The Tribe
This term symbolizes the influence that other people have in the formation of a human mind. The tribe mentality of a human being makes them impressionable and liable to be misinformed. The emotional relationship between people and their environment, their need to believe in other people, their desire for security, might lead a person to conclude that someone in their tribe has authority that they do not actually possess. According to Bacon, this is how humans could be wrong about something perpetually, because to disagree with the herd would be heresy.
The Cave Escape
Bacon argues that there are ways to escape the limitations of the mind, to push into an objectivity that the majority of people do not see or cannot find. Bacon writes about this by alluding to Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave," from book Eight of the Republic. In that book, the cave illustration was used as a way to entice the reader to consider the mystic truth that is available to a human beyond the insight they perceive through their senses. In this book, Bacon uses the metaphor a little differently, showing that through communal "cave escape," a language could be born to share ideas between skeptics who are establishing a truth derived not from impression, but from scientific study.
Suspension of Belief
In order to attain Bacon's ideal outcome, a person would have to undergo this allegorical, symbolic transition. Some people allow their minds to be limited by belief. For instance, a person can say, "I believe God created the world several thousand years ago." That will make them unable to synthesize facts that show the world to be much older than that belief allows. Bacon argues that one's beliefs can often operate as a blinder, so it is a permanent obstacle until one decides not to believe what they cannot prove.
Language and Knowledge Sharing
Bacon argues that one of the outcomes of scientific inquiry is a new language. This motif of a language creation appears throughout The Advancement of Learning. He says that words will need to be invented and shared in an elite community of scientifically minded people, because the challenges of science will be best faced with teams of researchers who can share their findings with a broad academy. In other words, Bacon is advocating the creation of the scientific school, which like the church, can exist all over the planet as a platform for information exchange. He is imagining a meta-culture across the planet with one shared language.
Christianity
Bacon's endorsement of a specific form of scientific inquiry (induction) is not, as one might expect, antithetical to Christian belief. On the contrary, the motif of Christianity – particularly a Christianity that guides and demands knowledge acquisition – appears in every major text that Bacon wrote. Bacon is keen to include Christianity as an important tenet of his philosophy, often citing the fact that God himself created all knowledge and it is humanity's duty to pursue that knowledge in honor of and dedication to the creator.
