Will Durant---The Philosophy of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon from Aristotle to the Renaissance when Sparta blockaded and defeated Athens towards the close of the fifth century BC political supremacy passed from the mother of Greek philosophy and art and the vigor and independence of the Athenian mind decayed when in 399 BC Socrates was put to death the soul of Athens died with him lingering only in his proud pupil Plato and when Philip of Macedon defeated the Athenians at Chaeronea in 338 BC and Alexander burned the great city of Thebes to the ground three years later even the ostentatious pairing of Pinder's home could not cover up the fact that Athenian independence in government and in thought was irrevocably destroyed the domination of Greek philosophy by the Macedonian Aristotle mirrored the political subjection of Greece by the virile and younger peoples of the north the death of Alexander 323 BC quickened this process of decay the boy emperor barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle's tutoring had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece and a dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies the development of Greek Commerce sent the multiplication of Greek trading posts throughout Asia Minor had provided an economic basis for the unification of this region as part of an Hellenic Empire and Alexander hoped that from these busy stations Greek thought as well as Greek goods would radiate and conquer but he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind and the mass and depth of oriental culture it was only a youthful fancy after all to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurably more widespread and rooted in the most venerable traditions the quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece Alexander himself in the hour of his triumph was conquered by the soul of the East he married among several ladies the daughter of Darius he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state he introduced into Europe the oriental notion of the Divine Right of Kings and at last he astonished a skeptic Greece by announcing in magnificent Eastern style that he was a god greece laughed and alexander drank himself to death this subtle infusion of an Asiatic soul into the wearied body of the master Greek was followed rapidly by the pouring of oriental cults and faiths into Greece along those very lines of communication which the young conqueror had opened up the broken dykes led in the ocean of Eastern thought upon the lowlands of the still adolescent European mind the mystic and superstitious faiths which had taken root among the poorer people of Hellas were reinforced and spread about and the Oriental spirit of apathy and resignation found a ready soil in decadent and despondent Greece the introduction of the stoic philosophy into Athens by the Phoenician merchants Zeno about 310 BC was but one of a multitude of Oriental infiltrations both stoicism and Epicureanism the apathetic acceptance of defeat and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved precisely is the pessimistic oriental stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent Epicureanism of Rijn all were in the 19th century the symbols of a shattered Revolution and a broken France not that these natural antitheses of ethical theory were quite new to Greece one finds them in the gloomy Heraclitus and the Laughing philosopher Democritus and one sees the pupils of Socrates dividing into cynics and cyrenaic under the lead of antis tonie's and eros tipis and extolling the one school apathy the other happiness yet these were even then almost exotic modes of thought Imperial Athens did not take to them but when Greece had seen Chaeronea in blood and thebes and ashes it listened to Diogenes and when the glory had departed from Athens she was ripe for Zeno and Epicurus Zeno built his philosophy of apatheia on the determinism which a later stoic cruciferous found it hard to distinguish from oriental fatalism when Zeno who did not believe in slavery was BT his slave for some offense the slave pleaded in mitigation that by his master's philosophy he had been destined from all eternity to commit this fault - which Zeno replied with the calm of a sage that on the same philosophy he Zeno had been destined to beat him for it as Schopenhauer deemed it useless for the individual will to fight the universal will so the stoic argued that philosophic indifference was the only reasonable attitude to a life in which the struggle for existence is so unfairly doomed to inevitable defeat if victory is quite impossible it should be scorned the secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our desires but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements if what you have seems insufficient to you said the Roman stoic Seneca who died 65 ad then will you possess the world you will yet be miserable such a principle cried out to heaven for its opposite and Epicurus though himself as stoic in life as Zeno supplied it Epicurus says fennel all bought a fair garden which he tilled himself there it was he set up his school and there he lived a gentle and agreeable life with his disciples whom he taught as he walked and worked he was gentle and affable to all men he held there was nothing nobler than to apply oneself to philosophy his starting point is a conviction that apathy is impossible and that pleasure though not necessarily sensual pleasure is the only conceivable and quite legitimate end of life and action nature leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other good even the stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation we must not avoid pleasures but we must select them Epicurus then is no epicurean he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and appease in the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense but ataraxia tranquility equanimity repose of mind all of which trembles on the verge of he knows apathy the Romans coming to despoil helis in 146 BC found these rival schools dividing the philosophic field and having neither leisure nor subtlety for speculation themselves brought back these philosophies with their other spoils to Rome great organizers as much as inevitable slaves tend to stoic moods it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive so such philosophy as Rome had was mostly of xenos school whether in marcus aurelius the emperor or in epictetus the slave and even Lucretia stocked Epicureanism stoic li-like highness Englishmen taking his pleasures sadly and concluded his Stern gospel of pleasure by committing suicide his noble epic on the nature of things follows Epicurus in damning pleasure with faint praise almost contemporary with Caesar and Pompey he lived in the midst of turmoil and alarms his nervous pen is for ever indict increas to tranquility and peace one pictures him as a timid soul whose youth had been darkened with religious fears for he never tires of telling his readers that there is no hell except here and that there are no gods except gentlemanly ones who live in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds and never intrude in the affairs of men to the rising cult of Heaven and Hell among the people of Rome he opposes a ruthless materialism soul and mind are evolved with the body grow with its growth ale with its ailments and die with its death nothing exists but atoms space and law and the law of laws is that of evolution and dissolution everywhere no single thing abides but all things flow fragment to fragment clings the things thus grow until we know and name them by degrees they melt and are no more the things we know globe from the atoms falling slow or Swift I see the sun's I see the system's lift their forms and even the systems and their sons shall go back slowly to the eternal drift thou to O earth thine empires lands and seas least with thy stars of all the galaxies globe from the drift like these like these thou to shalt go thou art going hour-by-hour like these nothing abides thy season delicate haze go off those moon and sands forsake their place and where they are shall other seas in turn mow with their scythes of whiteness other Bay's to astronomical evolution and dissolution at the origin and elimination of species many monsters to the earth of old tried to produce things of strange face and limbs some without feet some without hands some without mouth some without eyes every other monster of this kind earth would produce but in vain for nature set a ban on their increase they could not reach the coveted flower of age nor find food nor be united in marriage and many races of living things must then have died out and been unable to beget and continue their breed for in the case of all things which you see breathing the breath of life either craft or courage or speed has from the beginning of its existence protected and preserved each particular race those two Nature has granted none of these qualities would lie exposed as a prey and booty to others until nature brought their kind to extinction nations to like individuals slowly grow and surely die some nations wax others wane and in a brief space the races of living things are changed and like runners hand over the lamp of life in the face of warfare and inevitable death there is no wisdom but in ataraxia to look on all things with a mind at peace here clearly the old pagan joy of life is gone and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre history which is nothing if not humorous was never so facetious as when she gave to the substance and epic pessimist the name of epicurean and if this is the spirit of the follower of Epicurus imagine the exhilarating optimism of explicit Stoics like a real eos or epictetus nothing in all literature is so depressing as the dissertations of the slave unless it be the meditations of the Emperor seek not to have things happen as you choose them but rather choose that they should happen as they do and you shall live prosperously no doubt one can in this manner dictate the future and play royal highness to the universe story has it that depicted toises master who treated him with consistent cruelty one day took to twisting a picta toises leg to pass the time away if you go on seda picked a disk calmly you will break my leg the master went on and the leg was broken did I not tell you I picked it as observed mildly that you would break my leg yet there is a certain mystic nobility in this philosophy as in the quiet courage of some Dostoevsky and pacifist never in any case say I have lost such a thing but I have returned it is that child dead it is returned is thy wife dead she is returned art thou deprived of I estate is not this also returned in such passages we feel the proximity of Christianity and its dauntless martyrs indeed were not the Christian ethic of self-denial the Christian political ideal of an almost communistic brotherhood of man and the Christian eschatology of the final conflagration of all the world fragments of stoic doctrine floating on the stream of thought in Epictetus the greco-roman soul has lost its paganism and is ready for a new faith his book had the distinction of being adopted as a religious manual by the early Christian Church from these dissertations and Aurelius meditations there is but a step to the imitation of Christ meanwhile the historical background was melting into newer scenes there is a remarkable passage in Lucretia's which describes the decay of agriculture in the Roman state and attributes it to the exhaustion of the soil whatever the cause the wealth of Rome passed into poverty the organization into disintegration the power and pride into decadence and apathy cities faded back into the undistinguished hinterland the roads fell into disrepair and no longer hummed with trade the small families of the educated Romans were out bred by the vigorous and untutored German stocks that crept year after year across the frontier pagan culture yielded to oriental cults and almost imperceptibly the Empire passed into the papacy the church supported in its earlier centuries by the Emperor's whose powers it gradually absorbed grew rapidly in numbers wealth and range of influence by the 13th century had owned one-third of the soil of Europe and its coffers bulged with donations of rich and poor for a thousand years it United with the magic of an unvarying Creed most of the peoples of a continent never before or since was organization so widespread or so Pacific but this unity demanded as the church thought a common faith exalted by supernatural sanctions beyond the changes and corrosion zuv time therefore dogma definite and defined was cast like a shell over the adolescent mind of medieval Europe it was within this show that scholastic philosophy moved narrowly from faith to reason and back again in a baffling circuit of uncritically your deigned conclusions in the 13th century all Christendom was startled and stimulated by Arabic and Jewish translations of Aristotle but the power of the church was still adequate to secure through Thomas Aquinas and others the transmogrification of Aristotle into a medieval theologian the result was subtlety but not wisdom the wit and mind of man has bacon put it if at work upon the matter worketh according to the staff and is limited thereby but if at work upon itself as the spider worketh his web then it is endless and bringeth forth indeed cobwebs of learning admirable for the fineness of thread and work but of no substance or prophet sooner or later the intellect of Europe would burst out of this show after a thousand years of tillage the soil bloomed again woods were multiplied into a surplus that compelled trade and trade at its crossroads built again great cities wherein men might cooperate to nourish culture and rebuild civilization the Crusades in the roots to the east and let in a stream of luxuries and heresies that doomed asceticism and dogma paper now came cheaply from Egypt replacing the costly parchment that had made learning the monopoly of priests printing which had long awaited an inexpensive medium broke out like a liberated explosive and spread its destructive and clarifying influence everywhere brave Mariners aren't now with compasses ventured out into the wilderness of the sea and conquered man's ignorance of the earth patient observers armed with telescopes ventured out beyond the confines of dogma and conquered man's ignorance of the sky here and there in universities and monasteries and hidden retreats men ceased to dispute and began to search deviously out of the effort to change baser metal into gold alchemy was transmuted into chemistry out of astrology men groped their way with timid boldness to astronomy and out of the fables of speaking animals came the science of zoology the awakening began with Roger Bacon who died 1294 he grew with the limitless Leonardo 14:52 to 1519 it reached its fullness in the astronomy of Copernicus 1473 to 1543 and Galileo 1564 to 1642 in the researches of Gilbert 15:44 to 1603 in magnetism and electricity of Vesalius 1514 to 1564 in anatomy and of Harvey 1578 to 16:57 on the circulation of the blood as knowledge grew fear decreased men thought less of worshipping the unknown and more of overcoming it every vital spirit was lifted up with a new confidence barriers were broken down there was no bound now - what man might do but that little vessels like the celestial bodies should sail around the whole globe is the happiness of our age these times may justly use plus ultra more beyond where the ancients used non plus ultra bacon the advancement of turning book to chapter 10 a medieval motto showed a ship turning back at Gibraltar into the Mediterranean with the inscription non plus ultra go no farther it was an age of achievement hope and vigor of new beginnings and enterprises in every field an age that waited for a voice some synthetic soul to sum up its spirit and resolve it was Francis Bacon the most powerful mind of modern times who rang the bell that called the wits together and announced that Europe had come of age the political career of Francis Bacon bacon was born on January 22nd 1561 at York House London the residence of his father Sir Nicholas Bacon who for the first 20 years of Elizabeth's reign had been keeper of the Great Seal the fame of the father says Macaulay has been thrown into the shade by that of the son but Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man it is as one might have expected for geniuses an apex to which a family builds itself through talent and through talent in the geniuses offspring subsides again towards the mediocrity of man Bacon's mother was Lady Anne cook sister-in-law of Sir William Cecil Lord Burleigh who was Elizabeth's Lord treasurer and one of the most powerful men in England her father had been chief tutor of King Edward the sixth she herself was a linguist and a theologian and thought nothing of corresponding in Greek with bishops she made herself instructress of her son and spared no pains in his education but the real nurse of Bacon's greatness was Elizabethan England the greatest age of the most powerful of modern nations the discovery of America had diverted trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic had raised the Atlantic nations Spain and France and Holland and England to that commercial and financial supremacy which had been Italy's when half of Europe had made her its port of entry and exit in the Eastern trade and with this change the Renaissance had passed from Florence and Rome and Milan and Venice to Madrid and Paris and Amsterdam and London after the destruction of the Spanish naval power in 1588 the commerce of England spread over every see her towns throve with domestic industry her sailors circumnavigated the globe and her captains one America her literature blossomed into Spencer's poetry and Sydney's prose her stage throbbed with the drama's of Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ben Jonson and a hundred vigorous pens no man could fail to flourish in such a time and country if there was seed in him at all at the age of 12 bacon was sent to Trinity College Cambridge he stayed there three years and left it with a strong like of its texts and methods a confirmed are still 'ti to the cult of aristotle and a resolved to set philosophy into a more fertile path to turn it from scholastic disputation to the illumination and increase of human good though still a lad of sixteen he was offered an appointment to the staff of the English ambassador in France and after careful casting up of pros and cons he accepted in the Pro M to the interpretation of nature he discusses this fateful decision that turned him from philosophy to politics it is an indispensable passage whereas I believed myself born for the service of mankind and reckoned the care of the commonweal to be among those duties that are of public right open to all alike even as the waters in the air I therefore asked myself what could most advantage mankind and for the performance of what tasks I seemed to be shaped by nature but when I searched I found no work so meritorious as the discovery and development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilize the life of man above all if any man could succeed not merely in bringing to light some one particular invention however useful but in kindling in nature a luminary which would at its first rising shed some light on the present limits and borders of human discoveries and which afterwards as it rose still higher would reveal and bring into clearer view every nook and cranny of darkness it seemed to me that such a Discoverer would deserve to be called the true extender of the kingdom of man over the universe the champion of human liberty and the exterminator of the necessities that now keep men in bondage moreover I found in my own nature a special adaptation for the contemplation of truth for I had a mind at once versatile enough for that most important object I mean the recognition of similitudes and at the same time sufficiently steady and concentrated for the observation of subtle shades of difference I possessed a passion for research a power of suspending judgment with patience of meditating with pleasure of accenting with caution of correcting false impressions with readiness and of arranging my thoughts with scrupulous panes I had no hankering after novelty no blind admiration for antiquity imposture in every shape I utterly detested for all these reasons I considered that my nature and disposition had as it were a kind of kinship and connection with truth but my birth my rearing and education had all pointed not toward philosophy but towards politics I had been as it were imbued in politics from childhood and as is not unfrequently the case with young men I was sometimes shaken in my mind by opinions I also thought that my duty towards my country had special claims upon me such as could not be urged by other duties of life lastly I conceived the hope that if I held some honorable office in the state I might have secured helps and supports to aid my labors with a view to the accomplishments of my destined task with these motives I applied myself to politics Sir Nicholas Bacon died suddenly in 1579 he had intended to provide Francis with an estate but death overreached his plans and the undiplomatic old hurriedly to London saw himself at the age of 18 fatherless and penniless he had become accustomed to most of the luxuries of the age and he found it hard to reconcile himself now to a forced simplicity of life he took up the practice of law while he important his influential relatives to advance him to some political office which would liberate him from economic worry his almost begging letters had small result considering the Grace and vigor of their style and the proved ability of their author perhaps it was because bacon did not under ate this ability and looked upon positions as his do that Burleigh failed to make the desired response and perhaps also these letters protested too much the past present and future loyalty of the writer to the Honorable Lord in politics as in love it does not do to give oneself wholly one should at all times give but at no time all gratitude is nourished with expectation eventually bacon climbed without being lifted from a but every step caused him many years in 1583 he was elected to Parliament for Taunton and his constituents liked him so well that they returned him to his seat an election after election he had a terse and vivid eloquence in debate and was an orator without oratory no man said Ben Jonson ever spoke more neatly more compressively more weightily or suffered less emptiness less idleness in what he uttered no member of his speech but consisted of its own graces his hearers could not call for look aside from him without loss he commanded where he spoke no man had their affections more in his power the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end enviable orator one powerful friend was generous to him that handsome Earl of Essex whom Elizabeth loved unsuccessfully and so learned to hate in 1595 Essex to atone for his failure in securing a political post for bacon presented him with a pretty estate at Twickenham it was a magnificent gift which one might presume would bind bacon to Essex for life but it did not a few years later Essex organised a conspiracy to imprison Elizabeth and select her successor to the throne bacon wrote letter after letter to his benefactor protesting against this treason and when Essex persisted bacon warned him that he would put loyalty to his queen above even gratitude to his friend Essex made his effort failed and was arrested bacon pled with the Queen in his behalf so incessantly that at last she bad him speak of any other subject when Essex temporarily freed gathered armed forces about him marched into London and tried to rouse its populace to revolution bacon turned against him angrily meanwhile he had been given a place in the prosecuting office of the realm and when Essex again arrested was tried for treason they can took active part in the prosecution of the man who had been his unstinting friend Essex was found guilty and was put to death Bacon's part in the trial made him for a while unpopular and from this time on he lived in the midst of enemies watching for a chance to destroy him his insatiable ambition left him no rest he was ever discontent and always a year or so ahead of his income he was lavish in his expenditures display was to him a part of policy when at the age of 45 he married the pompous and costly ceremony made a great gap in the dowry which had constituted one of the ladies attractions in 1598 he was arrested for debt nevertheless he continued to advance his varied ability and almost endless knowledge made him a valuable member of every important committee gradually higher offices were open to him in 1606 he was made Solicitor General in 1613 he became Attorney General in 1618 at the age of 57 he was at last Lord Chancellor the essays the author has thought it better in the section to make no attempt to concentrate further the already compact thought of bacon and has preferred to put the philosophers wisdom in his own incomparable English rather than to take probably greater space to say the same things with less clarity beauty and force his elevation seemed to realise Plato's dream of a philosopher King for step by step with his climb to political power bacon had been mounting the summit's of philosophy it is almost incredible that the vast learning and literary achievements of this man were but the incidents and diversions of a turbulent political career it was his motto that one lived best by the hidden life been a weak seat Bend law to eat he could not quite make up his mind whether he liked more the contemplative or the active life his hope was to be philosopher and statesman - like Seneca though he suspected that this double direction of his life would shorten his reach and lessen his attainment it is hard to say he writes whether mixture of contemplations with an active life or retiring wholly to contemplations do disable or hinder the mind more he felt that studies could not be either end or wisdom in themselves and that knowledge unapplied in action was a pale academic vanity to spend too much time in studies is sloth to use them too much for ornament is affectation to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar crafty men condemned studies simple men admire them and wise men use them for they teach not their own use but that is a wisdom without them and above them one by observation here is a new note which marks the end of scholasticism ie the divorce of knowledge from use and observation and places that emphasis on experience and results which distinguishes English philosophy and culminates in pragmatism not that bacon for a moment cease to love books and meditation in words reminiscent of Socrates he writes without philosophy I care not to live and he describes himself as after all a man naturally fitted rather for literature than for anything else and born by some destiny again the inclination of his genius ie character into active life almost his first publication was called the praise of knowledge 1592 its enthusiasm for philosophy compels quotation my praise shall be dedicate to the mind itself the mind is the man and knowledge mind a man is but what he knoweth are not the pleasures of the affections greater than the pleasures of the senses and are not the pleasures of the intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections is not that only a true and natural pleasure whereof there is no satiety is not that knowledge alone that hath clear the mind of all perturbations how many things be there which we imagine are not how many things do we esteem and value more than they are these vain imaginations these ill proportioned estimations these be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of perturbations is there then any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things where he may have a respect of the order of nature and the error of men is there but a view only of delight and not of discovery of contentment and not of benefit shall we not discern as well the riches of nature's warehouse is the beauty of her shop is truth barren shall we not thereby be able to produce worthy effects and to endow the life of man with infinite commodities his finest literary product the essays 1597 to 1623 show him still torn between these two loves for politics and for philosophy in the essay of honour and reputation he gives all the degrees of Honor to political and military achievements none to the literary or the philosophical but in the essay of truth he writes the inquiry of truth which is the lovemaking or wooing of it the knowledge of truth which is the praise of it and the belief of truth which is the enjoying of it is the sovereign good of human nature's in books we converse with the wise as in action with fools that is if we know how to select our books some books are to be tasted reads a famous passage others to be swallowed some to be chewed and digested all these groups forming no doubt an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned surely the essays must be numbered among the few books that deserve to be chewed and digested rarely shall you find so much meat so admirably dressed and flavored and so small a dish bacon abhors padding and disdains to waste a word he offers us infinite riches in a little phrase each of these essays gives in a page or two the Distilled subtlety of a mastermind on a major issue of life it is difficult to say whether the matter or the manner more excels for here as language is supreme in prose as shakespeare's is in verse it is a style like sturdy Tacitus --is compact yet polished and indeed some of its conciseness is due to the skillful adaptation of latin idiom and phrase but its wealth of metaphor is characteristically Elizabethan and reflects the exuberance of the Renaissance no man in English literature is so fertile in pregnant and pithy comparisons their lavish array is the one defect of Bacon's style the endless metaphors and allegories and allusions fall like whips upon our nerves and tire us out at last the essays are like rich and heavy food which cannot be digested in large quantities at once but taken four or five at a time they are the finest intellectual nourishment in English what should we extract from this extracted wisdom perhaps the best starting point and the most arresting deviation from the fashions of medieval philosophy is Bacon's Frank acceptance of the epicurean ethic that philosophical progression use not that you may not wish wish not that you may not fear seems an indication of a weak diffident and timorous mind and indeed most doctrines of the philosophers appear to be too distrustful and to take more care of mankind than the nature of the thing requires thus they increase the fears of death by the remedies they bring against it for whilst they make the life of man little more than a preparation and discipline for death it is impossible but the enemy must appear terrible when there is no end of the defense to be made against him nothing could be so injurious to health as the stoic repression of desire what is the use of prolonging a life which apathy has turned into premature death and besides it is an impossible philosophy for instinct will out nature is often hidden sometimes overcome seldom extinguished force maketh nature more violent in the return doctrine and discourse maketh nature less important but custom only death alter or subdue nature but let not a man trust his victory over nature too far for nature will they buried a great time and yet revived upon the occasion or temptation like as it was with Aesop's damsel turned from a cat to a woman who sat very demure Lee at the board's end till a mouse ran before her therefore let a man either avoid the occasion all together or put himself often to it that he may be little moved with it indeed bacon thinks the body should be inured to excesses as well as to restraint else even a moment of unrestrained may ruin it so one accustomed to the purest and most adjustable foods is easily upset when forgetfulness or necessity diverts him from perfection yet variety of delights rather than surfeit of them for strength of nature and youth passeth over many excesses which are owing a man till his age a man's maturity pays the price of his youth one royal road to health is a garden bacon agrees with the author of Genesis that God Almighty first planted a garden and with full tear that we must cultivate our backyards the moral philosophy of the essays smacks rather of Machiavelli than of the Christianity to which bacon made so many astute obeisances we are beholden to machiavel and writers of a kind who openly and unmasked declare what men do in fact and not what they ought to do for it is impossible to join the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove without a previous knowledge of the nature of evil as without this virtue lies exposed and unguarded the Italians have an ungracious proverb tanto Wonka Valiente so good that he is good for nothing bacon Accords his preaching with his practice and advises a judicious mixture of dissimulation with honesty like an alloy that will make the pure but softer metal capable of longer life he wants a full and varied career giving acquaintance with everything that can broaden deepen strengthen or sharpen the mind he does not admire the merely contemplative life like Goethe he scorns knowledge that does not lead to action men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for gods and angels to be spectators his religion is patriotically like the Kings though he was more than once accused of atheism and the whole trend of his philosophy is secular and rationalistic he makes an eloquent and apparently sincere disclaimer of unbelief I had rather believe all the fables in the legend and the Talmud and the al-quran then that this universal frame is without a mind a little philosophy inclined at the man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered it may sometimes rest in them and go no further but when it be holdeth the chain of them Confederate and linked together it must needs fly to Providence and deity religious indifference is due to the multiplicity of factions the causes of atheism are divisions in religion if they be many for any one division addeth zeal to both sides but many divisions introduce atheism and lastly learn at times especially with peace and prosperity for troubles and adversities do more bow men's minds to religion but Bacon's value lies less in theology and ethics than in psychology he is an undeceive Abul analyst of human nature and sins his shaft into every heart on the stay list subject in the world he is refreshingly original a married man is seven years older than his thoughts the first day it is often seen that bad husbands have good wives bacon was an exception a single life doth well with church men for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool he that hath wife and children have given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises either a virtue or mischief bacon seems to have worked too hard to have had time for love and perhaps he never quite felt it to its depth it is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover death of the person beloved you may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons were of the memory remaineth either ancient or recent there is not one that has been transported to the mad degree of love which shows that great spirits and great business to keep out this weak passion he values friendship more than love though a friendship - he can be skeptical there is little friendship in the world and least of all between equals which was want to be magnified that that is is between superior and inferior whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other a principle fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart which passions of all kinds to cause and induce a friend is an ear those that want friends to open themselves unto our cannibals of their own hearts whoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discourse in with another he toss off his thoughts more easily he Marshall it them more orderly he seeth how they look when they are turned into words finally he waxeth wiser than himself and that more by one hours discourse than by a day's meditation in the essay of youth and age he puts a book into a paragraph young men are fitter to invent than to judge fitter for execution than for counsel and fitter for new projects than for settled business for the experience of age in things that fall within the compass of it directeth them but in new things abuse at them young men in the conduct and management of actions embrace more than they can hold stir more than they can quiet fly to the end without consideration of the means and degrees pursue absurdly some few principles which they have chanced upon care not to ie how they innovate which draws unknown inconveniences men of age object too much consult too long adventure too little repent too soon and seldom drive business home to the full period but content themselves with a mediocrity of success certainly it is good to compel employments of both because the virtues of either may correct the defects of both he thinks nevertheless that youth and childhood may get to great Liberty and so grow disordered and lacks let parents choose but i'ms the vocations and courses they mean their children should take 4 then they are most flexible and let them not too much apply themselves to the disposition of their children as thinking they will take best to that which they have most mind to it is true that if the affections or aptness of the children be extraordinary then it is good not to cross it but generally the precept of the pythagoreans is good Optimum ledge a suave at fatty lay elude fatty Atkins why to dough choose the best custom will make it pleasant and easy for custom is the principal magistrate of man's life the politics of the essays preacher conservatism natural in one who aspired to rule bacon wants a strong central power monarchy is the best form of government and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentration of power there be three points of business in government the preparation the debate or examination and the perfection or execution where of if you look for dispatch let the middle only be the work of many and the first and last the work of a few he is an outspoken militarist he deplores the growth of industry is unfitting men for war and the wales long pieces lulling the warrior in man nevertheless he recognizes the importance of raw materials Solon said well to Croesus when in ostentation Croesus showed him his gold sir if any other come that hath better iron than you he will be master of all this gold like Aristotle he has some advice on avoiding revolutions the surest way to prevents additions is to take away the matter of them for if there be fuel prepared it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire neither that follow that the suppressing of Fame's ie discussion with too much severity should be a remedy of troubles for the despising of them many times checks them best and the going about to stop them but makes a wonder long lived the matter of sedition is of two kinds much poverty and much discontentment the causes and motives of seditions are innovations in religion taxes alteration of laws and customs breaking of privileges general oppression advancement of unworthy persons strangers dearths disbanded soldiers factions grown desperate and whatsoever an offending of people join at them in a common cause the queue of every leader of course is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends generally the dividing and breaking of all factions that are adverse to the state and setting them in a distance or at least distrust among themselves is not one of the worst remedies for it is a desperate case if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction and those that are against it be entire and united a better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth money is like muck not good unless it be spread but this does not mean socialism or even democracy they can distrusts the people who were in his day quite without access to education the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people and Foshee on took it right to being applauded by the multitude asked what had he done amiss what bacon wants his first a yeoman reeling farmers than an aristocracy for administration and above all a philosopher king it is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors he mentions seneca Antoninus Pius and Aurelius it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own the great reconstruction unconsciously in the midst of his triumphs his heart was with philosophy it had been his nurse in youth it was his companion in office it was to be his consolation in prison and disgrace he lamented the ill repute into which she thought philosophy had fallen and blamed an arid scholasticism people are very apt to contempt truth on account of the controversies raised about it and to think those all in a wrong way who never meet the sciences stand almost at a stay without receiving any augmentations worthy of the human race and all the tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters and scholars not of inventors in what is now done in the matter of science there is only a whirling about and perpetual agitation ending where it began all through the years of his rise and exaltation he brooded over the restoration or reconstruction of philosophy medet or instar axiom philosophy I he planned to center all his studies around this task first of all he tells us in his plan of the work he would write some introductory treatises explaining the stagnation of philosophy through the posthumous persistence of old methods and outlining his proposals for a new beginning secondly he would attempt a new classification of the sciences allocating their material to them and listing the unsolved problems in each field thirdly he would describe his new method for the interpretation of nature fourthly he would try his busy hand at actual Natural Science and investigate the phenomena of nature fifthly he would show the latter of the intellect by which the writers of the past had mounted towards the truths that were now taking form out of the background of medieval verbiage sixthly he would attempt certain anticipations of the scientific results which he was confident would come from the use of his method and lastly as second or applied philosophy he would picture the utopia which would flower out of all this budding science of which he hoped to be the Prophet the whole would constitute the magnet in store at sea Oh the great reconstruction of philosophy it was a magnificent enterprise and except for Aristotle without precedent in the history of thought it would differ from every other philosophy and aiming at practice rather than a theory at specific concrete goods rather than it's speculative symmetry knowledge is power not mere argument or ornament it is not an opinion to be held but a work to be done and I am laboring to lay the foundation not of any sect or doctrine but of utility and power here for the first time are the voice and tone of modern science the advancement of learning to produce works one must have knowledge nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed let us learn the laws of nature and we shall be her masters as we are now in ignorance or thralls science is the road to utopia but in what condition this road is tortuous sunlit turning back upon itself lost in useless by paths and leading not to light but to chaos let us then begin by making a survey of the state of the sciences and marking out for them their proper and distinctive fields let us seat the sciences each in its proper place examine their defects their needs and their possibilities indicate the new problems that await their light and in general open and stir the earth a little about the roots of them this is the task which bacon set himself in the advancement of learning it is my intention he writes like a king entering his realm to make the circuit of knowledge noticing what parts lie waste and uncultivated and abandoned by the industry of man with a view to engage by a faithful mapping out of the deserted tracts the energies of public and private persons in their improvement he would be the Royal surveyor of the we grown soil making straight the road and dividing the fields among the laborers it was a plan audacious to the edge of immodesty but bacon was still young enough 42 is young in a philosopher to plan great voyages I have taken all knowledge to be my province he had written to Burleigh in 1592 not meaning that he make himself a premature edition of the encyclopædia Britannica but implying nearly that his work would bring him into every field as the critic and coordinator of every science in the task of social reconstruction the very magnitude of his purpose gives a stately magnificence to his style and brings him at times to the height of English prose so he ranges over the vast battleground in which human research struggles with natural hindrance and human ignorance and in every field he sheds illumination he attaches great importance to physiology and medicine he exalts the latter as regulating a musical instrument of much and exquisite workmanship easily put out of tune but he objects to the lacks empiricism of contemporary doctors and their facile tendency to treat all elements with the same prescription usually physic our physicians are like bishops that have the keys of binding and loosing but no more they rely too much on mere haphazard uncoordinated individual experience let them experiment more widely let them illuminate human with comparative anatomy let them dissect and if necessary vivisect and above all let them construct an easily accessible and intelligible record of experiments and results bacon believes that the medical profession should be permitted to ease and quickened death euthanasia where the end would be otherwise only delayed for a few days and at the cost of great pain but he urges the physicians to give more study to the art of prolonging life this is a new part of medicine and deficient though the most noble of all for if it may be supplied medicine will not then be wholly versed in sordid cures nor physicians be honored only for necessity but as dispensers of the greatest earthly happiness that could well be conferred on mortals one can hear some Sauer Chopin our e'en protesting at this point against the assumption that longer life would be a boon and urging on the contrary that the speed with which some physicians put an end to our illnesses is a consummation devoutly to be praised but bacon worried and married and harassed though he was never doubted that life was a very fine thing after all in psychology he is almost to behaviorist he demands a strict study of cause and effect in human action and wishes to eliminate the word chance from the vocabulary of science chance is the name of a thing that does not exist and what chance is in the universe so will is in man here is a world of meaning and the challenge of war all in a little line the Scholastic doctrine of free will is pushed aside as beneath discussion and the universal assumption of a will distinct from the intellect is discarded these are leads which bacon does not follow up it is not the only case in which he puts a book into a phrase and then passes blithely on again in a few words bacon invents a new science social psychology philosophers should diligently inquire into the powers and energy of custom exercise habit education example imitation emulation company friendship praise reproof exhortation reputation laws books studies etc for these are the things that rain in men's morals by these agents the mind is formed and subdued so closely has this outline been followed by the new science that it reads almost like a table of contents for the works of tarred LeBeau ross wallace and dirk m nothing is beneath science nor above it sorceries dreams predictions telepathic communications psychical phenomena in general must be subjected to scientific examination for it is not known in what cases and how far effects attributed to superstition participate of natural causes despite his strong naturalistic bent he feels the fascination of these problems nothing human is alien to him who knows what unsuspected truth what new science indeed may grow out of these investigations as chemistry budded out from alchemy alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard where they by digging found no gold but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage so the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light still another science grows to form in book 8 the science of success in life not yet having fallen from power bacon offers some preliminary hints on how to rise in the world the first requisite is knowledge of ourselves and of others the know theis a Alton is but half know thyself is valuable chiefly as a means of knowing others we must diligently inform ourselves of the particular persons we have to deal with their tempers desires views customs habits the assistances helps and assurances whereon they principally rely and whence they receive their power their defects and weaknesses were at they chiefly lie open and are accessible their friends factions patrons dependence enemies and veers rivals their times and manners of access but the surest key for unlocking the minds of others turns upon searching and sifting either their tempers and natures or their ends and designs and the more we can simple our best judged by their temper but the more prudent and close by their designs but the shortest way to this whole inquiry rests upon three particulars viz one in procuring numerous friendships two in observing a prudent mean and moderation between freedom of discourse and silence but above all noting conduces more to the well representing of a man's self and securing his own right then not to disarm oneself by too much sweetness and good nature which exposes a man to injuries and reproaches but rather at times to dart out some sparks of a free and generous mind that have no less of the sting than the honey friends are for bacon chiefly a means to power he shares with Machiavelli a point of view which one is at first inclined to attribute to the Renaissance to one thinks of the fine and done calculating friendships of Michelangelo and Cavalieri Montaigne and Laboy see Sir Philip Sidney and uber long gay perhaps this very practical assessment of friendship helps to explain Bacon's fall from power as similar views help to explain the pole Ian's for a man's friends will seldom practice a higher philosophy in their relations with him than that which he professes in history ment of them bacon goes on to quote bias one of the seven wise men of ancient Greece love your friend as if he were to become your enemy and your enemy as if he were to become your friend do not betray even to your friend too much of your real purposes and thoughts in conversation ask questions oftener than you express opinions and when you speak offer data and information rather than beliefs and judgments manifest pride is a help to advancement and ostentation is a fault in ethics rather than in politics here again one is reminded of Napoleon bacon like the little Corsican was a simple man enough within his walls but outside them he effected the ceremony and display which he thought indispensable to public repute so bacon runs from field to field pouring the seed of his thought into every science at the end of his survey he comes to the conclusion that science by itself is not enough there must be a force and discipline outside the sciences to coordinate them and point them to a goal there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress which is this it is not possible to run a course a right when the goal itself has not been rightly placed what science needs is philosophy the analysis of scientific method and the coordination of scientific purposes and results without this any science must be superficial for as no perfect view of a country can be taken from a flat so it is impossible to discover the remote and deep parts of any science by standing upon the level of the same science or without ascending to a higher he condemns the habit of looking at isolated facts out of their context without considering the unity of nature as if he says one should carry a small candle about the corners of a room radiant with the central light philosophy rather than science is in the long run Bacon's love it is only philosophy which can give even to a life of turmoil and grief the stately peace that comes of understanding learning conquers or mitigates the fear of death and adverse fortune he quotes Virgil's great lines Felix to eat rerum pugna share a cow's ass quick way meto somnus it inexorable a phatom subi a cheat pedi booze strip eaten kwai occur aunty Suvari happy the man who has learned the causes of things and has put under his feet all fears and inexorable fate and the noisy strife of the hell of greed it is perhaps the best fruit of philosophy that through it we unlearn the lesson of endless acquisition which an industrial environment so insistently repeats philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind and the rest will either be supplied or not much wanted a bit of wisdom is a joy forever government suffers precisely like science for lack of philosophy philosophy bares to science the same relationship which statesmanship bears to politics movement guided by total knowledge and perspective as against aimless and individual seeking just as the pursuit of knowledge becomes scholasticism when divorced from the actual needs of men and life so the pursuit of politics becomes a destructive bedlam when divorced from science and philosophy it is wrong to trust the natural body to empirics who commonly have a few receipts whereupon they rely but who know neither the cause of the disease nor the constitution of patients nor the danger of accidents nor the true methods of cure and so it must needs be dangerous to have the civil body of states managed by empirical statesmen unless well mixed with others who are grounded in learning though he might be thought partial to his profession who said states would then be happy when either Kings were philosophers or philosophers Kings yet so much is verified by experience that the best times have happened under wise and learned princes and he reminds us of the great emperors who ruled Rome after Domitian and before Commodus so bacon like Plato and us all exalted his hobby and offered it as the salvation of man but he recognized much more clearly than Plato and the distinction announces the modern age the necessity of specialist science and of soldiers and armies of specialists research no one mind not even bacons could cover the whole field though he should look from Olympus's stop itself he knew he needed help and keenly felt his loneliness in the mountain air of his unaided enterprise what comrades have you in your work he asks a friend as for me I am in the completest solitude he dreams of scientists coordinated in specialization by constant communion and cooperation and by some great organization holding them together to a goal consider what may be expected from men abounding in leisure and from association of Labor's and from successions of Ages the rather because it is not a way over which only one man can pass at a time as is the case with that of reasoning but within which the labors and industries of men especially as regards the collecting of experience may with the best effort be collected and distributed and then combined for then only will men begin to know their strength when instead of great numbers doing all the same things one shall take charge of one thing and another of another science which is the organization of knowledge must itself be organized and this organization must be international let it pass freely over the frontiers and it may make Europe intellectually one the next want I discover is the little sympathy and correspondence which exists between colleges and universities as well throughout Europe is in the same state and Kingdom let all these universities allot subjects and problems among themselves and cooperate both in research and in publication so organised and correlated the universities might be deemed worthy of such royal supporters would make them what they shall be in utopia centers of impartial learning ruling the world bacon notes the mean salaries apportioned to public lecture ships whether in the sciences or the arts and he feels that this will continue till governments take over the great tasks of a occasion the wisdom of the ancient distant best times always complain that states were too busy with laws and to rammus in point of education his great dream is the socialization of science for the conquest of nature and the enlargement of the power of man and so he appeals to James the first showering upon him the flattery which he knew his Royal Highness loved to sip James was a scholar as well as a monarch prouder of his pen and of his scepter or his sword something might be expected of so literary and erudite a king Bacon tells James that the plans he has sketched are indeed opera basilica kingly tasks towards which the endeavours of one man can be but as an image on a crossroad which points out the way but cannot tread it certainly these royal undertakings will involve expense but as the secretaries and spies of princes and states bring in bills for intelligence so you must allow the spies and intelligences of nature to bring in their bills if you would not be ignorant of many things worthy to be known and if Alexander placed so large a treasure at Aristotle's command for the support of hunters Fowler's fishers and the like in much more need do they stand of this beneficence who unfold the labyrinths of nature with such royal aid the great reconstruction can be completed in a few years without it the task will require generations what is refreshingly new in bacon is the Magnificent assurance with which he predicts the conquest of nature by man I stake all on the victory of art over nature in the race that which men have done is but an earnest of the things they shall do but why this great hope had not men been seeking truth and exploring the paths of science these 2000 years why should one hope now for such great success where so long a time had given so modest a result yes bacon answers but what if the methods men have used have been wrong and useless what if the road has been lost and research has gone into by paths ending in the air we need a ruthless revolution in our methods of research and thought in our system of science and logic we need a new organ on better than Aristotle's fit for this larger world and so bacon offers us his supreme book the new organ on Bacon's greatest performance says his bitterest critic is the first book of the Novum organum never did a man put more life into logic making induction an epic adventure and a conquest if one must study logic let him begin with this book this part of human philosophy which regards logic is disagreeable to the taste of many as appearing to them no other than a net and the snare of thorny subtlety but if we would rate things according to their real worth the rational sciences are the keys to all the rest philosophy has been barren so long says bacon because she needed a new method to make her fertile the great mistake of the Greek philosophers was that they spent so much time in theory so little in observation but thought should be the aid of observation not its substitute man says the first aphorism of the Novum organum as if flinging a challenge to all metaphysics man as the minister and interpreter of nature does and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature permit him and neither knows nor is capable of more the predecessors of Socrates were in this matter sounder than his followers Democritus in particular had a nose for facts rather than an eye for the clouds no wonder that philosophy is advanced so little since Aristotle's day it has been using Aristotle's methods to go beyond Aristotle by the light of Aristotle is to think that a borrowed light can increase the original light from which it is taken now after 2,000 years of logic chopping with the machinery invented by Aristotle philosophy has fallen so low that none will do her reverence all these medieval theories theorems and disputations must be cast out and forgotten to renew herself philosophy must begin again with a clean slate and a cleansed mind the first step therefore is the exploitation of the intellect we must become as little children innocent of isms and abstractions washed clear of prejudices and preconceptions we must destroy the idols of the mind an idol as bacon uses the word reflecting perhaps the Protestant rejection of image worship is a picture taken for a reality a thought mistaken for a thing errors come under this head and the first problem of logic is to trace and Damned the sources of these errors bacon proceeds now to adjust the famous analysis of fallacies no man says Conde Act has better known than bacon the causes of human error these errors are first idols of the tribe fallacies natural to humanity in general for man's sense is falsely asserted by Protagoras man is the measure of all things 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 those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects and distort and disfigure them our thoughts are pictures rather of ourselves than of their objects for example the human understanding from its peculiar nature easily supposes a greater degree of order and regularity in things than it really finds hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles again the human understanding when any proposition has been once laid down either from general admission and belief or from the pleasure it affords forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary yet either does not observe or despises them or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction with violent and injurious prejudice rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions it was well answered by him who was shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the peril of shipwreck and was pressed as to whether he would then recognize the power of the gods but where are the portraits of those that have perished in spite of their vows all superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology dreams omens retributive judgment or the like in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled but neglect and pass over their failure though it be much more common having first determined the question according to his will man then resorts to experience and bending her into conformity with his Placid s' leads are about like a captive in a procession in short the human understanding is no dry light but receives an infusion from the will and affections whence proceeded Sciences which may be called Sciences as one would for what a man had rather were true he more readily believes is it not so bacon gives at this point a word of golden counsel in general that every student of nature take this as a rule that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar 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 the understanding must not be allowed to jump and fly from particulars to remote axioms and of almost to the highest generality it must not be supplied with wings but rather hung with weights to keep it from leaping and flying the imagination may be the greatest enemy of the intellect whereas it should be only its tentative and experiment a second class of errors bacon calls idols of the cave errors peculiar to the individual man for everyone has a cave or den of his own which refracts and discolors the light of nature this is his character as formed by nature and nurture and by his mood or condition of body and mind some Minds eg are constitutionally analytic and see differences everywhere others are constitutionally synthetic and see resemblances so we have the scientist and the painter on the one hand and on the other hand the poet and the philosopher again some dispositions of Vincente unbounded admiration for antiquity others eagerly embraced novelty only a few can preserve the just medium and neither tear up what the ancients have correctly established nor despised the just innovations of the moderns truth knows no parties thirdly idols of the marketplace arising from the commerce and association of men with one another for men converse by means of language but words are imposed according to the understanding of the crowd and there arises from a bad and in apt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind philosophers deal out Infinite's with the careless assurance of grammarians handling infinitives and yet does any man know what this infinite is or whether it has even taken the precaution of existing philosophers talk about first cause uncaused or first mover unmoved but are not these again figley phrases used to cover naked ignorance and perhaps indicative of a guilty conscience in the user every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be causeless nor any mover unmoved perhaps the greatest reconstruction in philosophy would be simply this that we should stop lying lastly there are idols which have migrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophers and also from wrong laws of demonstration these I call idols of the theater because in my judgment all the received systems of philosophy are but so many stage plays representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion and in the plays of this philosophic theatre you may observe the same thing which is found in the theatre of the poets that stories invented for the stage are more compact and elegant and more as we would wish them to be than true stories out of history the world as Plato describes it is merely a world constructed by Plato and pictures Plato rather than the world we shall never get far along towards the truth if these idols are still to trip us up even the best of us at every turn we need new modes of reasoning new tools for the understanding and as the immense regions of the West Indies had never been discovered if the use of the compass had not first been known it is no wonder that the discovery and advancement of arts have made no greater progress when the art of inventing and discovering of the sciences remains hitherto unknown and surely it would be disgraceful if while the regions of the material globe have been in our times laid widely open and revealed the intellectual globe should main shut up within the narrow limits of old discoveries ultimately our troubles are due to dogma and deduction we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as an indubitable starting point and never think of putting this assumption itself to the test of observation or experiment now if a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties alas it is not quite inevitable here is an out common in the youth of modern philosophy part of its Declaration of Independence Descartes too would presently talk of the necessity of meth-addicted as the cobweb clearing prerequisite of honest thought bacon proceeds to give an admirable description of the scientific method of inquiry there remains simple experience which if taken as it comes is called accident empirical if sought for experiment the true method of experience first lights the candle hypothesis and then by means of the candle shows the way arranges and delimits the experiment commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested not bungling nor erratic and from it did using axioms and from established axioms again new experiments we have here as again in a later passage which speaks of the results of initial experiments as a first vintage to guide further research and explicit though perhaps inadequate recognition of that need for hypothesis experiment and deduction which some of Bacon's critics suppose him to have entirely overlooked we must go to nature instead of the books traditions and authorities we must put nature on the rack and compel her to bear witness even against herself so that we may control her to our ends we must gather together from every quarter a natural history of the world built by the United Research of Europe's scientists we must have induction but induction does not mean simple enumeration of all the data conceivably this might be endless and useless no mass of material can by itself make science this would be like chasing a quarry over an open country we must narrow and enclose our field in order to capture our prey the method of induction must include a technique for the classification of data and the elimination of hypotheses so that by the progressive cancelling of possible explanations one only shall at last remain perhaps the most useful item in this technique is the table of more or less which lists instances in which two qualities or conditions increase or decrease together and so reveals presumably a causal relation between the simultaneously varying phenomena so bacon asking what is heat seeks for some factor that increases with the increase of heat and decreases with its decrease he finds after long analysis an exact correlation between heat and motion and his conclusion that heat is a form of motion constitutes one of his few specific contributions to Natural Science by this insistent accumulation and analysis of data we come and Bacon's phrase to the form of the phenomenon which we study to its secret nature and its inner essence the theory of forms in bacon is very much like the theory of ideas in Plato a metaphysics of science when we speak of forms we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations of simple action which arrange and constitute any simple nature the form of heat or the form of light therefore means no more than the law of heat or the law of light in a similar strain Spinoza was to say that the law of the circle is its substance for although nothing exists in nature except individual bodies exhibiting clear individual effects according to particular laws yet in each branch of learning those very laws their investigation discovery and development are the foundation both of theory and of practice of theory and of practice one without the other is useless in perilous knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing unworthy of mankind we strive to learn the Four terms of things not for the sake of the forms but because by knowing the forms the laws we may remake things in the image of our desire so we study mathematics in order to reckon quantities and build bridges we study psychology in order to find our way in the jungle of society when science has sufficiently ferret about the forms of things the world will be nearly the raw material of whatever utopia man may decide to make the Utopia of science to perfect science so and then to perfect social order by putting science in control would itself be utopia enough such as the world described for us in Bacon's brief fragment and last work the New Atlantis published two years before his death Welles thinks it Bacon's greatest service to science to have drawn for us even so sketchily the picture of a society in which at last science has its proper place as the master of things it was a royal act of imagination by which for three centuries one goal has been held in view by the great army of warriors in the battle of knowledge and invention against ignorance and poverty here in these few pages we have the essence and the form of Francis Bacon the law of his being and his life the secret and continuous aspiration of his soul Plato in the Timaeus had told of the old legend of Atlantis the sunken continent in the Western seas bacon and others identified the new America of Columbus and Cabot with this old Atlantis the great continent had not sunk after all but only men's courage to navigate the sea since this old Atlantis was now known and seemed inhabited by a race vigorous enough but not quite like the brilliant utopians of Bacon's fancy he conceived of a new atlantis an isle in that distant Pacific which only Drake and Magellan had traversed an isle distant enough from Europe and from knowledge to give generous scope to the utopian imagination the story begins in the most artfully artless way like the great tales of Defoe and Swift we sailed from Peru where we had continued for the space of one whole year for China and Japan by the South Sea came a great calm in which the ships were weak slake Wyatt Leon the boundless ocean like specks upon a mirror while the provisions of the adventurers ebbed away and then resistless winds drove the vessels pitilessly north and north and north out of the island dotted south into an endless wilderness of sea the rations were reduced and reduced again and again reduced and diseased a cold of the crew at last when they had resigned themselves to death they saw almost unbelieving a fair island looming up under the sky on the shore as their vessel neared it they saw not savages but men simply and yet beautifully clothed clean and manifestly have developed intelligence they were permitted to land but were told that the island government allowed no strangers to remain nevertheless since some of the crew were sick they might all stay till these were well again during the weeks of convalescence the Wanderers unraveled day by day the mystery of the new Atlantis there reigned in this island about nineteen hundred years ago one of the inhabitants tells them a king whose memory above all others we most adore his name was Salim ona and we esteem him as the lawgiver of our nation this King had a large heart and was wholly bent to make his kingdom and people happy among the excellent acts of that King one above all hath the preeminence it was the creation and institution of the order or society which is called Solomon's house the noblest foundation as we think that was ever upon the earth and the lantern of this kingdom there follows a description of Solomon's house too complicated for a quoted abstract but eloquent enough to draw from the hostile Macaulay the judgment that there is not to be found in any human composition a passage more eminently distinguished by profound and serene wisdom Solomon's house takes the place in the New Atlantis of the houses of parliament in London it is the home of the island government but there are no politicians there no insolent elected persons no national palaver as Carlyle would say no parties caucuses primaries convention campaigns buttons lithographs editorials speeches lies and elections the idea of filling public office by such dramatic methods seems never to have entered the heads of these Atlantians but the road to the heights of scientific repute is open to all and only those who have travelled the road sit in the council's of the state it is a government of the people and for the people by the selected best of the people a government by technicians architects astronomers geologists biologists physicians chemists economists sociologists psychologists and philosophers complicated enough but think of a government without politicians indeed there is little government at all in the New Atlantis these governors are engaged rather in controlling nature than in ruling man the end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire to the effecting of all things possible this is the key sentence of the book and a Francis Bacon we find the governor's engaged in such undignified tasks as studying the Stars arranging to utilize for industry the power of falling water developing gases for the cure of various ailments experimenting on animals for surgical knowledge growing new varieties of plants and animals by crossbreeding etc we imitate the flights of birds we have some degree of flying in the air we have ships and boats for going underwater there is foreign trade but of an unusual sort the island produces what it consumes and consumes what it produces it does not go to war for foreign markets we maintain a trade not of gold silver or jewels nor for silks nor for spices nor for any other commodity or matter but only for God's first creature which was light to have light of the growth of all parts of the world these merchants of light are members of Solomon's house who are sent abroad every 12 years to live among foreign peoples of every quarter of the civilized globe to learn their language and study their sciences and industries and literature's and to return at the end of the 12 years to report their findings to the of Solomon's house while their places abroad are taken by a new group of scientific explorers in this way the best of all the world comes soon to the new Atlantis brief as the picture is we see in it again the outline of every philosophers utopia a people guided in peace and modest plenty by their wisest men the dream of every thinker is to replace the politician by the scientist why does it remain only a dream after so many incarnations is it because the thinker is too dreamily intellectual to go out into the arena of affairs and build his concept into reality is it because the hard ambition of the narrowly acquisitive soul is forever destined to overcome the gentle and scrupulous aspirations of philosophers and saints or is it that science is not yet grown to maturity and conscious power that only in our day do physicists and chemists and technicians begin to see that the rising role of science and industry and war gives them a pivotal position in social strategy and points to the time when they're organized strength will persuade the world to call them to leadership perhaps science has not yet merited the mastery of the world and perhaps in a little while it will criticism and now how shall we appraise this philosophy of Francis Bacon's is there anything new in it McAuley thinks that induction as described by bacon is a very old fashioned affair over which there is no need of raising any commotion much less a monument induction has been practiced from morning till night by every human being since the world began the man who infers that mince-pies disagreed with him because he was ill when he ate them well when he ate them not most ill when he ate most and least ill when he ate least has employed unconsciously but sufficiently all the tables of the Novum organum but John Smith hardly handles his table of more or less so accurately and more probably will continue his mince pies despite the seismic disturbances of his lower strata and even with John Smith so wise it would not sheer bacon of his merit for what does logic do but formulate the experience and methods of the wise what does any discipline do but try by rules to turn the art of a few into a science teachable to all but is the formulation Bacon's own is not the Socratic method inductive is not Aristotle's biology inductive did not Roger Bacon practice as well as preach the inductive method which Francis Bacon merely preached did not Galileo formulate better the procedure that science is actually used true of Roger Bacon less true of Galileo less true yet of Aristotle least true of Socrates Galileo outlined the aim rather than the method of science holding up before its followers the goal of mathematical and quantitative formulation of all experience and relationships Aristotle practiced induction when there was nothing else for him to do and where the material did not lend itself to his penchant for the deduction of specific conclusions from magnificently general assumptions and Socrates did not so much practice induction the gathering of data as analysis the definition and discrimination of words and ideas bacon makes no claim to parthenogenetic originality like Shakespeare he takes with the lordly hand and with the same excuse that he adorns whatever he touches every man has his sources as every organism has its food what is his is the way in which he digests them and turns them into flesh and blood as Rolly puts it bacon contemned no man's observations but would light his torch at every man's candle but bacon acknowledges these debts he refers to that useful method of Hippocrates so sending us at once to the real source of inductive logic among the Greeks and Plato he writes we're less accurately we right Socrates giveth good example of inquiry by induction and view of particulars though in such a wandering manner as is of no force or fruit he would have disdained to dispute his obligations to these predecessors and we should disdain to exaggerate them but then again is the Baconian method correct is it the method most fruitfully used in modern science no generally science is used with best result not the accumulation of data Natural History and their manipulation by the complicated tables of the Novum organum but the simpler method of hypothesis deduction and experiment so Darwin reading malthus's essay on population conceived the idea of applying to all organisms the Malthusian hypothesis the population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence deduced from this hypothesis the probable conclusion that the pressure of population on the food supply results in a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive and by which in each generation every species is changed into closer adaptation to its environment and finally having by hypothesis and deduction limited his problem and his field of observation turned it to the unwitnessed inductive examination of the facts again Einstein conceived or took from Newton the hypothesis that light travels in curved not straight lines deduced from it the conclusion that a star appearing to be on the straight line theory in a certain position in the heavens is really a little to one side of that position and he invited experiment and observation to test the conclusion obviously the function of hypothesis and imagination is greater than bacon supposed and the procedure of science is more direct and circumscribed than in the Baconian scheme bacon himself anticipated the superannuation of his method the actual practice of science would discover better modes of investigation than could be worked out in the interludes of statesmanship these things require some ages for the ripening of them even a lover of the Baconian spirit must concede too that the great Chancellor while laying down the law for science failed to keep abreast of the science of his time he rejected Copernicus and ignored Kepler and took Abraha he'd appreciated Gilbert and seemed unaware of Harvey in truth he loved discourse better than research or perhaps he had no time for toilsome investigations such work as he did in philosophy and science was left in fragments and chaos at his death full of repetitions contradictions aspirations and introductions are as long a vita brevis art is long and time is fleeting this is the tragedy of every great soul to assign to so overworked a man whose reconstruction of philosophy had to be crowded into the crevices of a harassed and burdened political career the vast and complicated creations of Shakespeare is to waste the time of students with the parlour controversies of idle theorists Shakespeare lacks just that which distinguishes the lordly Chancellor area edition and philosophy Shakespeare has an impressive smattering of many Sciences and a mastery of none in all of them he speaks with the eloquence of an amateur he accepts astrology this huge state were on the stars in secret influence comment he is forever making mistakes which the learned bacon could not possibly have made his Hector quotes Aristotle and his Coriolanus alludes to Cato he supposes the Lupercalia to be a hill and he understands Caesar about as profoundly as Caesar as understood by HG Wells he makes countless references to his early life and his match tribulations he perpetrates vulgarities obscenities and puns natural enough in the gentle Roy stirrer who could not quite outlive the Stratford rioter and the butcher's son but hardly to be expected in the cold and calm philosopher Carlile calls Shakespeare the greatest of intellects but he was rather the greatest of imaginations and the keenest eye he is an inescapable psychologist but he is not a philosopher he has no structure of thought unified by a purpose for his own life and for mankind he is immersed in love and its problems and thinks of philosophy through Montana's phrase only when his heart is broken otherwise he accepts the world blithely enough he is not consumed with the reconstructive vision that a noble Plato or Nietzsche or Bacon now the greatness and the weakness of bacon lay precisely in his passion for unity his desire to spread the wings of his co-ordinating genius over a hundred Sciences he aspired to be like Plato a man of sublime genius who took a view of everything as from a lofty rock he broke down under the weight of the tasks he had laid upon himself he failed forgive ibly because he undertook so much he could not enter the promised land of science but as Cowley's epitaph expressed it he could at least stand upon its border and point out its fair features in the distance his achievement was not the less great because it was indirect his philosophical works though little red now moved the intellects which moved the world he made himself the eloquent voice of the optimism and resolution of the renaissance never was any man so great a stimulus to other thinkers King James it is true refused to accept his suggestion for the support of science and said of the Novum organum that it was like the peace of God which passeth all understanding but better men in 1662 founding that royal society which was to become the greatest Association of scientists in the world named bacon as their model and inspiration they hoped that this organization of English research would lead the way toward that europe-wide Association which the advanced learning had taught them to desire and when the great minds of the French enlightenment undertook that masterpiece of intellectual enterprise the encyclopedia they dedicated it to Francis Bacon if said Diderot in the Prospectus we have come of it successfully we shall owe most to the Chancellor bacon who threw out the plan of an Universal dictionary of Sciences and arts at a time when so to say neither arts nor sciences existed that extraordinary genius when it was impossible to write a history of what was known wrote one of what it was necessary to learn Dalembert called bacon the greatest the most universal and the most eloquent of philosophers the convention published the works of bacon at the expense of the state the whole tenor and career of British thought have followed the philosophy of bacon his tendency to conceive the world in democraty and mechanical terms gave to his secretary Hobbes the starting point for a thoroughgoing materialism his inductive method gave to lock the idea of an empirical psychology bound by observation and freed from theology and metaphysics and his emphasis on commodities and fruits found formulation in Bentham's identification of the useful and the good wherever the spirit of control has overcome the spirit of resignation Bacon's influence has been felt he is the voice of all those Europeans who have changed a continent from a forest into a treasure land of art and science and have made their little Peninsula the center of the world men are not animals erect said bacon but immortal God's the Creator has given us souls equal to all the world and yet satiable not even with a world everything is possible to man time is young give us some little centuries and we shall control and remake all things we shall perhaps at last learn the noblest lesson of all that man must not fight man but must make war only on the obstacles that nature offers to the triumphs of man it will not be a miss writes bacon in one of his finest passages to distinguish the three inés and as it were grades of ambition in mankind the first is of those who desire to extend their power in their native country which kind is vulgar and degenerate the second is of those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among men this certainly has more dignity but not less covetousness but if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and Dominion of the human race itself over the universe his ambition is without doubt both a more wholesome thing and a nobler than the other two it was Bacon's fate to be torn to pieces by these hostile ambitions struggling for his soul epilogue men in great place are thrice servants servants to the sovereign or state servants of fame and servants of business so as they had no freedom neither in their persons nor in their action nor in their time the rising unto places laborious and by pains men come to greater pains and it is sometimes base and by indignities men come to dignities the standing is slippery and the regress is either a downfall or at least in Eclipse what a wistful summary of Bacon's epilogue a man's shortcomings said Goethe are taken from his epoch his virtues and greatness belong to himself this seems a little unfair to the zeitgeist but it is exceptionally just in the case of bacon Abbott after a painstaking study of the morals prevalent at Elizabeth's Court concludes that all the leading figures male and female were disciples of Machiavelli Roger asked him described in doggerel the four cardinal virtues in demand at the court of the Queen cod lie flatter and face four ways in court to win men grace if Albee thrall to none of these away good piers home John cheese it was one of the customs of those lively days for judges to take presents from persons trying cases in their courts bacon was not above the age in this matter and his tendency to keep his expenditure several years in advance of his income for bad him the luxury of scruples it might have passed unnoticed except that he had made enemies in Essex's case and by his readiness to saber foes with his speech a friend had warned him that it is too common in every man's mouth in court that as your tongue has been a razor to some so shall theirs be to you but he left the warnings unnoticed he seemed to be in good favor with the king he had been made Baron very limb of very alum in 1618 and by counts and Albans in 1621 and for three years he had been Chancellor then suddenly the blow came in 1621 a disappointed suitor charged him with taking money for the dispatch of a suit it was no unusual but bacon knew at once that if his enemies wish to press it they could force his fall he retired to his home and waited developments when he learned that all his foes were clamoring for his dismissal he sent in his confession and humble submission to the King James yielding to pressure from the now victorious Parliament against which bacon had to persistently defended him sent him to the tower but bacon was released after two days and the heavy fine which had been laid upon him was remitted by the king his pride was not quite broken I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years he said but it was the justest judgment that was in Parliament these 200 years he spent the five years that remained to him in the obscurity and peace of his home harassed by an unwanted poverty but solaced by the active pursuit of philosophy in these five years he wrote his greatest latin work de augmentees shanty room published an enlarged edition of the essays a fragment called silver silver room and the history of Henry the seventh he mourned that he had not sooner abandoned politics and given all his time to literature and science to the very last moment he was occupied with work and died so to speak on the field of battle in his essay of death he had voiced a wish to die in an earnest pursuit which is like one wounded in hot blood do for the time scarce feels the hurt like Caesar he was granted his choice in March 16 26 while riding from London to Highgate and turning over in his mind the question how far flesh might be preserved from putrefaction by being covered with snow he resolved to put the matter to a test at once stopping off at a cottage she bought a fowl killed it and stuffed it with snow while he was doing this he was seized with chills and weakness and finding himself too ill to ride back to town he gave directions that he should be taken to the nearby home of Lord Arundel where he took to bed he did not yet resign life he wrote cheerfully that the experiment succeeded excellently well but it was his last the fitful fever of his varied life had quite can assumed him he was all burnt out now too weak to fight the disease that crept up slowly to his heart he died on the 9th of April 16 26 at the age of 65 he had written in his will these proud and characteristic words I bequeath my soul to God my body to be buried obscurely my name to the next stages and to foreign nations the ages and the nations have accepted him

Channel: Rocky C

Views: 158,473

Keywords: Philosophy (Field Of Study), Francis Bacon (Author), Will Durant (Author)

Id: 5SmZQLxE98Y

Length: 103min 40sec (6220 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 09 2014