question, but it would certainly seem to be too late now to turn to it in the manner proposed. In any event, it involves properly not questions of taxation, but questions as to the advantage or disadvantage of private property in land."[11]

[Footnote 11: Report of the Massachusetts Commission, 1897, p.
74.]

If securities are to be taxed, the methods adopted should avoid a double taxation, and an attempt to reach capital outside of the State. It is evident that a State, like Massachusetts, which taxes the foreign holder of shares in its corporations as well as the shares of foreign corporations held by its own citizens, is inviting a dangerous reprisal from other States. "Wherever the owner may be, if the corporation is chartered within the State the Commonwealth collects the tax on the shares. Wherever the corporation may be, if the owner is within the State the Commonwealth also collects the tax (in theory of law at least)." If this be the best possible system, and it is supposed Massachusetts assumes it to be, general double taxation would follow its adoption by the other States. The effort to carry this rule into practice proves its injustice as well as futility. The most searching and inquisitorial methods of seeking such property will not avail to reach a good part of it, and this results in adding inequality of burden to its other difficulties. Evasion is too simple a process to be unused, and the heavier the rate of tax the greater will be the resort to evasion and even to perjury, express or implied. The fundamental cause of the failure lies in this, "the endeavor to tax securities, which are no more than evidences of ownership or interest in property, and which offer the easiest means of concealment and evasion, by the same methods and at the same rate as tangible property situated on the spot."

This inherent difficulty can be cured only by abandoning the attempt to tax directly securities or evidences of debt, representing ownership or interest in property beyond the limits of the taxing authority. In the case of the securities of home companies they may be readily taxed at the source, but in the case of foreign corporations it is only by methods almost revolting in their injustice and treatment of the taxpayer that even a partial success can be secured. The dependence upon the sworn statement or declaration of the taxpayer is known to be extremely faulty and to offer a premium on untruthfulness. So long as this dependence is retained in whole or in part in a system for taxing personal property, the results must be unsatisfactory. The most judicious, even if it seems the most radical, remedy is to abandon the taxation of securities. Certainly it would be well to put an end to the Massachusetts plan of taxing securities representing property outside of the State, for that involves double taxation wherever it has been possible to impose the tax. What can be reached only by methods at all times trying and difficult, and sometimes very demoralizing, should not be permitted to remain a permanent feature of the revenue system of a State.

The New York commission of 1870 proposed to limit the State taxes to a very few number of objects. That they be "levied on a comparatively broad basis--like real estate--with certainty, proportionality, and uniformity on a few items of property, like the franchises of all moneyed corporations enjoying the same privileges within the State, and on fixed and unvarying signs of property, like rental values of buildings"--such was the scheme proposed. The leading object to be attained was equality of burdens, and a second object of quite as great importance, was simplicity in assessment and collection. Granting that real estate, lands, and buildings were taxed on a full and fair market valuation, and that corporations contributed their share toward the expenses of the State, it remained to devise a tax that should reach all other forms of property that could be properly and easily assessed. This tax was to be known as the "building-occupancy" tax, and was to be levied on an additional assessment of a sum equal to three times the annual rent or rental value of all the buildings on the land.[12] Nearly thirty years later the Massachusetts commission proposed a modified form of this tax. An annual rental value of four hundred dollars was to be exempt from taxation, but ten per cent was to be levied on all rental values in excess of that amount.

[Footnote 12: The New York commission of 1870 submitted two
propositions on this point:

1. Tax the house or building as real estate separately, at the
same rate of valuation as the land--that is, fifty per cent--and
then assuming that the value of the house or building,
irrespective of its contents, be such contents furniture,
machinery, or any other chattels whatsoever, is the sign or index
which the owner or occupier puts out of his personal property,
tax the house or building on a valuation of fifty per cent
additional to its real estate valuation, as the representative
value of such personal property; or, in other words, tax the land
separately on fifty per cent of its fair marketable valuation,
and tax the building apart from the land, as representing the
owner's personal property, on a _full_ valuation, as indicated by
the rent actually paid for it or its estimated rental value. Or--

2. Tax buildings conjointly with land as real estate at a uniform
valuation; and then as the equivalent for all taxation on
personal property, tax the occupier, be he owner or tenant of any
building or portion of any building used as a dwelling, or for
any other purpose, on a valuation of three times the rental or
rental value of the premises occupied. Tenement houses occupied
by more than one family, or tenement houses having a rental value
not in excess of a fixed sum, to be taxed to the owner as
occupier.--_Report_, p. 107.]

"The advantages of a tax on house rentals," said the commission, "can be easily stated. It is clear, almost impossible of evasion, easy of administration, well fitted to yield a revenue for local uses, and certain to yield such a revenue. It is clear, because the rental value of a house is comparatively easy to ascertain. The tax is based on a part of a man's affairs which he publishes to all the world. It requires no inquisition and no inquiry into private matters; it uses simply the evidence of a man's means which he already offers."[13] If this tax were to be given it would be possible to wipe out all the tax on incomes from "profession, trade, or employment," to abolish the existing assessments on personal property. The effects would be far-reaching. If loans of money are free from taxation, the purchasing power of money in the same degree must diminish, which simply means that the purchasing power of farms and products of farms for money must to the same extent increase; hence, the borrower on bond and mortgage will not be subject to double taxation--first, in the form of increased rate of interest, and then in taxation of his real estate--and hence the farmer or landowner who is not in the habit of either lending or borrowing money will find his ability to meet additional taxation on his land increased in additional value of land and products of land in proportion as the tax is removed from money at interest. Also, the exemption of the products of farms and things consumed on farms from taxation will give a corresponding increased value to compensate for the "building-occupancy" tax. Tenants controlled by all-pervading natural laws can and will give increased rents, if their personal property is exempt primarily from taxation. The average profits of money at interest or of dealings in visible personal property free from taxation can not exceed, for any considerable length of time, the average profits of real estate, risk of investment and skill in management taken into consideration; and therefore the real pressure of taxation under the proposed system will finally be, like atmospheric pressure or pressure of water, on all sides, and by a natural uniform law executed upon all property in every form used and consumed in the State. Persons must occupy buildings and business must be done in buildings, and through these visible instrumentalities capital can be reached by a rule of fractional uniformity, and by a simple, plain, and economical method of assessment and collection.

[Footnote 13: Massachusetts Report, p. 106.]

This building-occupancy tax, or tax on rental value, does not preclude a supplementary tax on corporations.

Much has been said of the onerous burdens of taxation endured by individuals compared with those of corporations, and especially corporations enjoying certain rights or franchises in public streets and highways or corporations of a more or less public character. The phenomenal growth of municipalities has been one of the notable social movements of the last twenty-five years. The drift of population from the country districts to cities has increased with each year, and finds an explanation in many causes. The opportunities offered in a city for advancement are greater and more numerous; the monotony of the farm life does not keep the young at home, but drives them for excitement and profit to the great centers of population. The economic changes of a half century also have their influence. The competition of new regions, better adapted for certain cultures on a commercial scale, has reduced the profitableness of older and more settled localities, where comparatively costly methods must be resorted to if the fertility of the land is to be maintained. The wheat fields of the West narrowed the margin of profit in New England farming, while the sheep and cattle ranges of the West made it impossible for the same quality of live stock to be raised for profit in the East. Farms were abandoned, and the younger blood went West to grow up with the country, or into the cities to struggle for a living. Further, the advances in agriculture, the application of more productive methods, and the introduction of machinery have reduced the demand for labor in the rural districts, and this has led to a migration to the cities.

The result of this has been an immense development of city life, and with it an ever-increasing field for investment in corporate activities. The supply of water is usually in the city's control, but the manufacture and sale of gas, the production and distribution of electricity, the street railways, telegraph, and telephone interests are private corporations formed for profit and using more or less the public highways in the conduct of their various enterprises. A grant of a street or highway for a railway or electric-wire subway generally involves a monopoly of that use, and the privilege or franchise may become more valuable with the mere growth in the population of the cities. Assured against an immediate competition, there is a steady increment in the value of the franchise, and in the case of a true monopoly there seems to be no limits to its possible growth.

An instance of this nature is so striking in its relations and so pertinent to the present discussion that attention is asked to it. In the reign of James I water was supplied by two or three conduits in the principal streets of London, and the river and suburban springs were the sources of supply. Large buildings were furnished with water by tapping these conduits with leaden pipes, but other buildings and houses were supplied by "tankard bearers," who brought water daily. A jeweler of the city, Hugh Myddleton by name, believed something better could be done, and he proposed to bring water from Hertfordshire by a "new river." He embarked in the undertaking, sank his fortune in its conduct, and appealed to the king for assistance. James granted this aid, taking one half of the shares of the company--thirty-six out of the seventy-two shares into which it was divided. The shares that remained received the name of "adventurer's moiety." The work was completed in 1613, and water was then let into the city.

So little was the measure appreciated that its first years were troublous ones for the shareholders. The squires objected to the river, believing it would overflow their lands or reduce them to swamps and destroy the roads. The city residents adopted the use of the water slowly. The shares were nominally worth £100 apiece, but for nearly twenty years the income was only 12_s._, or $3, per share. In 1736 a share was valued at £115 10_s._, and by 1800 it had risen to £431 8_s._ With the first years of this century the company prospered, and its benefits were widely applied, reflecting this change in the value of its capital. In 1820 a share was worth £11,500 and in 1878 the fraction of a share was sold at a rate which made a full share worth £91,000. In 1888 the dividend distributed to each share was £2,610. Eleven years later, in July, 1889, a single share was sold for £122,800, or nearly $600,000. The nominal capital of the company in 1884 was £3,369,000, and besides its water franchise it holds large estates and valuable properties. While the actual real estate controlled by the corporation accounts for some of this remarkable rise in the value of the shares, a greater and more lasting cause was the possession of an almost exclusive privilege or franchise which assured a handsome and ever-increasing return on the investment. Had all the other property been deducted from the statement of the company's assets, there would have remained this intangible and immeasurable right created and conceded by its charter and long usance.

A definition of a franchise has been given by the Supreme Court in terms of sufficient general accuracy to be adopted: "A franchise is a right, privilege, or power of public concern which ought not to be exercised by private individuals at their mere will and pleasure, but which should be reserved for public control and administration, either by the Government directly or by public agents acting under such conditions and regulations as the Government may impose in the public interest and for the public security."[14] A necessary condition, then, is a public interest in the occupation or privileges to be followed. The good will of a person or individual trader is not a franchise in this sense, though a franchise may be enjoyed by an individual as well as by a corporation, and good will may rest upon the privilege implied in the franchise.

[Footnote 14: California vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, 127 U.
S., 40.]

The recognition of franchises, a species of property "as invisible and intangible as the soul in a man's body," as a proper object for taxation is now beyond any dispute. It is peculiarly appropriate as a source of revenue for the exclusive use of the State, inasmuch as the grant of franchises emanates from the State in its sovereign capacity. In the case of Morgan _vs._ the State of Louisiana, Justice Field, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said: "The franchises of a railroad corporation are rights or privileges which are essential to the operation of the corporation and without which its roads and works would be of little value, such as the franchise to run cars, to take tolls, to appropriate earth and gravel for the bed of its road, or water for its engines, and the like. They are positive rights or privileges, without the possession of which the road or company could not be successfully worked. Immunity from taxation is not one of them."[15] Further, the extent to which this taxation of franchises may be carried rests entirely in the discretion of the taxing power, subject only to constitutional restrictions.

[Footnote 15: 93 U. S. Reports, pp. 217, 224.]

The great difficulty in applying such a tax lies in the methods of reaching an understanding on the value of the franchise. How can this indefinite something be made visible on the tax books? In many instances the franchise may be regarded as inseparable from the real property of the corporation. The rails of a tramway, the poles and wires of a telegraph company, the pipes and conduits of a gas company, are real and tangible things, necessary to a proper conduct to the respective functions of the corporations. But the right to lay tracks in the public streets, to sink pipes under the streets, or to string wires overhead is as necessary a possession and as essential to the performance of what the corporation was created to accomplish. Whether this permits the franchise to be regarded as "real estate" and so offers it for taxation is a question of some theoretical interest, but of little practical importance.[16] Unless the franchise is regarded in this way, as belonging to real estate, or as forming a taxable entity apart from other property, it would be simpler to reach it through a corporation tax in one of the many ways open for applying that tax.

[Footnote 16: A recent law of New York is very full on this
point:

"The terms 'land,' 'real estate,' and 'real property,' as used in
this chapter, include the land itself above and under the water,
all buildings and other articles and structures, substructures,
and superstructures, erected upon, under, or above, or affixed to
the same; all wharves and piers, including the value of the right
to collect wharfage, cranage, or dockage thereon; all bridges,
all telegraph lines, wires, poles, and appurtenances; all
supports and inclosures for electrical conductors and other
appurtenances upon, above, and underground; all surface,
underground, or elevated railroads, including the value of all
franchises, rights or permission to construct, maintain, or
operate the same in, under, above, on, or through streets,
highways, or public places; all railroad structures,
substructures, and superstructures, tracks, and the iron thereon,
branches, switches, and other fixtures permitted or authorized to
be made, laid, or placed on, upon, above, or under any public or
private road, street, or grounds; all mains, pipes, and tanks
laid or placed in, upon, above, or under any public or private
street or place for conducting steam, heat, water, oil,
electricity, or any property, substance, or product capable of
transportation or conveyance therein, or that is protected
thereby, including the value of all franchises, rights,
authority, or permission to construct, maintain, or operate in,
under, above, upon, or through any streets, highways, or public
places, any mains, pipes, tanks, conduits, or wires, with their
appurtenances, for conducting water, steam, heat, light, power,
gas, oil, or other substance, or electricity for telegraphic,
telephonic, or other purposes; all trees and underwood growing
upon land, and all mines, minerals, quarries, and fossils in and
under the same, except mines belonging to the State. A franchise,
right, authority, or permission, specified in this subdivision,
shall for the purposes of taxation be known as a 'special
franchise.' A special franchise shall be deemed to include the
value of the tangible property of a person, copartnership,
association, or corporation, situated in, upon, under, or above
any street, highway, public place, or public waters, in
connection with the special franchise. The tangible property so
included shall be taxed as a part of the special franchise." The
reason for classing franchises as real estate was that under the
existing laws of New York a franchise could not be assessed as
personal property, as the bonded debt could then be deducted,
leaving little or nothing to be taxed.]

Enough has been said to demonstrate the extremely faulty condition of tax methods in the United States. Uniformity is highly desirable, but equality of burden is even more to be desired. The advances in this direction have been few, and accomplished only partially in a few States. The machinery for making assessments is only a part of the problem, as the intention of the law, the spirit of the act, is of even higher importance in securing justice and moderation. If these essays, incomplete as they must of necessity be, have led to a better comprehension of the chaotic condition existing now and of the difficulties to be overcome, their object will have been attained. The remedy may be left for time to effect.

* * * * *

In connection with the celebration of the centenary of the death
of the naturalist Lazaro Spallanzani, at Reggio, Italy, in
February last, a booklet has been published containing articles
on various aspects of the life and work of Spallanzani and
matters associated with him. Among the authors represented are
Mantegazza, Ferrari, and others well known in Italian science.

BACON'S IDOLS: A COMMENTARY.

BY WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON,

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

In the first book of the _Novum Organon_ the great leader of the new philosophy undertook to set forth the dangers and difficulties which stand always in the way of clear and fruitful thought. Conscious that he was breaking entirely with the schools of the past, and ambitious of laying the firm foundations on which all future inquirers would have to build, it was natural that Bacon should pause on the threshold of his vast enterprise to take stock of the mental weaknesses which had rendered futile the labors of earlier thinkers, and which, if not carefully guarded against, would jeopardize the efforts of times to come. That the understanding may direct itself effectively to the search for truth it is necessary, he insisted, that it should have a full apprehension of the lapses to which it is ever liable, the obstacles with which it will constantly have to contend. A vague sense of peril is not enough. As a first condition of healthy intellectual activity we must learn to know our frailties for what they really are, estimate their consequences, and probe the secrets of their power.

Bacon's statement of the sources of error and vain philosophizing is regarded by him as merely the _pars destruens_ or negative portion of his work--as it were, "the clearing of the threshing floor." But his aphorisms are packed close with solid and substantial thought, and well deserve the attention of all who would seriously devote themselves to the intellectual life. "True philosophy," as he conceived it, "is that which is the faithful echo of the voice of the world, which is written in some sort under the direction of things, which adds nothing of itself, which is only the rebound, the reflection of reality." To reach for ourselves, as nearly as we may, a philosophy which shall meet the terms of this exigent definition is, or should be, one chief purpose of our study and our thought. We may very well ask, then, what help so great and suggestive a thinker may give us on our way.

With his characteristic fondness for fanciful phraseology, Bacon describes the causes which distort our mental vision as _Idola_--idols or phantoms of the mind.[17] Of such he distinguishes four classes, which he calls, respectively: Idols of the Tribe (_Idola Tribus_); Idols of the Cave (_Idola Specus_); Idols of the Market Place (_Idola Fori_); and Idols of the Theater (_Idola Theatri_). It is not to be claimed for Bacon's analysis that it is exhaustive or always scientifically exact. In many places, too, it opens up difficult philosophic questions, which for the present must be disregarded. But, as Professor Fowler has said, there is something about his diction, "his quaintness of expression, and his power of illustration which lays hold of the mind and lodges itself in the memory in a way which we can hardly find paralleled in any other writer, except it be Shakespeare."[18] Moreover, though he often deals with matters of merely technical and temporary interest, his leading thoughts are of permanent and universal applicability. Let us see, then, what suggestions we can gather from a brief consideration of his Idols, one by one.

[Footnote 17: _Idola_ ([Greek: eidôla]), though commonly rendered
idols, would here undoubtedly be more correctly translated
phantoms or specters. With this explanation, however, I shall
usually employ the more familiar word.]

[Footnote 18: Novum Organon, edited by Thomas Fowler,
introduction, p. 132.]

Idols of the Tribe are so called because they "have their foundation in human nature itself"; in other words, they are the prepossessions and proclivities which belong to men as men, and as such are common to the whole race or tribe. "Let men please themselves as they will," says Bacon, "in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain: that as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of objects through the sense, can not be trusted to report them truly, but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with the nature of things." In many lines of thought there is no more pregnant source of fallacy and confusion than the tendency, innate in all and seldom properly checked, to accept man as the measure of all things, and to translate the entire universe into terms of our own lives. Theology, though it is slowly outgrowing its cruder anthropomorphism, still talks about the "will" of God, an "intelligent" First Cause, the "moral governor," and "lawgiver"; and outside theology we have ample evidence of the persistency with which we humanize and personify Nature by endowing it with attributes belonging to ourselves. Darwin confessed that he found it difficult to avoid this tendency.[19] It is a pitfall into which men constantly stumble in their attempts to interpret the processes at work about them.

[Footnote 19: Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i, p.
6.]

One important result of our habit of thus forcing the universe to become "the bond-slave of human thought" is to be found, as Bacon notes, in our proneness to "suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world" than is actually to be discovered there. While we read design and purpose into the phenomena of Nature because we are conscious of design and purpose in our own activities, thus allowing ourselves to drift into the metaphysical doctrine of Final Causes, we also do our best to bring Nature's multitudinous operations into such definite formulas as will satisfy our love of plan and symmetry. We are not content till we can systematize and digest, whence our continual recourse to loose analogies and fanciful resemblances. We start from an imagined necessity of order, or from some conception of things attractive because of its apparent simplicity, and then reason out from this into the facts of Nature. Mill furnishes some telling examples. "As late as the Copernican controversy it was urged, as an argument in favor of the true theory of the solar system, that it placed the fire, the noblest element, in the center of the universe. This was a remnant of the notion that the order of the universe must be perfect, and that perfection consisted in conformity to rules of procedure, either real or conventional. Again, reverting to numbers, certain numbers were _perfect_, therefore these numbers must obtain in the great phenomena of Nature. Six was a perfect number--that is, equal to the sum of all its factors--an additional reason why there must be exactly six planets. The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, attributed perfection to the number ten, but agreed in thinking that the perfect numbers must be somehow realized in the heavens; and knowing only of nine heavenly bodies to make up the enumeration, they asserted 'that there was an _antichthon_, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun, invisible to us.' Even Huygens was persuaded that when the number of heavenly bodies had reached twelve it could not admit of any further increase. Creative power could not go beyond that sacred number."[20] Do these concrete illustrations of perverse reasoning strike us as ludicrous? It is because they are taken from an order of ideas long since outgrown. The tendencies they exemplify have not been outgrown. We have only to keep a vigilant eye on our own mental conduct to be convinced that we are very apt to begin with some general notion of "the fitness of things," or what "ought to be," and to argue thence to conclusions not a whit less absurd essentially than those just referred to.

[Footnote 20: Logic, ninth edition, Book V, chapter v, § 6.]

While these universal mental habits are conspicuous enough in the higher regions of thought and begin to play tricks with us the moment we undertake on our own accounts any serious speculation, there are other Idols of the Tribe whose influence is perhaps more commonly fatal. We all jump at conclusions, the mind feigning and supposing "all other things to be somehow, though it can not see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded"; we all allow ourselves to be unduly "moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination." Hasty judgments are thus daily and hourly passed on men and things, and rash generalizations permitted to circulate untested. Even more disastrous, perhaps, in the long run, is the power of prepossessions. When once, says Bacon, the human understanding has "adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion, or as being agreeable to itself)" it straightway "draws all things else to support and agree with it." Illustrations may be found in every direction. Note, for instance, the vitality, even in the teeth of positive disproof, of many long-accepted and often-challenged ideas--belief in dreams, omens, prophecies, in providential visitations and interpositions, in the significance of coincidences, in popular saws about natural phenomena, in quacks and quackery, in old wives' tales, vulgar and pseudo-scientific. The story of witchcraft is only another example of the same kind, though written large in the chronicles of the world in letters of fire and blood; the human understanding had "adopted" a belief in witches, and drew "all things else to support and agree with it." In all such cases of prepossession the mind obstinately dwells on every detail that favors its accepted conclusions, while disregarding or depreciating everything that tells against them; it is always, in Bacon's phrase, "more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives." Thus, we hear much of the one dream that is fulfilled, and of the ninety and nine that are unfulfilled--nothing. Bacon illustrates this perversity by the well-known anecdote of the ancient cynic, which may be left to convey its own moral: "And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods--'Ay,' asked he again, 'but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?'"

Finally, among these Idols of the Tribe we must include the disturbance caused by the play of feeling upon the mind. "The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would.'" We all know, to our cost, how passion will warp judgment; how difficult it is to see clearly when the emotions are thoroughly aroused; how tenaciously men cling to opinions they are familiar with, or would fain have to be true; how fiercely they contest ideas that are unfamiliar or repugnant. Had it been contrary to the interest of authority, observed shrewd old Hobbes, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square, the fact would have been, if not disputed, yet suppressed.[21] Similarly, if the passions of men had been called into play over the most clearly demonstrable of abstract mathematical truths, we may be sure that furious controversy would have attended the issue, and some way found to overthrow the demonstration. That two and two make four would have been denied had any strong emotion been excited against the proposition. "Men," said Whateley, "are much more anxious to have truth on their side than to be on the side of truth." And the danger is greater because we are frequently not aware of the bias given by feeling. There are cases in plenty where men more or less consciously and deliberately espouse "sciences as one would," but there are many others in which the emotional interference is insidious and obscure. "Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the feelings color and infect the understanding."

[Footnote 21: Leviathan, Part I, chapter xi.]

These Idols of the Tribe are of course inherent in our intellectual constitution, and are ineradicable. The simple consideration that all knowledge is relative--that by no effort and under no circumstances can we escape beyond the conditions and limitations of our own minds--suffices to show that intelligence must ever mix up its own nature with the nature of things, though this fact need not make us doubt the validity of knowledge as is sometimes hastily inferred. For the rest, clear recognition of these common obstacles to thought should put us in the way of anticipating and withstanding their more serious effects. In practice it must be our object to maintain watchfulness and a careful skepticism; to test evidence and check passion; to cultivate candor, flexibility, and alertness of mind; to avoid loose generalizations; and to be ever ready to accept, revise, reject. Above all must we steadily resist the seductions of what is called common sense, and overcome that mental inertness which too often leads us to drift unthinking along the current of popular opinion.[22]

[Footnote 22: It is well to remember that if common sense had
said the last word about the matter, the Ptolemaic theory of the
universe would still stand unshaken.]

But, in addition to errors arising from the common intellectual nature of men, there are others, the sources of which are to be found in the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind. These Bacon calls Idols of the Cave;[23] for every one, he says, "has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of Nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to his reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed, or in a mind indifferent and settled; and the like." This summary is comprehensive enough to indicate the character and point to some of the causes of individual aberrations of judgment; that it does no more than this is due to the simple fact that the personal bias is as varied as humanity itself, and that the deflecting impulses in any given case are to be referred to a complex of factors almost eluding analysis. To follow this part of the subject into detail would, therefore, manifestly be impossible. But certain of the larger and more widely influential of these disturbing forces may be roughly marked out by way of illustration.

[Footnote 23: The metaphor is taken from the opening of the
seventh book of Plato's Republic.]

In the first place, there is what we may call the professional bias. Exclusive devotion to separate lines of activity, study, or thought inevitably gives the mind a particular set or twist. Bacon complains that Aristotle, primarily a logician, made his natural philosophy the slave of his logic. Few specialists can escape the insulation consequent upon living too continuously in a confined area of problems and ideas. Their intellectual outlook is necessarily circumscribed, facts are seen by them out of proper perspective, and one-sidedness of training and discipline renders their judgment of things partial and incomplete. The lawyer carries his legal, the theologian his theological, the scientist his scientific bent of mind into every inquiry; with what grotesque results is only too frequently apparent. Accustomed to move in a single narrow groove, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of certain isolated classes of phenomena, they unconsciously allow their particular interests to dominate their thought, and impose disastrous restrictions upon their view of whatever lies outside their own chosen field.

Secondly, we have the bias of nation, rank, party, sect. Here the mental disturbances are too numerous to permit and too obvious to require special exemplification. Intellectual provincialism of any kind is fatal to large and fertile thought, alike by limiting the range of our knowledge and sympathies and by inducing mental habits and implanting prejudices which prevent us from seeing things in wide relations and under a clear light. So long as our point of view is simply that of our country, our class, our party, or our church, so long, it is evident, our minds will lack the breadth and flexibility necessary for free inquiry, fruitful comparisons, sane and balanced judgments.[24]

[Footnote 24: _Cf._ Spencer's Introduction to the Study of
Sociology, chapters viii-xii.]

Finally, among the Idols of the Cave "which have most effect in disturbing the clearness of the understanding," mention must be made of the temperamental bias. Every man, it has been said, is born Platonist or Aristotelian; it is certain that the great divisions in thought--religious, philosophical, political--answer roughly to fundamental differences in human nature, and that every one not checked or turned aside by extraneous influences will spontaneously gravitate in one or another direction. Bacon is only recording a fact of the commonest experience when he says that "there are found some minds given to an extreme admiration of antiquity, others to an extreme love and appetite for novelty, but few so duly tempered that they can hold the mean, neither carping at what has been well laid down by the ancients nor despising what is well introduced by the moderns." Many instinctively brace themselves against authority and tradition; by others again, whatever is handed down to us by authority and tradition is for this reason alone treated with contempt. That the crowd believes a thing is enough to convince this man of its truth, and that of its falsehood.

"The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learned by being singular."

These and similar congenital differences in men's intellectual constitutions might be illustrated indefinitely if it were necessary. A further remark of Bacon's must, however, be quoted, for it goes deeper in mental analysis and touches a less obvious point. "There is one principal and, as it were, radical distinction between different minds in respect of philosophy and the sciences, which is this: that some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things, others to mark their resemblances. The steady and acute mind can fix its contemplations and dwell and fasten on the subtlest distinctions; the lofty and discursive mind recognizes and puts together the finest and most general resemblances." Men belonging to the former class we should call logical and critical; those belonging to the latter, imaginative and constructive. Each class tends to the excesses of its own predominant powers, and in each case excess interferes with calm reasoning and sound judgment.

To correct the personal equation it is imperative that we should study ourselves conscientiously, consider dispassionately the natural tendencies of our birth, early surroundings, education, associations, and interests, and do our utmost to conquer, or at least to make allowance for, every individual peculiarity, temperamental or acquired, likely to turn the mind aside from the straight line of thought. Such self-discipline every one must strenuously undertake on his own account if he would wish to see things as they really are. Stated in more general terms, our aim must be to rise above all kinds of provincialism and personal prejudice, and to overcome our natural proneness to rest content in our own particular point of view. Bacon quotes with approval the words of Heraclitus: "Men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world." We must strive to escape from our own lesser world, and to make ourselves citizens of the greater, common world. For this we need the widest and most generous culture--the culture that is to be found in books, in travel, in intercourse with men of all classes and every shade of opinion. Left to ourselves we only too sedulously cultivate our own insularity; we mingle simply with the people who agree with us, belong to our own caste, and share our own prejudices; we read only the papers of our own party, the literature of our own sect; we allow our own special interests in life to absorb our energies, color all our thoughts, and narrow our horizon. In this way the Phantoms of the Cave secure daily and yearly more despotic sway over our minds. Self-detachment, disinterestedness, the power of provisional sympathy with alien modes of thought and feeling, must be our ideal. "Let every student of Nature," says Bacon, "take this as a rule, that whatever his mind seizes and dwells on with particular satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear." A hard saying, truly, yet one that must be laid well to heart.

While the Idols of the Tribe, then, are common human frailties in thought, and the Idols of the Cave the perturbations resulting from individual idiosyncrasies, there are other Idols "formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other," which Bacon calls "Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there." By reason of its manifold and necessary imperfections--its looseness, variability, ambiguity, and inadequacy--the language we are forced to employ for the embodiment and interchange of ideas plays ceaseless havoc with our thought, not only introducing confusion and misconception into discussion, but often, "like the arrows from a Tartar bow," reacting seriously upon our minds. A large part of the vocabulary to which we must perforce have recourse, even when dealing with the most abstruse and delicate subjects, is made up of words taken over from vulgar usage and pressed into higher service; they carry with them long trains of vague connotations and suggestions; the superstitions of the past are often imbedded in them; no one can ever be absolutely certain of their intellectual values. While, therefore, they may do well enough for the rough needs of daily life, they prove sadly defective when required for careful and exact reasoning. And even with that small and comparatively insignificant portion of our language which is not inherited from popular use, but fabricated by philosophers themselves, the case is not much better. Every word, no matter how cautiously employed, inevitably takes something of the tone and color of the particular mind through which it passes, and when put into circulation fluctuates in significance, meaning now a little more and now a little less.[25] What wonder, then, that "the high and formal discussions of learned men" have so often begun and ended in pure logomachy, and that in discussions which are neither high nor formal and in which the disputants talk hotly and carelessly the random bandying of words is so apt to terminate in nothing beyond the darkening of counsel and the confusion of thought?

[Footnote 25: The need of a language of rigid mathematical
precision for the purposes of philosophic thought and discussion
has long been the subject of remark. Hence Bishop Wilkins's Essay
toward a real character and a philosophic language (1668), and
the earlier Ars Signorum of George Dalgarno--boldly presented by
its inventor as a "remedy for the confusion of tongues, as far as
this evil is reparable by art." We may give these ingenious
authors full credit for the excellent intentions with which they
set out on impossible undertakings. A philosophic language may
perhaps be attained in the millennium, but then probably it will
be no longer needed. Meanwhile readers interested in the history
of the mad scheme called Volapük may find some curious matter in
these rare works.]