Aphorism 42
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) 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 the 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; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
“All which a man loves, for which he leaves everything else but that, is his god, thus the glutton and drunkard has for his idol his own flesh, the fornicator has for his idol the harlot and the greedy has for his idol silver and gold, and so the same for every other sinner.”
Source: Gospel of Barnabas (c. 16th century AD manuscript), Ch. 33. The gospel's origins and author have been debated; several theories are speculative, and none has general acceptance. The Gospel of Barnabas is dated to the 13th to 15th centuries,[2] much too late to have been written by Barnabas (fl. 1st century CE). Many of its teachings are synchronous with those in the Quran and oppose the Bible, especially the New Testament; some, however, contradict the Quran.
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