Our Past Fast Upon Us – On Reading Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of our Ages

When I was in college I took a class on the English Renaissance. In that class we read a lot of literature. One piece that struck me deeply and which we read heavily from was a little book called The Essays by Sir Francis Bacon. Now you are probably not very familiar with this book, which is one reason why I felt compelled to share about it here with you – the other reason being of course my deep love, admiration, and appreciation to the work.

As I’ve said numerous times in various posts here, as well as throughout my time discussing literature and art with friends and fellows, the act of reading, and therefore by extension the act of writing, is an act of transcending time and space through the power of
communication. Through books and words we are all able to “pick up” conversation with the greatest thinkers and philosophers, artists and visionaries, the world has ever known. And often, as one might expect, there is great challenge in keeping pace, or catching up as it were, with such excellent luminaries. But as in nearly all things in life, the truly great rewards are accompanied by truly great challenges. To be honest, I often love the challenge, the stretch, the rigor that such great works and ideas demand of me. And so this is where we find ourselves with Francis Bacon.

Bacon lived in the time of Shakespeare. He was a nobleman who served largely under the reign of the great Queen Elizabeth. He was a trained lawyer, a politician, a scientist, an esteemed classicist, philosopher, and writer. There is an entire movement, perhaps admittedly fringe but none the less noteworthy, which posits that it is actually Francis Bacon who is none other than William Shakespeare. Once in college I asked my professor, a Shakespeare specialist, if he believed Bacon was in fact the actual Shakespeare to which he immediately replied, “I wasn’t aware we had reason to believe Shakespeare wasn’t himself already.” It is always fun conversation to debate such conspiracy theories, but nevertheless it speaks to the stature and renown Bacon holds in our literary history.

There is no question that Bacon was a great man. It has been said that when Bacon stood up to speak in Parliament the halls grew quiet and all men listened intently. He was a man of great report and was deeply respected in his day. He was not without his faults of course, as are all men, but whatever failings he may have had, he seemed to continually redirect himself to even greater aspirations and advances.

However I am not here to give you a biography of the great man, rather I wish to discuss his literary work called, The Essays. It must be noted that his most famous work is called the Novum Organum Scientarium – that is the ‘New Scientific Organ’. It is written in Latin, which yours truly is painstakingly trying to learn without much avail admittedly. The tome is essentially an attempt to create a new mode of philosophical inquiry and reasoning that would replace Aristotle’s model. An ambitious task to say the least! Essentially he creates the foundations for the scientific method by detailing the intellectual underpinnings for the process of reduction and inductive reasoning. Interestingly the Novum Organum was intended to be one part of much larger work of six parts called the Instauratio magna—’the great instauration.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred to Bacon as the British Plato and considered the Novum Organum as one of the three greatest books since the birth of Christianity (the other two were Spinoza’s Ethics and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason). As you can see there is quite a lot of philosophical history and content we could discuss here and frankly yours truly is not as well versed in it all as he would like to be – I am remember not a major in Philosophy but rather in English Literature. So perhaps we’ll save all that for another day – I certainly do hope to delve more into it all in the days to come – God willing. As I say, today I am keen to share with you the wisdom of his little book called The Essays.

The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral were first written in 1597, around the same time Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice hit the stage, and were published in their final form in 1625, approximately 10 years after Shakespeare’s passing. The essays are dedicated to “The Right Honourable, my very good Lord, The Duke of Buckingham His Grace, Lord High Admiral of England”. The book is arranged as a series of relatively short essays typically 1-2 pages long, but don’t be deceived – what the essays lack in length they make up for in density. Bacon has a way with writing thick and powerful sentences, and he quotes extensively from the ancient world making his frame of reference that much more profound. The essays themselves run the gamut from Truth to Death, from Cunning to Gardens, and from Parenting to Empire. Bacon has such a masterful style of writing incredible perceptions so flawlessly that one may think the essays simply wrote themselves. I think the best way to dive into Bacon here in this post is to simply share with you some of the great lines throughout. As I mentioned above, Bacon quotes extensively from a wide array of ancient sources and often in their original language, so I recommend reading a copy that has extensive and valuable footnotes (and translations). It will be an immense help to your full enjoyment of his work. I found a link to a free pdf which seems to fit the bill nicely and has a thorough introduction as well which looks quite interesting. You can find the link to that pdf here. I still have my copy from college which is the Penguin Classics version and can be purchased here if you are interested as well. Now that we all have our source materials – let’s dive in!

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly the contemplation of death as the wages of sin and passage to another world is holy and religious, but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office.

For he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not. Therefore set it down, that an ‘habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.’ And in this part it is good that a man’s face give his tongue leave to speak. For the discovery of a man’s self by the tracts of his countenance is a great weakness and betraying, by how much it is many times more marked and believed than a man’s words.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fear: they cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter: they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.

boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts. But nevertheless it doth fascinate and bind hand and foot those are either shallow in judgement or weak in courage, which are the greatest part; yea, and prevaileth with wise men at weak times…Certainly to men of great judgement, bold persons are a sport to behold; nay, and the to the vulgar also, boldness hath somewhat of the ridiculous. For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without absurdity.

Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This of all virtues and dignities of the mind is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess, but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in clarity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

Common benefits are to be communicate with all, but peculiar benefits with choice.

Shepherds of people had need know the calendars of tempests in state; which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality, as natural tempests are greatest about the ‘equinoctia.’ And as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states.

God never wrought miracle to convince aetheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy bringeth men’s minds 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 beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him: for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity…superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new ‘primum mobile’ that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The mast of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools, and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear. And yet that commonly is the case of kings, who, being at the highest, want matter of desire, which makes their minds more languishing; and have many representations of perils and shadows, which makes their minds less clear. And this is one reason also of that effect which the Scripture speaketh of, ‘that the king’s heart is inscrutable.’

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.

I could surely continue quoting on and on until the whole book was retyped right here for you all! I must say that reading Bacon again for these past couple hours, late at night, perusing and flipping through his pages, readjusting my mind to his great thoughts and language, it truly is captivating, even disorienting. He is a very observant, thoughtful, and learned man. And he writes so well too. I am grateful to him and to not just the posterity he provides us of his own mind and time, but like a winding fractal, how he likewise provides a certain derivative posterity to the ancients as well. The English Renaissance and perhaps Bacon more than many of that time, were steeped in the classics and ancients, and so through a transcendent sort of osmosis, the more we immerse ourselves in Bacon, the more we likewise immerse ourselves in that which he himself was reading and imbibing, thereby creating an even longer chain reaction of thought, civilization, and greatness. There is an invisible cord of continuity here between ourselves today wherever that may be on this earth, with Francis Bacon, with Shakespeare, and with England and it traces itself back ever further even to Seneca, Tacitus, and the dusty streets of Ancient Rome all the way back even further still to Plato, Pythagoras, and the luxuriant Ancient Greeks. The world is certainly smaller today thanks to technology, and our experience of time is arguably much faster as well considering how much we accomplish in a day thanks to the speed of communication, and yet here with books one of our oldest, most basic inventions, the past seems to remain right here on top of us. It has welded itself into our bones and sinews, buried itself in our brains, intent to live all life to the fullest through all of us here and now perhaps forever.