| The human mind is so disposed that it
| relies on the senses, which provide
| it with the rudiments of all
| knowledge. Of course, Bacon argues,
| we cannot get any information about
| things except with the senses, and
| skeptics are wrong when, questioning
| them, they plunge the mind into
| despair. "But by far the greatest
| hindrance and aberration of the human
| understanding proceeds from the
| dulness, incompetency, and deceptions
| of the senses" (IV, 58). On the one
| hand, they are too dull and too
| gross, and let the more subtle parts
| of nature escape our observation:
| their range is limited to the most
| conspicuous information. On the other
| hand, they are misleading, by a
| fundamental illusion: they offer
| things to the mind according to the
| measure of human nature. "For it is a
| false assertion that the sense of man
| is the measure of things. On the
| contrary, all perceptions as well of
| the sense as of the mind are
| according to the measure of the
| individual and not according to the
| measure of the universe" (IV, 54). In
| order to have access to reality, we