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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY of AMERICA Francis Bacon on Action

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY of AMERICA Francis Bacon on Action

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Francis Bacon on Action, Contemplation, and the Human Good

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

By Aaron Maddeford

Washington, D.C.

2018

Francis Bacon on Action, Contemplation, and the Human Good

Aaron Maddeford, Ph.D.

Director: John McCarthy, Ph.D.

Francis Bacon is rarely, if ever, considered a moral philosopher. Commentators generally have focused on his contributions to . Nevertheless, he does write on moral philosophy. Further, throughout his natural philosophy, he employs a distinction central to ancient ethics, that of action and contemplation.

Bacon seeks an action and contemplation more united than those of the ancients. What drives men’s actions, in his view, is the desire for immortality, of the individual and of the species.

Such an aim is achieved most perfectly by Bacon’s natural philosophy, which has for its end the mastery of for the relief of man’s estate. Bacon uses Christian charity as an argument for his philosophy, but his understanding of charity is particularly un-Christian in its focus on this world.

His moral philosophy and natural philosophy both reject the starting point of the ancients, namely, what is most known to us. Natural philosophy begins from simple natures, the first tendencies of matter, rather than from natural wholes. Moral philosophy begins not from opinions about the good, but from a consideration of the passions of men. Both natural and moral philosophy aim at immortality, one through dominion over the natural world, the other through dominion over men.

Bacon’s action and contemplation are united by his new conception of form. Form refers not to the cause of a natural whole, but to the laws regulating simple natures. The one who knows the forms can generate natures on a given body. Hence his contemplation confers the ability to manipulate the world and leads to the Kingdom of Man, the empire of man over nature.

His new conception of form entails the rejection of the ancients’ notion of virtue. As Bacon uses the term, it refers to the acquisition of power rather than the perfection of one’s nature. In his political , Bacon advocates economic and military power as the main common good.

But in the New , he portrays a society that attains power not over other nations but over nature. The scientist is the good man, who, motivated by , achieves such mastery.

This dissertation by Aaron Maddeford fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in philosophy approved by John McCarthy, Ph.D., as Director, and by Richard Hassing, Ph.D., and Timothy Noone, Ph.D. as Readers.

______John McCarthy, Ph.D., Director

______Richard Hassing, Ph.D., Reader

______Timothy Noone, Ph.D., Reader

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FRANCIS BACON ON ACTION, CONTEMPLATION, AND THE HUMAN GOOD

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER ONE: THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING...... 13

Introduction

1. Toward a New Learning...... 22

Outline of Book One Prior Traditions Dismissed The New End of : The Relief of Man’s Estate

2. Moral Philosophy in the Advancement...... 40

Prior Moral Philosophers in the Advancement: , Lucretius, Seneca Moral Philosophy within Bacon’s Division of Learning The Ancient’s Neglect of the Good The Public and Private Goods Division and Description of the Human Goods Achieving the Human Good Learning and the Human Goods Summary

3. Christian Charity and the Baconian Good...... 82

Some Skeptics Regarding Bacon’s Christianity Bacon’s Appeal to Christianity and Charity in the Advancement The Compatibility of Christian Charity and Baconian Charity Summary

CHAPTER TWO: STARTING POINTS AND ENDS IN DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM 99

iii

Introduction

1. Preliminaries: Title, Literary Form, Order...... 106

Title and Literary Form Order

2. Division of De Sapientia...... 115

Natural Philosophy and Human Philosophy Divine Philosophy The Division of the Fables

3. Principles of Natural and Human Philosophy in De Sapientia...... 127

The Starting Point The End

4. Moral Philosophy as a Preparation for Natural Philosophy...... 143

Conclusion

CHAPTER THREE: ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION IN THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA...... 155

Introduction

1. Preliminaries: Bacon’s Instauratio Magna and ...... 160

Instauratio Magna Plan of the Novum Organum

2. Bacon’s Action...... 167

Prior Accounts of Action: Aristotle and Seneca The Goal of the Instauratio Magna The Kingdom of Man The New Alexander iv

3. Bacon’s Contemplation...... 188 Prior Accounts of Contemplation: Aristotle, Seneca, Lucretius The Idols The Old and New Organons Baconian Forms The Ultimate Causes

4. The Relationship between Baconian Action and Contemplation...... 217

Natural Philosophy: Contemplative and Active The Great Mother of the

Conclusion

CHAPTER FOUR: THE GOOD MAN IN THE ESSAYS AND ...... 228

Introduction

1. Essays and Counsels, Moral...... 230

Literary Form The Essays and the Instauratio Magna in Aristotle Human Nature and Virtue in the Essays

2. Essays and Counsels, Civil...... 245

Aquinas on the Common Good The Common Good in the Essays The Good Man in the Essays

3. The New Atlantis...... 266

Introduction and Literary Form Nature in the New Atlantis The Good of the Citizens The Common Good in the New Atlantis The Good Man in the New Atlantis

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Conclusion

CONCLUSION...... 295

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INTRODUCTION

Francis Bacon is widely regarded as one of the fathers of . He was one of several figures, such as Machiavelli, Descartes, and Locke, who broke with the prior traditions and set philosophy on a new course. His engagement with pre-modern traditions of philosophy, however, was much more thorough than that of any other early-modern philosopher.1 Commentators have, for the most part, focused on the changes he initiated or championed in his natural philosophy, which differs from prior with regard to such central concepts as nature, form, induction, and the role of . Such a focus is reasonable, since Francis Bacon’s main project, the Instauratio Magna – which includes his magnum opus, the Novum organum – is a work of natural philosophy. He has received little attention as a moral philosopher. For instance, he is not even mentioned in Alasdair MacIntyre’s

A Short of Ethics. But he did engage in moral philosophy, as is shown by the title of his most popular work, Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral. And he helps justify his revolutionary approach by an appeal to the human good: all knowledge, he insists, must be referred to “to the good of men and mankind.” His mastery of nature is for the “reliefe of Mans estate.”2 Further, the Advancement and Proficiency of Learning, Human and Divine contains a short treatment of ethics which differs from and criticizes prior accounts of the good. In all his writings on the human good he relies on a distinction central to ancient ethics, that of action and contemplation.

1 Richard Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New 1,” in On Modern Origins: Essays in , eds. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 17.

2 Advancement of Learning, OFB 4.7, 32.

1

2 Bacon departs significantly from the ancients in his conceptions of action and contemplation. This is indicated by his desire that “contemplation and action may be more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited together, than they haue beene,” and by his natural philosophy’s stated goal of mastering nature “for the relief of man’s estate.” Such a goal is foreign to prior philosophies and, at least on the surface, at odds with Aristotle’s teaching in the

Nicomachean Ethics that philosophy aims at contemplation for its own sake and that man’s highest perfection consists in this contemplation.

Status quaestionis

Earlier writers have suggested the importance of Bacon’s contributions to ethical theory.

Sir , who translated De sapientia veterum during Bacon’s life, compared it to St.

Thomas More’s and said that “it is hard to judge to whether of these two worthies policy and morality is more beholding.”3 In the late nineteenth century, Sidgwick states in his Outlines of the History of Ethics that Bacon’s outline of moral philosophy in the Advancement “contains much just criticism and pregnant suggestion, and deserves to be read by all students of the .”4 Despite this recommendation from an influential English moral philosopher, little attention has been paid to Bacon’s ethical thought.5

3 The Wisdom of the Ancients and New Atlantis, trans. Sir Arthur Gorges (: Cassell and Company, 1900), 9.

4 Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (London: MacMillan and Co., 1892), 158. Sidgwick does go on, however, to state that Bacon’s outline of moral philosophy “was never filled in, and does not seem to have had any material effect in determining the subsequent development of ethical thought” (Ibid., 159).

5 In Alasdair MacIntyre’s case, the neglect is more notable on account of the high regard he has for Sidgwick. See A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), vii.

3 While commentators on Bacon’s natural philosophy cannot avoid mentioning, if only in passing, some aspects of his moral philosophy, generally he is viewed as not departing significantly from earlier moral philosophy.6 Bacon’s political philosophy was similarly neglected until Howard B. White published his influential work, Peace Among the Willows: The

Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon. After this work, a number of studies of Bacon’s political philosophy were published.7 These works touch on Bacon’s ethical theory, and some make significant contributions to our understanding of it, but none focus on it.

Kathy McReynolds’s Enhancing Our Way to Happiness? Aristotle Versus Bacon on the

Nature of True Happiness seems to promise a comparison of the ethical theories of Aristotle and

Bacon. But according to McReynolds, Bacon “left no room for moral reflection.”8 McReynolds investigates Bacon’s psychology rather than his ethics, and subsequent developments from his thought rather than his own moral thought. Something similar can be said of Karl Wallace’s

6 Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 133; B. H. G. Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, politics and , 1561-1626 (: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 32; 44-45. See also Brian Vickers, who sees Bacon’s moral teachings as based on both classical ethics and Christian morality, with the latter predominating in his later works. Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxxv. Jerry Weinberger, while concentrating on political philosophy, sees Bacon as departing from the Christian understanding of the human good but returning to pre-Christian philosophy, modified to meet Christian sectarian violence. Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age: A Commentary on Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 10, 20-21, 35, 295, 300.

7 H. B. White, Peace Among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968); Jerry Weinberger, Science, Faith, and Politics; Heidi Studer, “‘Grapes Ill-trodden…’: Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of the Ancients” (Ph. D. diss., University of Toronto, 1992); Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1993); Kimberly Hurd Hale, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Though (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013); Tom van Malssen, The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon: On the Unity of Knowledge (Albany: SUNY, 2015).

8 Kathy McReynolds, Enhancing Our Way to Happiness: Aristotle versus Bacon on the Nature of True Happiness (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004), 4. One McReynold’s gives for Bacon’s neglect of ethics was that “he felt ‘the older moralists’ (mainly Aristotle) did a somewhat adequate job in the examination of the ‘platform of good’ [i.e., the nature and division of the good]”, though she admits, rather vaguely, that “he was not entirely pleased with their analysis” (ibid.).

4 Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man: The Faculties of Man’s Soul.9 Wallace sets out to give an account of the psychology commonly held in Bacon’s and so throws light on Bacon’s understanding of the soul and its powers, but he does not deal with ethics proper.

Svetozar Minkov, to my knowledge, has published the only book focusing on Francis

Bacon’s ethics.10 Moreover, he is attentive to Bacon’s engagement with ancient philosophy. But while he acknowledges the importance of Kennington’s account of the between the

Baconian and the ancient conception of the distinction between action and contemplation,

Minkov does not do justice to Bacon’s own statements about the novelty of his conception of action and contemplation. Indeed, his view is that Bacon departs from Christianity and returns to a pre-Christian understanding of the superiority of private contemplation to public action. I disagree with this interpretation of Bacon, holding rather that Bacon makes a fundamental break from ancient philosophy, and that his understanding of action, contemplation, and the human good departs significantly from that of the ancients. In sum, then, this dissertation concentrate on Bacon’s ethical theory, and will argue that he breaks with ancient moral philosophy.

Aristotle, Seneca, and Lucretius

Francis Bacon engages with numerous ancients throughout his works. In the

Advancement of Learning alone he refers on more than one thousand occasions to prior thinkers,

9 Karl R. Wallace, Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man: The Faculties of Man’s Soul (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1967).

10 Svetozar Minkov, Francis Bacon’s “ Touching Human Nature”: Virtue, Philosophy, and the Relief of Man’s Estate (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010).

5 the great bulk of them ancient.11 Ancient philosophy is not monolithic; Bacon discusses numerous competing views of the good held by ancients. Some focus is necessary for this dissertation. I will chiefly look at Bacon’s interaction with three figures: Aristotle, Seneca, and

Lucretius. These three philosophers are primary interlocutors in Bacon’s philosophy and serve as foils against which Bacon develops his own ethical ideas. Further, between them they cover, more or less, the range of possibilities for ethics in the ancient world. And finally, all three found large numbers of readers in the England and Europe of Bacon’s day.

Aristotle, according to Bacon, was at the core of the benighted philosophy of his own time: “Upon [Aristotle] the philosophy that now is chiefly dependeth.”12 Aided by the scholastics, who “have almost incorporated” Aristotle’s “contentious philosophy” into “the body of Christian religion,”13 he presided over philosophy and learning as a whole in Europe. His influence was not restricted to Catholics; Richard Hooker, the most prominent Anglican theologian of Bacon’s time, relies heavily on Aristotle in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.14

Certainly in his opposition to Aristotle Bacon was not a voice crying in the wilderness. Aristotle was subject to attack from a variety of quarters, from both the new scientists such as Galileo, a contemporary of Bacon’s, and from the humanists, who attempted to overthrow scholastic

11 Brian Vickers, “Introduction,” in Francis Bacon: The Major Works, xxxvii.

12 Filum Labyrinthi, SEH 3.502.

13 SEH 3.499.

14 Richard Hooker was criticized for this by the anonymous author of A Christian Letter: “Now in all your bookes, althogh we finde manie good things, many truethes and fine pointes bravelie handled, yet in all your discourse, for the most parte, Aristotle the patriarch of Philosophers (with divers other humane writers) and the ingenuous schoolemen, almost in all pointes have some finger.” The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, Volume IV: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Attack and Response, ed. John E. Booty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 65.

6 philosophy in the universities, largely unsuccessfully.15 None of these attacks, however, rival that of Bacon in thoroughness and depth.

The title of Bacon’s signature work is a sign of the predominance of Aristotle in Bacon’s thought. “Organon” was the title given to Aristotle’s logical works. Bacon wishes to replace

Aristotle’s method, the old organon, with a new method, a novum organum. Aristotle’s account of action and contemplation dominates the tradition of moral philosophy and provides a backdrop to a new action and contemplation; it is Aristotle’s account of form, mediated by

Ramus, that Bacon attacks and replaces with his new conception of form; and Aristotle’s account of nature serves as the foil and jumping-off point for Bacon’s new understanding of nature. In short, Aristotle’s teachings on substance, nature, form, virtue, habit, action, and contemplation constitute, in large part, the background against which Bacon develops his own ethical ideas.16

Seneca also receives significant attention from Bacon. He is, for Bacon, the principal representative of Stoic philosophy. Aside from the frequency of references (he is quoted throughout the Advancement and is the most-referenced philosopher in the Essays), he is of particular importance to Bacon for two . The first is the resurgence of Stoic thought in

Renaissance Europe in general and Jacobean England in particular.17 The second is the prima

15 See Laurence Brockliss, “Curricula” in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800), ed. Hilde De Ridder-Symoens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, ), 579, 593-596.

16 See Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon, 31: “Aristotle’s ideas in a number of areas, especially , , and the study of nature, constituted the basic and indispensable background, the point of both orientation and resistance, of Bacon’s own thought.”

17 See J. H. M. Salmon, “ and Roman Example: Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50, no. 2 (1989): 199-225. Also Roland Mayer, “Seneca Redivivus: Seneca in the Medieval and World,” and Peter Stacey, “Senecan Political Thought from the Middle Ages to Early ,” both

7 facie similarity between Bacon’s and Seneca’s moral thought. Bacon praises (with reservations)

Seneca’s close analysis of emotions in works such as De ira, De clementia, and De tranquillitate animi, and undertakes something similar himself.18 Bacon’s statements concerning the necessity of pursuing action as well as contemplation, and of seeking the good of all men, seem more closely allied to Seneca’s philosophy than to any other.

Lucretius is the third major ancient considered in the dissertation. At first glance, he does not seem to belong with Aristotle and Seneca. Bacon refers to him, but not nearly as often as to the other two. But though Bacon does not often mention him by name, his De rerum natura is usually the source behind Bacon’s presentation of the teachings of Democritus or in general.19 Even when Bacon quotes him directly, he often does not mention his name, perhaps because in the England of his time Lucretius and Epicureanism were associated with atheism.20

Bacon’s own cousin, William Cecil, the Lord Burghley, attributes the weakened state of religion in England at his time in part to the “Increase of Nombres of Irreligious and Epicures.”21 Around

in The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, ed. Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 277-302.

18 OFB 4.150. Cf. 4.128.

19 , SEH 3.83, n.1; C. T. Harrison, “Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient Atomists,” Harvard Studies in Philology and 15 (1933): 198; Eugenio Gattinara, Eros and the Atom, or the Birth of the Concept of Force (Madrid: Editorial Dos Continentes, 1974), 62, 68 ff.; Monte Johnson and Catherine Wilson, “Lucretius and the ” in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 134.

20 Gattinara, Eros and the Atom, 85.

21 Quoted in Tom Betteridge, Literature and Politics in the English Reformation (New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), 274.

8 the same time, Bishop Thomas Cooper writes in An Admonition of the People of England (1589) that the “the schoole of Epicure, and the Atheists, is mightily increased in these dayes.”22

Bacon frequently asserts that the pre-Socratic philosophers, in particular Democritus, were greatly superior to Aristotle and , despite the latter two philosophers’ dominance in the

Western tradition. Lucretius’ Democritean explanation of all things in terms of principles that combine in different patterns and ratios – principles that cut across all species – has a surface similarity to Bacon’s understanding of nature, particularly in its early stages of development.

This invites the question whether Bacon’s moral thought has a similar relationship to Lucretius’ philosophy.

In addition to Aristotle, Seneca, and Lucretius, I contrast Bacon’s philosophy with that of other pre-modern thinkers, such as Plato, Virgil, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Some justification has to be made why Plato is not ranked higher among the ancients used in this dissertation, given

Bacon’s frequent attacks on Plato. But it is particularly difficult to summarize the moral philosophy of such an unsystematic philosopher as Plato. Indeed, it is difficult to determine with any confidence what Plato’s ethical views are.23 A further point is that, to the extent that Plato’s ethical views can be confidently ascertained, they often broadly overlap with Aristotle’s – virtue as the fulfillment of human nature and the source of happiness, and the priority of contemplation over action. So while I examine Bacon’s relationship to Plato, particularly in his discussion of

22 Quoted in The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1975 ed, s.v. “Epicure.”

23 See the Introduction of the article “Plato’s Ethics: An Overview,” which summarizes the difficulties involved in understanding Plato’s moral philosophy, in an attempt to explain “the widely diverging reconstructions of Plato’s ethics in the secondary literature from antiquity to this day.” Dorothea Frede, “Plato's Ethics: An Overview,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

9 language in the Novum organum and in the political and social setting described in New Atlantis, it is not a focus of this dissertation.

Although this dissertation is properly philosophical, not theological, nevertheless any account of Bacon’s ethics cannot ignore the prevailing Christianity of his day, since Bacon has frequent recourse to arguments from Scripture and Christian doctrine. A significant portion of his justification for his new scientific project is made on Christian grounds, specifically those of

Christian charity. But William Rawley, his chaplain and executor, seems to allude to suspicion about Bacon’s commitment to Christianity even in his own lifetime.24 From that time down to ours there has been significant debate about the compatibility of Bacon’s teaching with Christian teaching. Thinkers as diverse as the Catholic counter-revolutionary , the poet and idiosyncratic Protestant William Blake, and the atheist encyclopedest Diderot were skeptical of Bacon’s professions of Christianity. In this work, I will focus on the question whether

Baconian charity and hope are compatible with Christian charity and Christian hope. Aside from the Bible (Francis Bacon was familiar with and quotes from both the Vulgate and the King James editions) I will use in particular William Perkins, one of the most influential Puritan preachers of

Bacon’s day,25 who shares many of Bacon’s preoccupations, such as the primacy of the common good, the relation of charity to the corporal works of mercy, and the importance of the active

24 William Rawley, Life of Bacon, SEH 1.14. “[Bacon] was religious: for though the world be apt to suspect and prejudge great wits and politics to have somewhat of the atheist, yet he was conversant with God, as appeareth by several passages throughout the whole current of his writings.”

25 William Perkins, The Work of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward (Berkeshire: The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 24; William Perkins, William Perkins: 1558-1602: English Puritanist: His Pioneer Works on Casusistry: “A Discourse of Conscience” and “The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience,” ed. Thomas F. Merrill (Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: B. De Graaf, 1966), ix.

10 life.26 I will also use Benedict XVI’s Spe salvi, which has a significant critique of Bacon’s replacement of Christian hope with hope in scientific progress.

Division of the Work

In this dissertation I will focus on Bacon’s properly philosophical works. These works fall into four main groups, corresponding to the four chapters of the dissertation. The first chapter studies his first major philosophical work, the Advancement and Proficiency of Learning,

Human and Divine, published in 1605. In that work he sketches the nature and division of learning along with the accomplishments and defects of contemporaneous learning. My first chapter will focus on the distinction between Bacon’s moral philosophy and prior moral philosophies. Bacon describes the Advancement as “a mixture of new conceits with old,” in contrast to his Magna instauratio, which “gives the new unmixed.”27 This work contains his first systematic treatment of ethics.28 The first chapter will attempt to understand three related themes: the Advancement’s departure from the ancients in its understanding of the nature, division, and end of learning; its departure from the ancients in its understanding of the division and nature of the human good; and the compatibility of its understanding of charity with the traditional Christian understanding.

26 Francis Bacon’s mother, Lady , had very strong Puritan leanings, as did her influential brother-in-law, William Cecil Lord Burleigh. See and Alan Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999), 31-32.

27 Dedicatory Epistle to An Advertisement Touching an Holy War, SEH 7.13.

28 This treatment appears, largely unchanged, nearly two decades later in the De augmentis (1623), a translation and significant expansion of the Advancement.

11 In the second chapter, I will consider De sapientia veterum, published in 1609. This is a collection of essays which interprets various Greek and Roman myths and purports to uncover their teachings on moral, political, and natural philosophy. More than any of Bacon’s other works it focuses on both moral and political philosophy. Its teaching has been largely neglected until recently.29 Even recent authors, however, have focused on the natural philosophy in these essays rather than on the moral philosophy. The question of the relation of these disciplines in

Bacon’s writing is a vexed one, with commentators disagreeing about the fundamental unity of his moral and natural philosophy. This work, which spells out some of the principles of both his moral and his natural philosophy, is a good place to investigate their relationship. The chapter focuses on three questions: On what basis does Bacon distinguish human nature from nature more broadly? What are the starting points and ends of his natural and moral philosophy? What relationship obtains between his moral and natural philosophy?

The third chapter focuses on Bacon’s Instauratio Magna, particularly the Novum organum, its second part. The De augmentis is also considered, as well as several early fragmentary drafts describing various parts of the Instauratio Magna. This massive project is one of natural philosophy, and while Bacon assures his readers the rebuilding of natural philosophy will lead to a re-invigorated ethics and politics, he treats neither of these topics at any length in the Instauratio Magna. But the works of the Instauratio, particularly the Novum organum, do treat of the distinction central to ancient ethics, the distinction between action and contemplation.

The question dominating the chapter is what is distinctively new about Bacon’s conception of

29 Fulton H. Anderson, Francis Bacon: His Career and His Thought (New York: University of Southern California Press, 1962), 57: “The work is unquestionably one of the most significant contributions to philosophy in the history of English thought. Its almost complete neglect by commentators is among the strangest phenomena in the history of philosophical exegesis.”

12 action and contemplation. Bacon’s new conceptions of form and nature are crucial to understanding his new action and contemplation.

In the final chapter, I look at Bacon’s Essays and Counsels, Civil and Moral, the final version of which was published in 1625, and at the New Atlantis, published posthumously.

These works provide some of his most direct engagement with moral and political philosophy, as the title of the Essays indicates. I explore two related questions: first, given the new understanding of form and nature laid out in the Novum organum, what is Bacon’s understanding of human nature and virtue? And, a question invited by the political nature of many of the essays, how does his conception of the political good differ from the traditional understanding of the common good? Finally, I attempt to sketch the good citizen and the good man as described in the New Atlantis.

The order of these four chapters progresses, roughly speaking, from the general to the particular. First Bacon’s philosophy is distinguished in crucial respects from the philosophy of the ancients; then his moral philosophy is compared to his natural philosophy; then his understanding of action and contemplation, concepts within his natural and moral philosophy, are examined; finally the picture of Bacon’s good man is sketched.

CHAPTER ONE

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

Introduction

Francis Bacon is generally acknowledged as one of the founders of modern philosophy.

The Encylopedist Jean d’Alembert, when describing the few great philosophers who “silently in the shadows…prepared from afar the light which gradually, by imperceptible degrees, would illuminate the world,” claims that the “immortal Chancellor of England, Francis Bacon, ought to be placed at the head of these illustrious personages.”1 According to D’Alembert, the philosophy introduced by Bacon, Descartes, and their successors is intransigently opposed to the learning that preceded them. Some authors, however, see modern philosophy as a continuation and development of classical philosophy, rather than a rupture from it. Most notably, Heidegger argues that modernity, characterized by technology, is the fulfillment of metaphysical thought

1 “Preliminary Discourse,” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, trans. Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex (Ann Arbor: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.083 (accessed November 19, 2011). Originally published as “Discourse Préliminaire,” Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1:i-xlv (Paris, 1751).

13

14 since Plato.2 Jacob Klein, on the other hand, argues that modernity is at its core opposed to classical thought.3

Commentators on Bacon have disagreed about his view on prior philosophers.

Specifically, there is disagreement about whether he wishes to depart from his predecessors.

Some hold that he wishes to make a decisive break with the prior philosophical traditions. In

Perez Zagorin’s formulation, Bacon “set[s] out to combat and supplant the old regime of knowledge.”4 Charles Whitney, while acknowledging that Bacon often speaks as if he were a mere reformer of prior learning, concludes “not only that ideas of change are central to his thought but also that discontinuity runs to its core.” He wishes “above all to break from the glutted paths of tradition.”5 Other scholars, however, hold that he was more conciliatory toward and appreciative of prior learning. Rhodri Lewis, aiming, among others, at Zagorin, critiques the

2 See Walter Biemel, “Heidegger and Metaphysics,” trans. by Thomas Sheehan, in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, Inc., 1981), 170: “So we touch on one of the most difficult points in Heidegger’s thinking, namely, that the history of metaphysics as a whole corresponds to the forgottenness of Being. Metaphysics constantly speaks of beings without questioning back into what supports and happens in these interpretations. That is why Heidegger says, ‘Metaphysics is in all its forms and historical stages a unique, but perhaps necessary, fate of the West and the presupposition of its planetary dominance.’” The quotation, translated by Sheehan, is from “Ueberwindung der Metaphysik” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967), 83.

3 See Jacob Klein’s “The World of and the ‘Natural’ World” in Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 1-34. See also Richard Kennington’s review of the same work: “From his first publication, Klein rejected their [i.e., Husserl’s and Heidegger’s] account of the modern origins: he refused the conclusion that modern is continuous with, or a development out of, Greek or Platonic metaphysics. The core of modernity is mathematical physics (or ‘mathesis universalis’ as its sixteenth and seventeenth originators called it); pre-modern thought does not know of the existence of mathematical physics” (The Review of Metaphysics 41, no. 1 [1987]: 145).

4 Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 29.

5 Charles Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 15, 94. Cf. also Julie Robin Solomon, in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), xii-xiii; 24-26; 103. Solomon agrees generally with Whitney’s assessment of Bacon as breaking with traditional learning, but sees that break as one already initiated by the dissolution of “Aristotelian-Thomist Scholasticism” on the one hand and by the arising of a constellation of arts and pursuits extrinsic to the traditional learning, such as those of travelers and merchants, on the other.

15 “” by which Bacon is seen as intransigently opposed to his predecessors. Bacon,

Lewis holds, believes that “traditional learning demands both respect and serious consideration.”

His plan for a renewal of learning requires a “balanced appraisal” of antiquity and modernity.6

This disagreement among scholars regarding Bacon’s relationship to prior philosophy extends to their discussions of Bacon’s moral philosophy. It should not, however, be assumed that commentators regard his natural philosophy – which most scholars have focused on because of its undeniable prominence in his corpus – as of a piece with his moral philosophy. The unity or disunity of his moral and natural philosophy will be the guiding question of the next chapter.

For the purposes of the present chapter it will suffice to indicate the extent to which commentators disagree about the degree of Bacon’s departure from prior moral philosophers.

Several authors have argued that he deviates little. Perez Zagorin, despite his contention that

Bacon sought to “supplant the old regime of knowledge,” finds little discrepancy between

Bacon’s ethics and that of his predecessors. Even in his discussion of the attainment of human goods, where Bacon most clearly objects to the ancients, Zagorin finds “little that is distinctive or original.”7 B. H. G. Wormald agrees with Zagorin that Bacon accepts the bulk of ancient moral philosophy, and sees that acceptance as motivated by a recognition that the ancients did indeed have a sound human philosophy. Bacon, on Wormald’s reading, aims to improve prior moral philosophy, but not to substantially alter it, as he aims to do with natural philosophy.8

6 Rhodri Lewis, “Francis Bacon, Allegory, and the Uses of Myth,” The Review of English Studies 61, no. 250 (2010): 361-362. See also Brian Vickers, “The Myth of Bacon’s Anti-,” in Humanism in Early Modern Philosophy, eds. Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone (London: Routledge, 2000), 135–58.

7 Zagorin, Francis Bacon, 133.

8 B. H. G. Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, Politics and Science, 1561-1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 32; 44-45.

16 Jerry Weinberger, in his book-length study on the Advancement, presents a more nuanced view of Bacon’s relationship to prior moral philosophers.9 He approaches the primarily from the perspective of political philosophy. On his reading, Bacon is indeed a true father of modernity, and as such emphasizes its new and striking claims. But this newness is

“not a categorical rejection of classical political philosophy.” Rather, Bacon addresses problems best understood from the viewpoint of classical political philosophy: “According to Bacon, only the ancient wisdom could disclose how far modern hopes and methods…are truly new and how far they are more familiar than we suppose.” Indeed, the very newness of Bacon’s project is dictated by his understanding of classical political philosophy. The newness springs, not from new principles, but from the “problems of Christian politics,” unknown to the ancients.10

Bacon’s ethics, according to Weinberger, follows the general pattern indicated above. He is disingenuous about his departure from the ancients; his true departure is from Christianity, whose elevation of charity and whose doctrine of perfect happiness in the next life forms men

“whose calculating love of self-sufficiency is always the most partisan and the most dangerous of all.”11 Despite his surface claims to the contrary, Bacon believes that Aristotle truly understood the relationship between action and contemplation, and the nature of the good. Nevertheless,

Bacon’s concrete proposals – notably his establishment of the scientific project – are drastically different from Aristotle’s, because of his direct knowledge of the destructive and violent partisanships of Christianity. Aristotle “did not anticipate the Christian doctrine of sin and the

9 Jerry Weinberger, Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age: A Commentary on Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).

10 Ibid., 10. Cf. also 20-21, 35.

11 Ibid., 295.

17 power with which such a doctrine would elevate charity as the corrosive bond of all the virtues.”

Bacon’s “corresponding focus upon the roots and strings of virtue leads not to Aristotle’s caution but to a new attempt to justify the tyrant.” The tyrant is justified “by freeing his desire against nature, which then serves the unbridled desires of all,” desires which otherwise find expression in the violence of Christian sects.12 To sum up, very roughly, Weinberger’s position, the departure of Bacon’s moral philosophy from Aristotle’s is due to the application of similar principles in very different circumstances.

Svetozvar Minkov, in his book-length study of Bacon’s moral philosophy, agrees with

Weinberger that Bacon’s apparent departure from prior moral philosophers does not reflect a fundamental disagreement with them. He emphasizes, even more than Weinberger, Bacon’s continuity with the ancients: Bacon “pursued, while sometimes reinterpreting or correcting, the classical understanding of the virtues, primarily those of courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom….For Bacon the best life consists fundamentally in philosophic inquiry.”13

There are several authors, however, who do see Bacon as offering a drastically different moral philosophy from his predecessors. Peter Harrison argues that Bacon departs from his predecessors not merely as regards the attainment of virtue, but also as regards the classical and especially Aristotelian understanding of the virtues.14 Harrison, however, reaches this conclusion not primarily from an examination of Bacon’s moral philosophy – though he does draw, for instance, from Bacon’s discussion of ethics in the Advancement – but from Bacon’s

12 Ibid., 300.

13 Svetozvar Minkov, Francis Bacon’s “Inquiry Touching Human Nature”: Virtue, Philosophy, and the Relief of Man’s Estate (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 23.

14 Peter Harrison, “The Natural Philosopher and the Virtues,” in The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, ed. Conal Condren, Stephen Gaukroger, and Ian Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 202-28. See esp. 202, 220-24.

18 portrayal of the philosopher. Following Stephen Gaukroger, he argues that Bacon transforms the idea of the philosopher from one primarily concerned with moral, individual perfection to one primarily concerned with operations of nature that have promise of utility for society. This transformation is traceable in part to a rejection of old notions of virtue: “Bacon’s new conception of the philosophical enterprise was influenced by the Protestant reformers’ critique of scholastic and classical models for the philosopher and of a related Aristotelian conception of the virtues.”15 Robert Faulkner, while his work markedly differs from Harrison’s, agrees that Bacon presents a radical departure from his predecessors’ notions of the human good.16

In this chapter, I will argue that Bacon, in the Advancement and Profincie of Learning,

Human and Divine, presents a moral philosophy that, while inchoate and unsystematic, marks a significant break from prior moral philosophies. While I agree with Weinberger and Minkov that Bacon’s philosophy is at odds with Christian teaching in important respects, I do not agree that he is fundamentally in accord with the ancients’ understanding of philosophical contemplation and of the human good. I will argue that, in , he departs from the ancients in both these areas: he offers an innovative and revolutionary understanding of knowledge, and he presents a novel division and description of the human good. I agree, in broad outline, with

Harrison and Faulkner that Bacon offers a revolutionary understanding of philosophy and the philosopher. My account will differ from – and supplement – their accounts in that I will focus on Bacon’s discussion of moral philosophy, whereas Harrison proceeds primarily from a consideration of the persona of the natural philosopher, and Faulkner from a consideration of

15 Ibid., 224.

16 Robert Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 92- 93.

19 Bacon’s political philosophy. Further, unlike Harrison and Faulkner, I focus on Bacon’s

Advancement, and hence offer a detailed discussion of Bacon’s treatment of the human good in this work.

There are several reasons why the Advancement is the best place to begin a consideration of Bacon’s moral philosophy in relation to that of his predecessors. First, it is his first major philosophical work, and hence a logical place to examine his break from prior philosophers.17

Second, it, along with its Latin translation and augmentation, De augmentis scientiarum, is the only work in which he offers anything approaching a systematic treatment of ethics. Finally, he is concerned with the relationship of his philosophy to the prior tradition more explicitly in this work than in any other.18

Bacon himself describes the Advancement as “a mixture of new conceits with old,” in contrast with his Magna instauratio, which “gives the new unmixed.”19 This mixture of

“conceits” is due at least in part to the dedicatee of the Advancement. The major historical against which this work was written was the death of Queen on March 24, 1603, and the subsequent ascension of James I to the English throne. The new monarch was brought up by rigorous who ensured that he devoted his childhood to studies, and despite his zealous turn to the hunt after he departed his tutors’ rather tyrannical rule, he loved both letters and

17 The first edition of the Essays appears in 1597, composed of ten short essays. It is only a fraction of the size it will eventually reach in its third edition, which contained 58 essays and was published in 1624, the year before Bacon’s death. I will consider this edition of the work in the final chapter of the dissertation.

18 A crude indication of Bacon’s concern in the Advancement with the relationship of his philosophy to prior philosophy is the abundance of references to and quotations from prior philosophers in this work: more than 1,000. Brian Vickers, “Introduction,” in Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxxvii.

19 Dedicatory Epistle to An Advertisement Touching an Holy War, SEH 7.13.

20 literary fame.20 He wrote several books, including two on politics, the second of which,

Basilikon Doron, was widely read and translated. Bacon had some reason to hope that his intellectual endeavors would be powerfully seconded by his new monarch. Thus he dedicated his Advancement to the new king, and presented a proposal for a politically-backed renewal of learning at the beginning of the second book. But he was aware that the monarch, like the majority of his other contemporary readers, was one who, as Bacon himself described his new king, “rather asked counsel of the time past than of the time to come.”21 That is, King James was, on the whole, satisfied with the old, traditional learning and did not seek a new philosophy.

Hence Bacon prudently mixes new things with old in the Advancement.

Bacon describes the first book of the Advancement as treating of “the excellencie of learning and knowledge; and the excellencie of the merit and true glory, in the Augmentation and

Propagation thereof.” Book Two is concerned, Bacon announces at the beginning of the

Advancement, with “what the particuler actes and works are, which haue been imbraced and vndertaken for the aduancement of learning: And againe what defects and vndervalewes I finde in such particular actes.”22 But the works which actually have advanced wisdom are given short shrift by Bacon, some two or three pages. He turns instead to the defects in learning, invoking

Scripture: “Let vs rather according to the Scriptures, looke unto that parte of the Race, which is before vs; then looke backe to that which is alreadie attained.”23 Hence most of Book Two is

20 For details of James I’s life, I use David Harris Willson, King James VI and I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956). For a treatment of James I’s literary reputation and Bacon’s hopes in his king see also OFB 4.xxxviii-xliii.

21 Letter to the Earl of Northumberland, written in 1603. , The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, Including All His Occasional Works vol. 3 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868), 77. Hereafter LL 3.77.

22 OFB 4.5.

23 OFB 4.57.

21 taken up with Bacon’s division of learning, in order to show what parts of learning are undeveloped or poorly developed, and thereby stir up both public rulers (especially the work’s dedicatee, James I) and private individuals to develop these areas.24

Bacon looks first to the general nature of learning in Book One before turning to the articulation and description of its various parts in Book Two. Following his order, I will consider the more general question of Bacon’s break with prior learning before the question of the relationship of his moral philosophy with the prior traditions of moral philosophy. In the first section, I will argue that, while Bacon in Book One follows a long tradition of philosophy in exalting knowledge, he establishes a new and revolutionary understanding of learning, one whose end is the mastery of nature for the relief of man’s estate. Bacon does, however, hold up prior instances of learning as examples. This can be understood to some extent as a rhetorical maneuver to gain acceptance for his new teaching by cloaking it in familiar garb. But Bacon chooses his disguises artfully; the prior instances of learning that he presents serve to corroborate his new idea of learning.

In the next section, I will situate the place of moral philosophy within Bacon’s novel division and description of the sciences presented in the second book of the Advancement. I will examine in detail his thematic discussion of ethics, and will argue that he presents a novel understanding and division of the good for men and a correspondingly novel method for the attainment of that good. I will look in particular at the departure of Bacon’s moral philosophy from some of his most important philosophical predecessors, namely, Aristotle, Seneca, and

24 OFB 4.61.

22 Lucretius. While Bacon is explicit that he is not concerned to refute prior philosophical positions

– his philosophy’s future fruits will demonstrate its superiority to them, fruits apprehended in the present by hope – he nevertheless situates and articulates his ethics in relation to his predecessors. I will attempt to connect his description and division of the human goods in this book with his account of learning as a good in the first book.

Finally, I will look at the relationship of Bacon’s moral philosophy to yet another prior account of the human good, that given by Christianity. Bacon frequently turns to Christianity to corroborate his account of learning and his new moral philosophy; he especially emphasizes the role of charity in his moral philosophy. Nevertheless, the fidelity of his teaching to Christianity has not been unanimously accepted. I will examine in particular the compatibility of Bacon’s description of charity with Christian charity.

1. Toward a New Learning

The title itself of Bacon’s work suggests discontinuity between Bacon and prior philosophical traditions. The Proficiency and Advancement of Learning, Human and Divine: it is a strikingly ambitious title, proposing to deal with learning as a whole rather than with any part or parts of it. One of Aristotle’s lost works was called De philosophia, but even the wide scope indicated by this title falls well short of that of the Advancement. In the sixth book of his

Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle separates philosophy, or scientific knowledge, from lesser intellectual habits. In the tenth book of the Ethics, he states that man’s greatest good is the philosophical life. He exalts philosophy, a very specific part of learning, rather than learning as a whole, as Bacon seems to by the title of the Advancement. The title of the Latin translation of

23 the Advancement, admittedly, has a somewhat more traditional sound: De augmentis scientiarum, The Advancement of the Sciences. But even a cursory glance at Bacon’s division of the sciences in this work shows that he includes under “sciences” numerous branches of knowledge that Aristotle would not classify as sciences, such as cosmetics; Bacon can translate

“learning” as “scientiae” only by widely extending the traditional meaning of the latter word.

The words “proficiency” and “advancement” in the title strengthen the idea of the unity of knowledge. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first meaning of “proficiency” as

“Progress or advance towards completeness or perfection; improvement in skill or knowledge, as distinguished from perfection.” A second meaning is “The state or degree of improvement attained.”25 In the Advancement, Bacon intends to describe the present state of learning, and then tell how to advance it. Not only can it be described as a whole, but it can be advanced as a whole. For Aristotle and other prior philosophers, the advancement of philosophy does not coincide with the advancement of other forms of knowledge, for instance the sorts of knowledge that artists or craftsmen possess. Indeed, it seems it would conflict, inasmuch as individual men have limited time, and so time devoted to philosophy is time taken from other activities. Bacon, in contrast, seeks to advance learning as a whole. Thus already the title of Bacon’s work indicates that his conception of the knowledge that men should pursue differs from prior conceptions.

There are many elements in Bacon’s Advancement that appear very traditional. The first book, inasmuch as it celebrates “the excellencie of learning and knowledge,” follows a well-

25 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1975 ed., s.v. “proficiency.”

24 travelled path. Further, he follows his predecessors in moral philosophy inasmuch as he compares the life of learning to two other ways of life – the life of public activity and the life of piety – that are traditionally seen as competitors for the best life.26 On the other hand, he departs decisively from tradition in his praise for learning, inasmuch as he considers one of the chief obstacles to the life of learning to be learned men themselves, and the nature of their learning.27

Indeed, he spends more time defending learning from learned men than he does defending it from politicians and divines put together. As Charles Whitney notes, his sharp defense of learning against prior philosophers makes his readers suspect that “Bacon’s proposals may not necessarily fall under the aegis of a ‘re-formation’ of received ideas” but rather entail a more radical separation from antiquity.28 His answers to the questions regarding learning and the good life can hardly be similar to those of the philosophers and the philosophic schools that he so sharply criticizes for disgracing the life of learning.

Bacon opens his discussion of the disgraces attaching to the studies themselves of learned men thus:

26 The life of piety does not appear as an alternative to the life of contemplation in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which is perhaps the most influential treatment of the question of the best life for men. Aristotle indeed there comes close to suggesting a conflation of the life of piety with the life of study (Nicomachean Ethics 10, 1177b27-1178a2; 1178b9ff.). But the life of contemplation as a competitor against the life of piety comes very much to the fore in Lucretius. And Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s diatribes against philosophy indicate that this competition was a subject of concern in Reformation Europe. See, for instance, Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. and ed. W. Pauck (London: SCM Press, 1961), 236, quoted in Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 745: “Indeed, I believe that I owe this duty to the Lord of crying out against philosophy and turning men to Holy Scripture. For, perhaps, if someone else who had not been through it all were to do it, he would either be scared to do it or he would not be believed. But I have been in the grind of these studies for, lo, these many years, and am worn out by it, and, on the basis of long experience, I have come to be persuaded that it is a vain study doomed to perdition.”

27 There are precedents, however. Socrates also consciously departs from prior philosophical traditions. His execution, as related in the Apology, indicates the extent to which his listeners perceived him as breaking from the understanding of wisdom as it was commonly held then. Both Plato’s sympathetic presentation in various dialogues and Aristophanes’ antagonistic portrayal in The Clouds show a discontinuity between the philosophy of Socrates and the traditional knowledge of Athens.

28 Charles Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 58.

25 Now I proceede to those errours and vanities, which haue interueyned amongst the studies themselues of the learned; which is that which is principall and proper to the present argument; wherein my purpose is not to make a iustification of the errors, but by a censure and separation of the errors, to make a iustification of that which is good & sound; and to deliuer that from the aspersion of the other.29

Bacon attempts to separate the good from the bad in the writings of the learned. The question is, then, how deep does his reform go? To what extent is prior knowledge retained? Is he continuing and strengthening the prior traditions, or establishing a new tradition?

Outline of Book One

Bacon divides the first book of the Advancement into two main parts. The first part seeks to remedy the disgrace that has attached to learning from various sources. This part serves as a preparation for the second part, which speaks directly of the excellence of the life of learning.

He begins his defense of learning by noting that the opponent of learning is always ignorance, but it is “seuerally disguised” as divines, politicians, and learned men.30 He proceeds to detail the various disgraces that each of these groups brings upon learning, and then defends learning from each.

The divines warn against the pursuit of knowledge for several reasons: it leads to sin, pride, sorrow, and atheism. The charges which politicians bring against learning center around the claim that the life of learning makes men unfit for or disinclined to political and military duties. The discredits which learning receives from learned men themselves “commonly

29 OFB 4.21.

30 OFB 4.5.

26 cleaueth fastest,” that is, are the hardest to remove, and Bacon accordingly devotes the bulk of his defense of learning to these.31

Bacon describes three sources of the discredit that learning receives from learned men. It can spring from the poverty of learned men, from their manners, or from the “nature of their

Studies.”32 Of these, the last is by far the most weighty source of discredit, and Bacon distinguishes three chief “vanities” or “distempers” or “diseases” of learning: “The first fantastical learning: The second contentious learning, & the last delicate learning, vaine

Imaginations, vaine Altercations, & vain affectations…”33 “Fantastical learning” concerns deceit or “vntruth” and is the worst of the three distempers insofar as it is most opposed to knowledge and . This learning does most harm when it takes the form of too much credulity towards the authors of the sciences: “the dammage is infinite that Sciences haue receiued thereby.”34

After concluding the diseases of learning, Bacon moves on to certain “peccant humors” of learning. He lists eleven of these obstacles to learning, concluding with the “greatest error of all the rest,” which is the “mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge.”

This end is neither the satisfaction of curiosity, nor pleasure, nor glory, nor money, but is “the benefite and vse of men.”35 This ends the first part of Book One, the clearing away of impediments to the dignity of learning.

31 OFB 4.15.

32 OFB 4.15.

33 OFB 4.21.

34 OFB 4.27-28.

35 OFB 4.31-32.

27 In the second part of Book One, Bacon undertakes to show the dignity of knowledge. He divides this second part into two parts, divine arguments and human arguments.36 For divine testimony of the excellence of knowledge, Bacon turns first to God, whose work of Creation, as described by Genesis, involves not only his power in creating matter, but also his wisdom in forming it over the six days. Bacon describes the exalted place learning has in the Old

Testament, the New Testament, and the subsequent history of the Christian Church, ending with

Bacon’s own time, in which learning is renewed on the one hand by the Reformers, and on the other hand by the Jesuits.

Bacon divides human testimony regarding the dignity of learning into several parts. The highest honor of antiquity, “diuine” honor, was granted to “such as were Inuentors and Authors of new Arts, endowments, and commodities towards mans life.”37 Only slightly less exalted are the honors to those who forwarded civil peace and virtue through their knowledge of political and military matters. Bacon gives several other arguments from human testimony for the dignity of learning: it contributes to moral and private virtue; it allows one to exert the greatest command over another, the command over another’s mind; it contributes to its possessor’s fortune and advancement; and it produces a great pleasure. The final argument for the excellency of knowledge is that learning contributes more than anything else to “that whereunto mans nature doth most aspire,” namely, “immortalitie or continuance.”38 This striking claim closes the first book of the Advancement.

36 OFB 4.33.

37 OFB 4.38.

38 OFB 4.52-53.

28 Prior Traditions Dismissed

Bacon, in his discussion of the diseases of learning, presents himself as healing or purifying the existing learning. But his criticisms of the main traditions of learning are so harsh and sweeping that there would be little left of contemporary learning once the diseases are healed. The first two “diseases of learning” which he describes are and scholasticism. The third disease of learning is more general, involving too slavish an adherence to any intellectual master.

Humanism, widespread in the courts and universities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was characterized by an increased attention to ancient texts, and hence to language generally. , eclipsed by dialectic and grammar in the middle ages, attained an important place in the faculty of arts. Etienne Gilson goes so far as to call these centuries the aetas

Ciceroniana, the “age of ,” in contrast to the aetas Aristotelica, the “age of Aristotle,” of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.39 The faculty of theology was similarly affected by humanism, manifested by a renewed attention to Greek and Hebrew and by a turn from the dominant text, Peter Lombard’s Libri quatuor sententiarum, to a study of the Fathers and of scripture in its original languages.40 Bacon himself traces humanism to Martin Luther, who, justifiably in Bacon’s view, called on the aid of the ancients to aid him against the Catholic

39 Etienne Gilson, “Le message de l’humanisme,” in Culture et politique en France à l’époque de l’Humanisme et de la Renaissance, ed. F. Simone (Turin: Accademia delle scienze, 1974), 4, cited in Walter Rüegg, “Epilogue: The Rise of Humanism,” in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1, Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Hilde de Ridder Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 448.

40 See Laurence Brockliss, “Curricula” in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800), ed. Hilde De Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 593- 596.

29 Church.41 But the close study of language necessitated by such a turn led to a “studie of eloquence, and copie of speech,” “which grew speedily to an excesse.” This first disease of learning is summed up as “when men studie words, and not matter.” Bacon points to Nicholas

Car and Roger Ascham, avowed Ciceronians who were fellows of Cambridge just prior to his time there, as infected with this disease. He accuses them of alluring “all young men that were studious vnto that delicate and pollished kinde of learning.”42

Brian Vickers objects to the identification of the first distemper of learning with

Renaissance humanism. While acknowledging that this is the majority view, he sees it as

“dogmatic” and “misguided.”43 Vickers argues that in describing the first disease of learning

Bacon is engaging in a debate within humanism over the use of imitatio, the use rhetoricians make of prior authors. Instead of attacking the tradition of Renaissance humanism, Bacon is actively engaging it and working within it. Vickers’s placement of Bacon within the humanist tradition is, I believe, forced. However commendable to Bacon the origins of humanism in anti-

Scholasticism and anti-papism were, he is clear that the tradition trended swiftly and as a whole to corruption: The study of eloquence “grew speedily to an excesse: for men began to hunt more after wordes, than matter…In summe, the whole inclination and bent of those times, was rather

41 See Kiernan, OFB 4.221: “Bacon takes considerable rhetorical licence in crediting Luther’s quarrel with Rome for the achievements of Renaissance humanism; by the second decade of the sixteenth century, the major texts of antiquity were well out of the library and into printed editions, and subject to critical study.”

42 OFB 4.22-23. Both authors died in 1568; see Kiernan’s commentary for a summary of their Cambridge careers, OFB 4.224. The two other practictioners of “delicate learning” that Bacon mentions are the Catholic Portuguese Bishop Jerónimo Osorio da Fonseca (1506-80) and the disciple of Melanchthon, Johnanes Sturm (1507-89). All four authors were known for their adulation of Cicero (Kiernan, OFB 4.223-24).

43 Brian Vickers, “The Myth of Francis Bacon’s ‘Anti-humanism,’” 137. There are several scholars of Bacon who identify the first distemper of learning with Renaissance humanism. See, for instance, Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 59, and Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975), 105. Kiernan describes Bacon’s attack on the first distemper of learning as “a withering short history of the Renaissance decline into stylistic obsession” (OFB 4.xx).

30 towards copie, than weight.”44 He is not castigating the part, but the whole. On his telling, it is the central characteristic of humanism, the primacy of place accorded to ancient languages and texts, that is its Achilles’ heel.

The second influential tradition that Bacon attacks is scholasticism. While this tradition was declining in England and other strongholds of the Protestant Reformation, it was far from finished in those parts of Europe, and in the universities of Catholic Europe it was very much alive. There, the usual replacement for Lombard’s Sentences was another scholastic work,

Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologica.45 Even in Protestant England scholastic influence was still strong, as manifested by the writings of the most famous of Anglican divines, Richard Hooker.46

Bacon states that scholasticism is worse than Renaissance learning, inasmuch as it concerns vain matter rather than vain words. It has two chief marks: invented terms and a rigid, doctrinaire stance. The scholastics exercised their minds on books rather than on reality, and on few books at that. The convoluted maze of their distinctions and propositions do not serve “for the vse and benefite of mans life,” a damning criticism in Bacon’s eyes.47

44 OFB 4.22-23.

45 Brockliss, “Curricula,” 596.

46 Hooker was criticized by contemporaries for being too close to Aristotle and the scholastics. For instance, the anonymous author of A Christian Letter (1599), a polemic directed against Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, writes: “Now in all your books, although we finde manie good things, many truethes and fine pointes bravelie handled, yet in all your discourse, for the most parte, Aristotle the patriarch of Philosophers (with divers other humane writers) and the ingenuous schoolemen, almost in all pointes have some finger…” Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill, volume 4 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1982), 65-67. Cited in Bryan D. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999), 105. Hooker commented on the accusation in the margin of his copy of A Christian Letter: “If Aristotle and the Schoolmen be such perilous creatures, you must needs think your self an happie man whome God hath so fairely blest from too much knowledg in them” (Works of Richard Hooker, 65).

47 OFB 4.25.

31 Bacon emphasizes the close connection of the scholastics to Aristotle, whom he calls

“their Dictator.”48 Aristotle’s influence in Bacon’s Europe extended well beyond the schoolmen.

Though he did not enjoy the unquestioned authority that he possessed in the late Middle Ages, the humanists’ efforts to overthrow his dominance in the universities’ philosophy courses were for the most part unsuccessful. According to Laurence Brockliss, “throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries the [philosophy] course continued to be…Aristotelian in tone.”49 Bacon himself sees Aristotle as the most influential authority in the European intellectual life: “upon [Aristotle] the philosophy that now is chiefly dependeth.” Aristotle’s influence also extends beyond philosophy; the scholastics “have almost incorporated the contentious philosophy of Aristotle into the body of Christian religion.”50

This third disease is, of all the diseases, the most harmful. It is the climax of the various diseases of learning:

And as for the ouermuch credite that hath beene giuen vnto Authors in Sciences, in making them Dictators, that their wordes should stand, and not Consulls to giue aduise; the dammage is infinite that Sciences haue receiued thereby, as the principall cause that hath kept them lowe, at a stay without groweth or aduancement. For hence it hath comen, that in arts Mechanicall, the first deuiser coms shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth: but in Sciences the first Author goeth furthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.51

Bacon singles out the philosophies and sciences of six men: three philosophers, Aristotle, Plato, and Democritus; the physician Hippocrates; and two mathematicians, Euclid and Archimedes.

48 OFB 4.24.

49 “Curricula,” 579.

50 Filum Labyrinthi, SEH 3.502, 499.

51 OFB 4.27-28.

32 The philosophies and sciences these men initiated reached their height under them. It is impossible, Bacon says, that uncritical disciples go farther than their masters: “For as water will not ascend higher, than the leuell of the first spring head, from whence it descendeth: so knowledge deriued from Aristotle, and exempted from libertie of examination, will not rise againe higher, than the knowledge of Aristotle.”52 Indeed, disciples never go even as far as their masters, according to Bacon: “the first Author goeth furthest.”

Bacon gives a sketch of how the true disciple should act:

And therfore although the position be good: Oportet discentem credere [It is necessary for the one learning to believe]: yet it must bee coupled with this, Oportet edoctum iudicare [It is necessary for the one who has learned to judge]: for Disciples doe owe vnto Maisters onely a temporarie beleefe, and a suspension of their owne judgement, till they be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation, or perpetuall captiuitie: and therefore to conclude this point, I will say no more, but; so let great Authors haue theire due, as time which is the Author of Authors be not depriued of his due, which is furder and furder to discouer truth.53

According to Bacon, past authors should indeed be studied (or at least their study is allowed), but discipleship is a temporary status; once the latter have learned from the great authors, they judge them. This position seems reasonable, perhaps precisely because Bacon’s idea of the progressive uncovering of truth by time, briefly presented in the above quote, has obtained nearly universal acceptance. If time progressively reveals the truth, then the influence and acknowledgment of prior thinkers diminishes.

Bacon’s claim that time progressively uncovers truth needs to be reconciled with his account of the stagnation of the sciences. If time itself causes the growth of knowledge, how is it possible that science has stagnated since the time of classical Greece? Perhaps further unveiling

52 OFB 4.28.

53 Ibid.

33 of truth occurs provided misguided discipleship does not unnaturally inhibit it, or perhaps the work of time is inhibited by prior philosophers themselves.54 Bacon’s criticism of slavish adherence to masters appears reasonable, but he includes all of extant Western learning within this criticism. He is attacking the way in which discipleship has been practiced since the time of the inception of sciences: “the dammage is infinite that Sciences haue receiued thereby, as the principall cause that hath kept them lowe, at a stay without groweth or aduancement.” He does not allow that any correct discipleship has yet taken place. The most common discipleship, that to Aristotle, has had a generally malign influence.

The New End of Knowledge: The Relief of Man’s Estate

Throughout the first book of the Advancement, Bacon repeatedly states that knowledge should be useful. This contention is closely allied with his rejection of prior philosophy, as

Zagorin points out: Bacon’s “rejection of Aristotle” is intertwined with “the conviction that the proper object of philosophy in seeking truth must be scientia operativa or a science productive of works for the relief and improvement of human life.”55 The most common criticism that Bacon levels against prior learning in the Advancement is its inutility; his defense of learning typically points to the utility of learning. In his defense of learning against the divines, Bacon insists knowledge must be referred “to the good of Men and Mankind”; he instructs his readers to apply

54 Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1, 1098a22-26, where Aristotle states that, provided the initial sketch or outline of his account of the good is done correctly, anyone can advance it: “in such cases time discovers more, or is a good partner in discovery.” The translation is by Terence Irwin, Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc., 1999), 9. Irwin’s translation of this work is used throughout the dissertation.

55 Francis Bacon, 30.

34 knowledge “to Charitie, and not to swelling; to vse, and not to ostentation.”56 In his defense of learning against the attacks of the politicians, Bacon similarly stresses the utility of knowledge.

Learning does not impede skill in politics or business, but rather augments it. Knowledge is useful for the interactions among humans. When it comes to the attacks of the learned men,

Bacon again emphasizes that knowledge should be useful; the failures of learning often stem from their inutility. The learning of the scholastics is barren because it does not serve “for the vse and benefite of mans life.”57 He praises astrology, natural magic, and , sciences to which men give credit too easily, for their goal of utility for men but condemns them for their inability to deliver on their promises.58

In the second part of the first book, the first of the human proofs for the excellence of learning is the divine honor paid to those who have discovered “Arts, endowments, and commodities towards mans life.”59 Thus the invention of wine is attributed to Bacchus, grain to

Ceres, and music to Apollo. Other human proofs for the excellence of learning continue the theme of utility as introduces in the first part of Book One; for instance, Bacon sees learning as increasing proficiency in military science and political rule.

Bacon states most clearly the end of this new useful science in his discussion of the final

“peccant humor.” This error, which he describes as the “greatest Error of all the rest,” is the

56 OFB 4.7, 4.9.

57 OFB 4.25.

58 OFB 4.27.

59 OFB 4.38.

35 “mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge.”60 This misplacing has been a nearly universal failing in learned men:

For men haue entred into a desire of Learning and knowledge, sometimes vpon a naturall curiositie, and inquisitiue appetite; sometimes to entertaine their mindes with varietie and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to inable them to victorie of wit and contradiction, and most times for lukar and profession, and seldome sincerely to giue a true account of their guift of reason, to the benefite and vse of men.61

Bacon leaves out the most standard classical formulation of the end of knowledge: man’s natural desire for knowledge and the happiness that knowing gives. For Bacon, this is either not worth mentioning or it is included in “naturall curiositie.” There is only one true end of knowledge,

“the benefite and vse of men.” In Bacon’s famous formulation, the end of knowledge is “the reliefe of Mans estate.”

Men can achieve the this true end of knowledge, and so “indeed dignifie and exalt knowledge,” if “contemplation and action may be more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited together, than they haue beene.”62 Bacon departs from the general tendency of prior moral philosophy to exalt contemplation apart from action. It is true that prior philosophical traditions, in various ways, treat learning as useful for human action. Aristotle proposes his political and moral philosophy as tools which can help men attain their end,63 though he also argues that the highest knowledge is primarily sought for its own sake.64 Seneca argues that

60 OFB 4.31.

61 OFB 4.31.

62 OFB 4.31-32.

63 Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a23-25, 1094b5-8, 1179b1-20.

64 Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b2-4.

36 learning aims at acquiring virtue.65 Lucretius sees the contemplation of nature as instrumental in attaining tranquility of mind and happiness.66 But Bacon departs from all these earlier understandings of the end of knowledge in the first book of the Advancement: knowledge is neither for its own sake nor for pleasure. Bacon’s emphasis on the utility of knowledge seems to accord most with Seneca, and indeed both philosophers see learning as conducive to morality.

But even setting aside for now the question of whether morality meant the same thing for these philosophers, Bacon and Seneca differ in that the former rejects the latter’s sole focus on virtue.

Indeed, Bacon compares natural philosophers favorably to civil and moral philosophers: the inventions of the former are attributed to the gods, the latter to “Worthies or Demy-Gods.”

Though he hastens to add they are close in stature, he is clear that “relieuing the necessities which arise from nature” takes precedence over “repressing the inconueniences which grow from man to man.”67 The end of his philosophy sets it apart from those of his predecessors.

The new philosophy, unsurprisingly, also demands a different method from prior philosophy:

For the two wayes of contemplation are not vnlike the two wayes of action, commonly spoken of by the Ancients. The one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable: the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while faire and euen, so it is in contemplation, if a man will begin with certainties, hee shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to beginne with doubts, he shall end in certainties.68

The “two wayes of action” is a reference to the parable concerning Hercules’ choice between two paths. Vice invited him down a pleasant and easy path. Virtue invited him on one that was

65 Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 8; Naturales quaestiones 6.1-3, 32.

66 De rerum natura 1.146-48 (repeated 2.59-61, 3.91-93, 6.39-41).

67 OFB 4.38-39.

68 OFB 4.31.

37 harsh and uninviting, warning him that the path espoused by Vice would end in misery. By using this parable, Bacon presents his way of contemplation as the morally good choice, in contrast to the way of the ancients. His way is more difficult because it does not begin with the false, easy “certainties” acquired from following prior traditions, but rather invites the one attempting to acquire knowledge “to beginne with doubts.” This brief passage is the only mention of his new method in the first book of the Advancement; later writings, most especially his Novum Organon, reveal in detail the new method that his radical new learning demands.

If Bacon proposes a new kind of learning, why does he exalt so many of the practitioners of the old learning? In the first book of the Advancement, he frequently turns to past learning, both from antiquity and from his own time, in his arguments regarding the excellence of learning. At times he quotes prior philosophers’ judgments or arguments. More often he uses the historical achievements of learned men for examples that show the truth of some particular thesis. Indeed, several of his arguments regarding the defense or the excellence of learning consist almost wholly in naming examples of prior philosophers and other learned men. For instance, the claim by politicians that learning makes a man unfit for arms is answered entirely by reference to examples, particularly of Alexander and Caesar. And the arguments from human testimony for the excellency of learning often consist entirely in examples as well, for instance, the arguments for the beneficent impact of learning on civil peace and imperial might. Why this deference to the wisdom of the past in a book that espouses a new type of learning? An obvious explanation is that, by holding up examples from the past in praising learning, he invests his new

38 learning with that past’s dignity.69 This answer accords with his own stated preference for avoiding conflict by presenting new ideas dressed in the familiar and comforting garbs of old ideas.70 He is not indiscriminate in his praise of prior philosophers, however. He is clear that the divine honors – those justly esteemed the greatest –are granted to learned men for “relieving the necessities which arise from nature.” They are granted for the greatest work of the mastery of nature: the mastery of non-human nature, a work which Bacon is careful to distinguish from the knowledge and governance of human nature.71

Bacon certainly indicates by his examples that mastery of human nature has proceeded farther than mastery of non-human nature; or at least that he is more willing to credit the achievements of moral and civil philosophy than natural. Certainly among his contemporaries the problem of guiding human nature was more to the fore, at least in the academy, than any attempts at mastery of non-human nature. Rhetoric, for instance, was a standard part of education. This does not mean that Bacon intends no reform of moral philosophy; he very much does, as the second part of this chapter will show. But he mentions several examples of moral or civil excellence brought about or aided by philosophy. In contrast, not once in Book One of the

Advancement does he give an example of a learned man who has forwarded the mastery of non- human nature.

Bacon follows his own advice in his engagement with prior philosophers. In the discussion of the first “peccant humor,” which is the too high regard for either antiquity or

69 See, for instance, Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity, 94-98.

70 OFB 4.81.

71 OFB 4.32, 38-39.

39 novelty, he sums up his teaching by quoting Scripture: “State super vias antiquas, & videte quaenam sit via recta & bona, & ambulate in ea.”72 “Stand upon the ancient ways, and see which is the right and good way, and walk in it.” Whitney notes that this is a “spectacular misquotation” of Jeremiah 6:16.73 The Vulgate reads: “State super vias, et videte et interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona, et ambulate in ea.” “Stand upon the ways, and look and ask concerning the old paths, [ask] what is the good way, and walk in it.”74 This verse is part of an indictment of for wandering away from the law of God; Jeremiah is pleading with

Jerusalem to return to her covenant, to the ways of her predecessors. For Jeremiah, the old path is the good path. In Bacon’s misquotation, the old path is not the good path, but the point of departure for seeking the good path. In his application of the quotation to the pursuit of knowledge, the old path, the teaching of the ancients, is a jumping-off point in the search for true knowledge. What good can be extracted from their teaching is; for the rest, they serve as a foil against which Bacon advances his new learning.75

72 OFB 4.28. The following translation is my own.

73 Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity, 92.

74 Compare the King James Version: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

75 Zagorin, Francis Bacon, 31: “Aristotle’s ideas in a number of areas, especially logic, metaphysics, and the study of nature, constituted the basic and indispensable background, the point of both orientation and resistance, of Bacon’s own thought.”

40 2. Moral Philosophy in the Advancement

Bacon devotes a relatively generous space to a discussion of ethics in the second book of the Advancement.76 Throughout this discussion, he engages prior moral philosophers, thereby setting off and highlighting innovations in his ethics. Following his lead, I will attempt to show the outlines of his moral philosophy by focusing on its departure from prior philosophers.

I will begin with a brief overview of his use throughout the Advancement of Aristotle,

Lucretius, and Seneca, three philosophers of particular interest in his discussion of moral philosophy. Next I will situate his ethics within his unique division of learning. Then I will discuss his innovative description of the human good and his advice on how to achieve this good, focusing on his departure from prior moral thought. Finally, I will attempt to find a place for learning within this division of the human goods.

Prior Moral Philosophers in the Advancement: Aristotle, Lucretius, Seneca

Throughout the Advancement, Bacon quotes or paraphrases Aristotle to confirm or establish some point that he wishes to make. For instance, in speaking of the imagination, he states that it is not merely a messenger of reason, but has some authority of its own: “For it was well sayd by Aristotle: That the minde hath ouer the Bodie that commaundement which the Lord hath ouer a Bond-man; But, that Reason hath ouer the Imagination that Commandement, which a Magistrate hath ouer a free Citizen…”77 He also, in several instances, commends Aristotle

76 Bacon’s discussion of ethics is found in OFB 4.133-56.

77 OFB 4.106. The paraphrase is from Politics 1, 1254b4-5. See also, for instance, OFB 4.107, 112, 119-20.

41 more generally for his approaches or contributions to philosophy. For example, he states that his predecessor handles well logical .78

Bacon also points out several areas where he believes that Aristotle errs. Thus, though he commends several aspects of Aristotle’s logic and rhetoric, he also draws attentions to defects in

Aristotle’s treatments of these subjects.79 As well, he critiques Aristotle, with other philosophers, for intermingling final causes into physics. More broadly, he attacks

Aristotelianism as destructive to the growth of philosophy; he notes especially the scholastics, to whom Aristotle is a “dictator.” Bacon is clear that the fault is not only with the scholastics:

Aristotle sets himself up as a dictator by his intransigent opposition to all other philosophers.

Aristotle, acting “as though he had bin of the race of the Ottomans, thought hee could not raigne, except the first thing he did he killed all his Brethern.”80 Aristotle learned from his student,

Alexander the Great, “with whom, it seemeth, he did emulate, the one to conquer all Opinions, as the other to conquer all Nations.” “[Aristotle] neuer nameth or mentioneth an Ancient Author or opinion, but to confute and reproue: wherein for glorie, and drawing followers and disciples, he tooke the right course.” 81 In this regard he is like the Antichrist, who comes in his own name while Christ comes in the name of his father.82 Bacon in the Advancement argues that the true philosopher is like God in his pursuit of the good for all mankind; Aristotle, to the contrary, like

78 OFB 4.115. For other instances of commendation, see OFB 4.26-27, 94, 127, 129.

79 OFB 4.130.

80 OFB 4.86-87; 4.24; 4.92.

81 OFB 4.81. Bacon himself, of course, frequently quotes other philosophers approvingly, including, as noted above, Aristotle.

82 OFB 4.81. Bacon quotes John 5:43: “Veni in nomine Patris, nec recipitis Me, Si quis venerit in nomine suo, eum recipietis.” “I have come in the name of the Father, and you do not receive me; if another will come in his own name, you will receive him.”

42 the Antichrist, seeks only his own personal glory. The fortune and success of his philosophy should not blind us to its true character; Christ was rejected while the Antichrist will be received.83 His use of learning for his own glory is the most notable example of the greatest of the “peccant humors” of learning which Bacon lists in Book One of the Advancement, “the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge.”84 Aristotle’s search for glory instead of truth that will benefit mankind perverts his philosophy.

Several commentators have discussed Bacon’s reluctance to name Lucretius in the

Advancement. There is only one explicit mention of the Epicurean in that work.85 Even where

Bacon clearly alludes to Lucretius he does not mention him by name. For example, he argues for his new understanding of form by using an of the composition of words. One should not investigate the sounds that make words, an interminable undertaking, but rather the sounds which make the letters that compose the word. Similarly to enquire about substantial forms, such as man or horse, is a useless pursuit, but to enquire about the Baconian forms – such as motion, colors, gravity, density, etc., which compose the essences of everything, as letters compose words – is the aim of natural philosophy.86 This analogy is appropriated from

Lucretius’ De rerum natura, where the poet compares the formation of all things from various

83 OFB 4.81. Bacon sees Aristotle as the most influential philosopher: “upon [Aristotle] the philosophy that now is chiefly dependeth.” Aristotle’s influence extends even to religion. The scholastics “have almost incorporated the contentious philosophy of Aristotle into the body of Christian religion” (Filum Labyrinthi, SEH 3.502, 499).

84 OFB 4.31. Bacon does not deny that glory can be an end of knowledge (OFB 4.52), but it is not the “furthest end.” It must be subordinated to the mastery of nature for the relief of man’s estate.

85 OFB 4.52.

86 OFB 4.84.

43 combinations of atoms to the formation of words from various combinations of letters.87 Bacon adapts the analogy to his purposes and makes no acknowledgment of his source. His commentators have noted that, in several of his works, he attributes positions common to

Epicureans, often even couched by him in the formulations of Lucretius, to Democritus.88

Different reasons have been brought forward to explain Bacon’s alacrity to attribute positions to

Democritus and his reluctance to acknowledge Lucretius’ influence. According to C. T.

Harrison, Bacon’s “personal enthusiasm for Democritus led him sometimes to ascribe to

Democritus opinions which he found only in Lucretius.” Eugenio Gattinara suggests that

“Bacon considered any approbatory mention of Lucretius detrimental to his career, knowing that his age severely reprimanded Lucretius and the Epicureans in general for their materialism and atheism.”89

The one time that Bacon does mention Lucretius by name occurs in Book One of the

Advancement, where he is giving various arguments for the excellence of learning. He argues that learning is the most pleasant activity, and in relation to this point paraphrases the famous beginning of Book Two of De rerum natura:

It is a view of delight (sayeth he) to stand or walke vpon the shoare side, and to see a Shippe tossed with tempest vpon the sea; or to bee in a fortified Tower, and to see two Battailes ioyne vppon a plaine. But it is a pleasure incomparable for the minde of man to bee setled, landed, and fortified in the certaintie of truth; and

87 De rerum natura 1.823-29; 2.688-99. The distinction between Baconian “forms” and traditional “forms” will be treated below.

88 This has been marked by several scholars. See, for instance, C. T. Harrison, “Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and the Ancient Atomists,” Harvard Studies in Philology and Literature 15 (1933): 198; Eugenio Gattinara, Eros and the Atom, or the Birth of the Concept of Force (Madrid: Editorial Dos Continentes, 1974), 62, 68 ff.; Monte Johnson and Catherine Wilson, “Lucretius and the History of Science” in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 134.

89 Harrison, “Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle,” 198; Gattinara, Eros and the Atom, 85.

44 from thence to descrie and behould the errours, perturbations, labours, and wanderings up and downe of other men.90

Bacon offers no commentary on the passage here, other than to acknowledge that the Epicurean poet is in truth pointing to a great pleasure. But in his discussion of ethics, Bacon will further consider tranquility of mind – espoused so powerfully by Lucretius as the highest good – in relation to other goods.

Seneca, like Aristotle, is frequently quoted by Bacon throughout the Advancement in corroboration of some particular point or another.91 Seneca is also mentioned approvingly in the first book of the Advancement as an example of the use of philosophy in political life.92 Further,

Bacon engages him and other Stoic philosophers in a more significant fashion in the

Advancement’s discussion of ethics, particularly in his discussion of the excellence of the active life and in his treatment of the emotions in the “culture of the mind.” Though the Stoics are by no means exempt from Bacon’s criticism, he does not attack Seneca and his fellow Stoics with the same energy with which he attacks Aristotle.

Bacon does not indeed present an explicit criticism of either Aristotle’s or anyone else’s ethics as a whole. The lack of any such criticism is in keeping with his statement at the beginning of the second book of the Advancement that his “purpose is at this time, to note onely omisions and deficiences; and not to make any redargution of Errors, or incomplete

90 OFB 4.52.

91 For example, OFB 4.13, 19, 49, 134.

92 OFB 4.11.

45 prosecutions.”93 If he differs from the “ancient, and receiued doctrines,” he will nevertheless not contend with them. He adopts, he states, the tactics of Alexander VI, who entered Naples with no weapons, but only chalk to mark the doors of those ready to receive him.94

This claim of Bacon seems to contradict his explicit attack in the first book of the

Advancement on scholasticism, humanism, and , as well his universal condemnation in the second book of prior moral philosophers for not pursuing the “roots of good and evil” and for neglecting the “culture of the mind.” Perhaps the contradiction can be resolved: Bacon indeed must present a case for his new philosophy by showing the ineptness of the old. Some initial clearing is necessary before he can build. A general attack on prior philosophy is necessary, but showing its lack of fruits is sufficient to indicate the need for a change. Further, he uses particular points of the old philosophies as foils to bring out the outlines of his new philosophy, thus separating it from prior philosophies. But he does not engage in any detailed criticism of individual philosophies as a whole. The proof of his philosophy’s superiority to the ancients’ will be revealed fully by its results, not by arguments; his new philosophy indeed demands a different criterion for truth than did the old, disputatious philosophy. He addresses certain errors (as he perceives them) in Aristotle’s, and others’, ethics in order to make clear his own moral philosophy.

93 OFB 4.61. “Redargution” is defined in the OED as a “reproof” or “refutation.”

94 OFB 4.90-91.

46 Moral Philosophy within Bacon’s Division of Learning

The great bulk of the second book of the Advancement is devoted to Bacon’s division of learning. The stated purpose of this division is to indicate what parts of learning are undeveloped or poorly developed, and thereby stir up both public rulers (especially the work’s dedicatee, James I) and private individuals to develop these areas.95 As Lisa Jardine shows,

Bacon does not follow the ancients with regard to their fundamental division of the sciences into theoretical and practical.96 Aristotle, for instance, divides knowledge into speculative, practical, and productive.97 Aquinas divides sciences into theoretical and practical.98 Bacon, in contrast, after distinguishing between human and divine sciences, divides each of these sciences according to the faculties of the human soul. The principal division of the human sciences is into history, , and philosophy, corresponding respectively to the three faculties of memory, imagination, and reason. The basis of Bacon’s division is a distinct departure from that of

Aristotle’s, laid out in the Metaphysics:

Now physical science, too, happens to be concerned with some genus of being (for it is concerned with such a substance which has in itself a principle of motion and of rest), and it is clear that this science is neither practical nor productive. For in productive sciences the principle of a thing produced is in that which produces,

95 OFB 4.61.

96 Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 96-101. This is an excellent account of the relationship of Bacon’s division of the sciences to prior divisions.

97 See, for example, Metaphysics 1025b19-27 and Nicomachean Ethics 1139b14-1140b30. Jardine has an extensive list of references in Francis Bacon, 98 n. 1.

98 Aquinas’ Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 1. See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 4-10, for an account of Aquinas’ division of the sciences. Wippel is primarily concerned with dividing the theoretical sciences, but also addresses the prior division of practical and theoretical.

47 whether this is intellect or art or some power, and in practical sciences the principle of action is in the doer, and this is choice…99

For Aristotle, the basis for the initial division of sciences is where the principle of the object that is studied resides. At times this is within the knower, at times not.

Bacon, for his part, does not simply reject the distinction between theoretical and practical sciences. As Lisa Jardine and Sachio Kusukawa have pointed out, Bacon, in departing from the old primary division of sciences into practical and speculative, allows the distinction between practical and speculative to be within the individual sciences themselves.100 Bacon’s division thus emphasizes the productive nature of learning more than ancient and medieval divisions did – sciences traditionally considered speculative are both speculative and practical for him. His new division neglects one of the main grounds for the traditional primacy of the theoretical sciences – a more exalted object of study101 – since the practical and theoretical are joined within the same study. He thus invites a reconsideration of the status of contemplation and action, and of the old ends of philosophy. Bacon rejects the old divisions of knowledge in favor of one more suited for the articulation of a learning in which “contemplation and action may be more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited together, than they haue beene.”102

99 1025b19-24. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1979), 102. All subsequent translations from Aristotle’s Metaphysics are from this work, unless otherwise noted.

100 Jardine, Francis Bacon, 98. Sachiko Kusukawa, “Bacon’s Classification of Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 72: One of the aims of Bacon’s new division of knowledge is to “unify theoretical and practical parts of science.” Bacon, for instance, divides natural philosophy into speculative and operative, and moral philosophy is divided into the nature of the good and the culture of the mind, the second of which Bacon describes as “practical” (OFB 4.80, 135, 147).

101 See, for instance, Aristotle’s Metaphysics 982b29-983a12, 993b19-32, 1026a20-24; Nicomachean Ethics 1177a20-22.

102 OFB 4.32.

48 After identifying “Philosophia Prima, Primitive or Summary Philosophy” as the common parent of philosophical sciences, Bacon identifies three main parts of philosophy: divine, natural, and human.103 Ethics falls under human philosophy. Human philosophy is subdivided according to whether the human is considered simply or conjugately – that is, as an individual or as a member of society or the human race. The knowledge of humans considered conjugately is divided into conversation, business, and politics.104 As considered simply, a human can be considered as a conjoined mind and body, as a body, or as a mind. The mind can be considered as a substance or as possessing faculties or functions. The primary division of the faculties is into reason and the will. The study of reason pertains to the “intellectual” arts, Bacon’s considerable alteration and expansion of traditional logic; the study of the will pertains to ethics.105 Recapitulating, the trail leading to the science of ethics is: philosophy – human philosophy – man simple – man’s mind – faculties of mind – appetite and will.

Of particular interest is the distinction Bacon makes between moral philosophy and political philosophy. Politics fall under man “conjugate,” whereas ethics falls under man

“simple.” In Bacon’s division, ethics is a closer relative to his new logic than to political philosophy. For Aristotle, the study of virtue is a political study, and political activity is an important part of ethical virtue. Bacon, in contrast, separates ethics from politics, inasmuch as ethics is not included under politics in his division of the sciences; they are related as cousins

103 OFB 4.76. Note that divine philosophy is not divinity. Divine philosophy is “that knowledge or Rudiment of knowledge concerning GOD, which may be obtained by the contemplation of his Creatures” (OFB 4.78). “Sacred Theology (which in our Idiome we call Diuinitie) is grounded onely vpon the word & oracle of God, and not vpon the light of nature” (OFB 4.182). If we set aside divine philosophy, to which Bacon devotes scarcely more than a page – he notes an “excesse” in this part of knowledge (OFB 4.79) – there remains natural philosophy and human philosophy, a division Bacon makes frequent use of in other works, as, for instance, in De sapientia veterum.

104 OFB 4.157.

105 OFB 4.105-107.

49 rather than as father and son. B. H. G. Wormald goes so far as to argue that Bacon “claimed to invent it [i.e., politics] by distinguishing it from the science of morality.”106

Bacon himself offers a curious distinction between ethics and “civil knowledge,” the branch of knowledge which contains conversation, business, and politics: “Moral Philosophye propoundeth to it selfe the framing of Internall goodnesse: But ciuile knowledge requireth onelye an Externall goodnesse: for that as to societye sufficeth.”107 To elucidate this rather obscure distinction, Bacon gives an instance where internal and external goodness diverge: there can be good kings, who govern in an orderly fashion, but bad men under them, as happened with

Jehosaphat.108 Earlier in the work, Bacon discusses the distinction between morality and politics when treating of “that Good of man, which respecteth and beholdeth Society,” which is divided from the “priuate & particular” good of man. He cautions his readers not to suppose that the former belongs to political science, despite its concern with man’s duties towards the state and mankind in general, “for it concerneth the Regiment & gouermnment of euery man, ouer himself, & not ouer others.” This government over oneself includes one’s duties towards the groups of which one is part. For example, he says, in architecture the shaping and designing of the beams and other parts of the building is not the same as constructing the building from these.

Nevertheless it is clear that the individual beams are formed with their use for the whole building

106 B. H. G. Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, Politics and Science, 1561-1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 29.

107 OFB 4.156. See B. H. G. Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, Politics and Science, 1561-1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 109-10; Svetozvar Minkov, Francis Bacon’s Inquiry, 25.

108 Bacon quotes from 2 Chron. 20:33: “Sed adhuc populus non direxerat cor suum ad dominum Deum patrum suorum.” “But still the people had not directed their hearts to the Lord God their father.” The prior verse states that Jehosaphat “ambulavit in via patris sui Asa nec declinavit ab ea faciens quae placita erant coram Domino.” “He walked in the way of his father Asa, nor did he decline from it, doing what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord.”

50 in mind. Thus Bacon includes “the common duty of euery man, as a Man or member of a State” as a part of ethics.109

The Ancients’ Neglect of the Good

Bacon first divides the subject matter of ethics into the “nature of good” and the “culture of the mind.” The “nature of good” can be considered as either “simple” or “compared,” the

“kindes of Good” or the “degrees of Good.” Central to discussions about the degrees of good was the question of what was “Felicity, Beatitude, or the highest Good, the doctrines concerning which were as the heathen Diuinity.” This was not a fruitful conversation, according to Bacon, but rather one that resulted in “infinite disputations” among the ancients. These disputes are

“discharged” by Christianity, which teaches that happiness is only “by hope of the future world.”

This is a liberating teaching: by it men are “freed therefore, and deliuered from this doctrine of the Philosophers heauen, whereby they [i.e., the philosophers] fayned an higher eleuation of

Mans Nature, then was.” 110 A number of can be drawn from this passage. Most obviously, Bacon rejects, by an appeal to Christianity, earlier arguments concerning the highest good for man. The question of the highest good is fundamental to ethics, and the various answers philosophers gave to it shaped and dominated their ethical thought. Aristotle’s

Nicomachean Ethics, for example, is ordered by the identification of the highest good for humans as the best fulfillment of their function as human beings – that is, performing virtuous actions. Lucretius’ acceptance of pleasure and the absence of pain as the highest good of

109 OFB 4.142-43.

110 OFB 4.135.

51 humans is responsible for the most distinctive parts of his ethical reflections: the rejection of popular religious sentiment, the abstention from politics, and the elevation of the study of natural philosophy. Given the centrality of the question of the highest good to ethics, then, and the consequent attention the ancients gave it, Bacon’s characterization of their discussions of the highest good – they “fayned an higher eleuation of Mans Nature, then was” and indulged in ceaseless wrangling from which men were thankfully freed by Christian revelation – is one that strikes at the root of earlier moral philosophies. Svetozvar Minkov states that Bacon in this passage dismisses “the notion of a good of a ‘supreme degree’ (‘felicity,’ ‘beatitude,’ or the

‘Highest Good,’ the heathen divinity) as not accessible to reason.”111 If Bacon does not himself state as much explicitly, certainly he does not give much room for hope of attaining the highest good in his presentation of the ancients’ attempts.

But Bacon, almost immediately after voicing this criticism, proceeds to offer his own division and ranking of the human goods. Though he does not explicitly name a “highest good,” his confident description and comparison of the various goods suggests the question: why does

Christianity “discharge” the ancients search for the highest good, but does not similarly dismiss his own investigation and ordering of the good? Bacon makes use of Christian teaching to bolster his argument, but they are not essential to his case, which is primarily based on reason. If arguments from Christianity were essential to his ethics, he would violate his own exhortation near the beginning of the Advancement not to “vnwisely mingle or confound these learnings [i.e., divinity and philosophy] together.”112

111 Inquiry Touching Human Nature, 28.

112 OFB 4.9.

52 There is a further difficulty. Bacon states both that prior philosophers are too worldly, in that they ignore the next life wherein man’s true happiness resides, and that they elevate man’s nature in this life beyond what they should. These statements need not necessarily imply a strict contradiction on the part of the ancient philosophers or a misunderstanding of these philosophers on Bacon’s part: one who believes that man has a supernatural end, attained in the next life, need not necessarily hold to a more exalted view of man’s nature in this life than those who do not believe in such a supernatural end. But it is certainly a curious position to hold that the ancients at the same time both unduly elevated man’s nature and were too worldly.

There is one solution that can address both the above difficulties. It is possible that

Bacon’s dismissal of the ancients’ arguments about the greatest good by an appeal to Christianity is primarily a rhetorical argument used to elevate his philosophy over the ancients. That is, he may not believe that Christianity legitimately replaces the search for the highest good, or that its vision of the highest good as otherworldly should be unhesitatingly accepted. This suggestion concerning his relationship to Christian teaching will be developed in the following section.

As stated above, Bacon claims that the ancients “fayned an higher eleuation of Mans

Nature, then was.” What does he mean by this? In what way is man’s nature lower than is reported by the ancients? To answer these questions, a close examination of his description of the nature of the human good is in order. The study of the human good that he now undertakes is, on his reading, one that was shamefully neglected by the ancients:

Notwithstanding, if before they had commen to the popular and receiued Nocions of vertue and vice, pleasure and payne, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer vpon the Enquirye, concerning the Rootes of Good and euill, and the Strings of those Rootes, they had giuen in my opinion, a great light to that which followed;

53 and speciallye if they had consulted with Nature, they had made their doctrins lesse prolixe, and more profound; which beeing by them in part omitted, and in part handled with much Confusion, we will endeauour to resume, and open in a more cleare Manner.113

Bacon here indicates that the ancients did not in fact understand the nature of the good. Their views on virtue and pleasure were “popular and received,” neglecting, he says in a strange formulation, the “roots of good and evil” and the “strings of these roots.”

The “strings,” Brian Vickers reasonably suggests, refer to smaller roots branching off of main roots.114 These smaller roots are slight and limp, and hence string-like. But what does

Bacon mean by “roots” of good and evil? The word is often used to denote what is an origin of something, as when St. Paul says that the love of money is the root of all evil: the love of money leads on to numerous other evils. Bacon seems to use “root” in this sense in the first book, when he states about learning that “it taketh away vaine admiration of any thing, which is the roote of all weakenesse.”115 “Vain admiration,” a lack of a proper understanding and judging of things, leads one to become weak in their understanding and actions. But it is hard to see how he is using “root” in this sense when talking of the “roots” and “strings of roots” of good. What would the origin of the good be? And would the “strings” refer to the origins of the origins of the good? Bacon does not in fact go on to speak of the origins of the good, but rather of its division and description.

There is another meaning of “root” which would fit better here. The Oxford English

Dictionary gives as one definition “the bottom or real basis, the inner or essential part, of

113 OFB 4.136.

114 Vickers, The Major Works, 650.

115 OFB 4.49.

54 anything.”116 By this understanding of the word, Bacon would be referring more to the formal than the efficient cause of the good, to use traditional terminology. There are “roots” and

“strings of roots” because there are several divisions and subdivisions of the good, which he goes on to relate. This understanding of “root” would also make sense of his criticism of the ancients: they do not look to the “inner or essential parts” of the good, but instead rely on “popular and received notions,” a practice which Bacon condemns at the end of the first book as excluding true learning.117 In contrast, he himself will consult “with nature,” that is, look to what the good is in itself rather than to what is reported about it. Hence his own discussion of moral philosophy is both more compressed and more profound than his predecessors.

The Public and Private Goods

Immediately following the above criticism of the ancients, Bacon presents his own teaching on the nature of the good:

There is fourmed in euery thing a double Nature of Good; the one, as euery thing is, a Totall or substantiue in it selfe; the other, as it is a parte or Member of a greater Bodye; whereof the later is in degree the greater, and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conseruation of a more generall fourme… This double nature of Good & the com-paratiue thereof is much more engrauen vpon Man, if he degenerate not: vnto whom the Conseruation of duty to the publique ought to be much more precious then the Conseruation of life and being…118

116 OED, s.v. “root.” The OED gives examples of this meaning of the word stretching back to Chaucer in the fourteenth century.

117 At the end of book one of the Advancement, Bacon expresses clearly the contempt he has for those who follow “popular Iudgements” and so reject learning as he describes it (OFB 4.54).

118 OFB 4.136.

55 This, on Bacon’s account, is a description of the “roots of good.” His claim that there exists a

“double nature of good,” the good of oneself and the good of the whole of which one is a part, is one well-grounded in tradition. His placement of the latter above the former also accords with tradition. Aristotle, for instance, states that “while it is satisfactory to acquire and preserve the good even for an individual, it is finer and more divine to acquire and preserve it for a people and for cities.”119 Bacon does, however, depart from the Peripatetic tradition in identifying the

“whole” whose good one should pursue as not only the state, but mankind as a whole.120 In this regard he is closer to the Stoics and the Christian tradition than to Aristotle, for whom the common good typically relates to the city, not to all men. Following Bacon’s principle that the good that tends “to the conseruation of a more generall fourme” is “greater” and “worthier,” the good of mankind as a whole should take precedence over the good of the state.

As Svetozar Minkov points out, Bacon’s claim regarding the primacy of the good of the whole is drawn from considering the natural world as well as human actions.121 Bacon argues for this claim first by pointing to several examples. First he turns to examples from nature, the most clear of which is the interaction between iron, magnets, and the earth: “the Iron in particuler simpathye mooueth to the Loadstone; But yet if it exceede a certayne quantity, it forsaketh the affection to the Loadstone and like a good patriot mooueth to the Earth which is the Region and

Countrye of Massie Bodyes.”122 This action of nature reflects the action of man, provided he is

119 Nicomachean Ethics 1, 1094b9-11 (Irwin, 2).

120 OFB 4.142-43. Nowhere does Bacon suggest that the “good of the whole” extends beyond human nature; the human species is apparently the greatest whole whose good men strive for.

121 Minkov, Inquiry Touching Human Nature, 29-30.

122 OFB 4.136.

56 not “degenrate.” Bacon gives as an example of a non-degenerate man Pompey the Great, who did not hesitate to hazard his life in a stormy sea to attain grain for Rome. Finally, Bacon turns to Christianity, which more than any other religion or philosophy “exalt[s] the good which is

Communicatiue and depresse[s] the good which is priuate and particuler.” He gives the example of the Saints who strikingly wish themselves anathema “in an extasie of Charity, and infinite feeling of Communion.”123

Bacon’s statements are clear about the priority of the common to the particular good, but this knowledge does not tell us what the good in fact is. What is the nature of the good, and how is it manifested in both the individual and the whole? Bacon’s statements concerning the

“double nature of the good” do not seem to answer this question. In his further division of the good he describes what the good is in greater detail, and we will turn there to attempt to uncover the nature of the good. First, though, we will look at certain applications he makes of the principle of the priority of the common good in adjudicating ancient quarrels.

Bacon begins his discussion of the nature of the good, as we saw, by considering it as the goal of each thing either as an individual or as part of a larger whole. The latter is greater,

“because it tendeth to the conseruation of a more generall fourme.” Aristotle, according to

Bacon, does not consider this fundamental distinction when he exalts the contemplative over the active life:

For first it [i.e., the common good] decideth the question touching the preferment of the Contemplatiue or actiue life, and decideth it against Aristotle; For all the

123 OFB 4.136-37. See St. Paul’s statement in Romans 9:3: “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

57 reasons which he bringeth for the Contemplatiue, are priuate, and respecting the pleasure and dignity of a mans selfe…124

The active life, on the contrary, looks to the good of a more universal whole – the state or mankind – and hence is higher than the contemplative life that Aristotle exalts.

Some commentators on Bacon have held that he does not truly hold that the public good is superior to the private good. Svetozar Minkov has questioned the straightforwardness of the passage in the Advancement commented on above: “What looks like a Baconian defense of the active life in the name of the common good will prove, upon closer inspection, to be a defense of the contemplative life in the name of the individual good.”125 According to Minkov, Bacon makes no serious case that the common good is primary. He argues that Bacon held that the contemplative, private good of the ancients was in fact superior to the public good aimed at by his scientific project, which itself was only philosophical in a limited way. Minkov suggests that

Bacon exalts the common good on the surface of his writing, contrary to his real belief, because his scientific project would not be implemented if men believed that the private good is primary.126 This view has a difficult time accounting for the centrality of the scientific project in

Bacon’s writings. Why would Bacon devote the bulk of his writing to a project whose fruits others, not Bacon, will enjoy?127 Minkov acknowledges that Bacon is not aiming at honor or glory, another possible motive for his initiation of his scientific project. Minkov can only suggest that Bacon’s project “could serve whatever selfish purpose(s) [Bacon] must have had in

124 OFB 4.136, 137.

125 Minkov, Inquiry Touching Human Nature, 39.

126 Ibid., 23; 35-39; 42, n. 34; 134-35.

127 See, for instance, Bacon’s well-known statement in his letter to Fr. Fulgentio, which Spedding dates in 1624: “posteritati (saecula enim ista requirunt) inservio” (LL 7.531). “I serve posterity (for these things [i.e., his new scientific project] require ages).”

58 mind for it.”128 Minkov does not finally offer any substantive reason for Bacon to embark on his massive scientific project.

Robert Faulkner similarly argues that Bacon is being disingenuous when he argues for the primacy of the public good. Faulkner’s account is more persuasive than Minkov’s inasmuch as he does provide a motive for Bacon’s initiation of his scientific project. According to

Faulkner, the public good is sought for private glory: “Baconian individualism culminates in a leader who seeks to be one alone by rising above human neediness, and who proceeds above others, and even above oblivion, by providing for others in their neediness.”129 Personal immortality through the public good, rather than the public good, is what great men aim at. But

Bacon, early and late, privately and publicly, insists that the good of all humans is the proper end for which men should strive, and which he himself aims at with his scientific project. His moral philosophy should be interpreted in a way consonant with this teaching, which is one of his most repeated and emphasized.

Minkov is right, however, in thinking that Bacon’s portrayal of contemplation as a merely private good, subservient to action, is incongruous with his philosophy as a whole. It is a departure from his portrayal of learning elsewhere in the Advancement, particularly in Book One.

Bacon interprets God’s preference for Abel over Cain as indicating the priority of the contemplative life over the active, and Bacon argues that it is by learning that man most nearly approaches divinity.130 It is not his own contemplation that Bacon takes issue with in his treatment of ethics, but Aristotle’s contemplation. Richard Kennington shows in detail the

128 Inquiry Touching Human Nature, 42, n. 34.

129 Faulkner, The Project of Progress, 127.

130 OFB 4.34, 38.

59 distinctness of these two ways of contemplation,131 a distinctness Bacon points to in passages of the first book of the Advancement. There are “two wayes of contemplation.” His contemplation and action are indeed “more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited together, than they haue beene.”132 His contemplation, as he argues throughout Book One of the Advancement, attains the common good, unlike Aristotle’s contemplation which looks to private pleasure and glory.

Aristotle, according to Bacon, is ignorant of the good that contemplation should aim for; he is indeed ignorant of the “nature of the good.” Aristotle’s misplacing of the end of contemplation, and his erroneous elevation of his contemplation above the active life, are indeed signs that Bacon’s claim against moral philosophers in general – that they have not “consulted with Nature” in their prolix but superficial investigation of the good – is meant to apply especially to Aristotle.133 Aristotle introduces his Nicomachean Ethics as a sustained search for the highest human good; Bacon has a low opinion of his attainment in this regard.

Bacon, continuing his application of the principle of the primacy of the public good, compares Socrates and the Stoics, who place happiness in virtue, to the Epicureans, who place happiness in pleasure, and the “reformed schoole of the Epicureans, which place it [i.e., happiness] in serenity of mind and freedome from perturbation.” Bacon decides in favor of

Socrates and the Stoics. He chides in particular the “reformed schoole of the Epicureans” for ignoring the state of the world in which they live: they act “as if they woulde haue deposed

Iupiter againe, and restored Saturne, and the first age, when there was no summer nor winter,

131 Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon 1.”

132 OFB 4.31, 32.

133 OFB 4.136.

60 spring, nor Autumne, but al after one ayre and season.”134 To apply Bacon’s apt phrase, in such a philosopher’s heaven tranquility of mind is the highest good, but in reality exertion is needed in this world. Reid Barbour emphasizes that Bacon’s concern is that Lucretius’ desire for tranquility leads away from public activity.135 The primacy of the common good condemns the

“Tendernesse and want of application” in those philosophers who “retyre to easily from Ciuile businesse, for auoyding of Indignities & perturbations.”136

The Stoics are superior to the Epicureans in their description of happiness because the

“actions and exercises” of virtue are primarily concerned with society, whereas pleasure or serenity of the mind is an individual achievement. Zagorin points out that Bacon mitigates this commendation of the Stoics by his immediately subsequent criticism of the “philosophy of

Epictetus which presupposeth that felicity must bee placed in those things which are in our power, lest we be lyable to fortune & disturbance.” It is better to strive and fail for public goods rather than to limit one’s sphere of action. Further, he condemns the abuse of philosophy that

“grew generall about the time of Epictetus” – the abuse of making philosophy an “occupation or profession.”137 Bacon believes such a transformation of philosophy leads to concern for private rather than public good.

134 OFB 4.138.

135 Reid Barbour, “Bacon, , and Imposture: The True and the Useful in History, Myth, and Theory” in Francis Bacon and the Refiguring of Early Modern Thought, ed. Julie Robin Solomon and Catherine Gimelli Martin (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005), 29-31, and also his “Moral and Political Philosophy: Readings of Lucretius from Virgil to ” in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, 156-57. I have generally followed Barbour’s appraisal of Bacon’s treatment of Lucretius in the above paragraph and the one following.

136 OFB 4.139.

137 OFB 4.138. The Stoics’ ambiguity towards the public life is clearly seen in Seneca’s De Otio.

61 Division and Description of the Human Goods

A brief overview of Bacon’s division of the human goods will help orient the reader before a more detailed discussion of the goods. Bacon first divides good into public and particular. He next divides the particular good into active and passive goods. Finally, he divides passive into “conservative” and “perfective” good. He is explicit about their ranking: the public good is the highest, followed in order by the active good, the “perfective” good, and the

“conservative” good. As we look at his description of each of these goods, we will attempt to see what is common in each of these goods; that is, we will attempt to uncover Bacon’s answer to the question, “What is the nature of the good?” This in turn will shed light on his accusations that the ancients neglected the study of the good and that they “fayned an higher eleuation of

Mans Nature, then was.”138

We have already seen Bacon’s division of the good into public and particular; following his own order, we will now look at his division of good into active and passive. This division is best revealed by the two distinct appetites in “creatures”: “the one to preserue or continue themselues, & the other to dilate or Multiply themselues.” Bacon gives several arguments why the latter is more perfect. For instance, animals find sex more pleasant than eating; also, the mortality of humans means that only their “deedes and works” can be “secured and exempted from Time.” This highest individual good has to do with “a mans own power, glory, amplification, continuance.”139 By this good humans not only continue throughout time by keeping themselves alive by works and memory, but also impress themselves on the external

138 OFB 4.135.

139 OFB 139-40.

62 world. Active good is the drive whereby men “multiply themselves,” imprinting themselves outside themselves. The one example Bacon names is a statesman, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the

Roman dictator, who is brought up to show that the active good and the public good do not necessarily coincide. Bacon points to Sulla’s epitaph, “No greater friend, no worse enemy,” in his description of the tyrant as one who wished the world to be conformed to his image, and who was concerned with private as opposed to public good. But he also notes that the active good can have an “incidence” with the public good, as when one’s own glory and continuance is achieved along with the public good. Augustus seems a notable example here, as Bacon describes him in an incomplete biographical sketch.140

The passive good is divided into conservative and perfective. Man’s “approach or

Assumption to diuine or Angellicall Nature, is the perfection of his forme.”141 Bacon, like some prior philosophers and theologians, sees our perfected nature as an approach to divinity. As exalted as this good is, it is passive rather than active, because it is a perfection within man, rather than one by which he impresses himself on the external world. Thus this perfection of form is not the highest good for man, but merely one among several goods, some of which – the common good and the active good – are greater. Bacon, tellingly, distinguishes between the perfection of man’s form and great actions that redound to his glory.

The preservation of one’s form, which is the passive conservative good, consists in the enjoyment of things which are pleasant to our nature. Bacon describes it as the most natural, yet the lowest, pleasure. What things are pleasant to our nature? Bacon revisits the ancient debate

140 See “Imago Civilis Augusti Caesaris,” SEH 6.339.

141 OFB 4.140. But see below, pp. 79-82, for a discussion of passages where Bacon calls the pursuit of the good of all divine.

63 in Plato’s Gorgias: is equanimity of mind or keenness of pleasure more suited to our nature? He presents the disagreement between Socrates and a Sophist, the former of whom places happiness in tranquility of mind, the latter in “much desiring, and much enioying.”142 Bacon points to the obvious overlap of the Epicurean position with this specific thesis of Socrates. As quoted above,

Bacon in the first book paraphrases Lucretius’ famous praise of tranquility: “But it is a pleasure incomparable for the minde of man to bee setled, landed, and fortified in the certaintie of truth; and from thence to descrie and behould the errours, perturbations, labours, and wanderings up and downe of other men.”143 Bacon refrains from deciding between the two positions: the best life encompasses both. Most philosophers have failed in this regard. They have “sought to make mens minds to vniforme and harmonicall, by not breaking them sufficiently to contrary

Motions”; this desire springs from their attachment to a private rather than a public life, and from a mistaken conviction that the life of public activity is not pleasant to our nature. But the best course is to imitate a good jeweler, who will remove an imperfection from a precious stone only if he can do so without removing too much of the stone. “So ought men, so to procure Serenity, as they destroy not magnanimity.” Lucretius’ freedom from perturbation is hence a legitimate good, but it should be pursued together with the good of activity, not at its expense.

What finally is the nature of the good for Bacon? What is it, in other words, that unifies these different divisions of the good? He unifies them by the love for oneself and one’s species:

[W]e haue spoken first of the Good of Society the intention whereof embraceth the Fourm of Humaine Nature, whereof we are members & Portions: and not our owne proper and Indiuidual fourme: we haue spoken of Actiue good and supposed it as a part of Priuate and particular good. And rightly: For there is impressed vppon all things a triple desire or appetite proceeding from loue to

142 OFB 4.141. The reference is to Plato’s Georgias, 491b-e (Kiernan, 4.331).

143 OFB 4.52.

64 themselues, one of preseruing and contynuing theyr form, another of Aduancing and Perfitting their fourm and a third of Multiplying and extending their fourme vpon other things: whereof the multiplying or signature of it vpon other things, is that which we handled by the name of Actiue good. So as there remayneth the conseruing of it and parfiting or rasing of it: which later is the highest degree of Passiue good.144

All of the different types of private goods stem from a man’s love for himself, which is but a particular manifestation of all things’ “loue to themselues.” This love is expressed in different ways, but all of them are concerned with what Bacon already in Book One describes as

“immortalitie or continuance,” which is “that whereunto mans nature doth most aspire.”145

But where does the public good fit into this scheme? It is, after all, the greatest good according to Bacon. He states that the public good “embraceth the Fourm of Humaine Nature, whereof we are members & Portions.” It has to do with “every man, as a Man or member of a

State.”146 The public good is concerned with one’s duty as a human and member of political society. But he says nothing about what this duty consists in, claiming that it has been handled well by prior philosophers. He does briefly say, in a passage quoted above, that the public good is that whereby one tends to the “conseruation of a more generall fourme.” This is a hint that the public good parallels the private good, and that it too is ultimately concerned with preservation and amplification. It would be hard otherwise to reconcile Bacon’s claim that the public good is the highest good for humans with his statement that “immortalitie or continuance” is “that

144 OFB 4.140.

145 OFB 4.52. Compare Aristotle’s De anima 2, 415a29, where he describes the reproductive power in living things: “The most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible” (On the Soul, trans. J.A. Smith, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995], 661). For Aristotle, all living things indeed strive for immortality (“the eternal”), but this is achieved not by “continuance,” but through imitation of the divine by making another like itself.

146 OFB 4.140; 4.142-43.

65 whereunto mans nature doth most aspire.” When we consider man as a member of a state, the conservation or furtherance of the whole is understandable. But what does it mean when we consider the individual as a part of mankind, or, in Bacon’s words, when we consider “Humaine

Nature, whereof we are members & Portions”? What would it mean for individual men to conserve or multiply human nature as a whole? Bacon is apparently silent on this point, stating that the public good is well-handled by prior philosophers. An argument will be made below that Bacon believes the public good is primarily to be sought through his new philosophy. His claim that the public good is well-handled by the ancients is incompatible with his accusation that they neglect the nature of the good. His claim that it has been well-handled is understandable, however, in light of his dedicatee; it would not be advisable to introduce too hastily a new conception of the public good to the King of England, or to the rest of his powerful readers for that matter.

Immortality or continuance drives human action, according to Bacon. At the lowest level, this consists in maintaining existence – self-preservation narrowly construed. At a higher level, what is aimed at is impressing one’s form on other things – the dilation or multiplication of one’s self on the external world. Higher yet is the conservation and impression of the form of human nature. The ancients fail to see that the desire for immortality or continuance of self or of human nature underlies all men’s actions. This is, to use ’ phrase, the “low but solid ground” upon which Bacon builds.147 The ancients, in contrast, seek happiness through such

147 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 247. The phrase is in quotation marks in this work, and a note refers to several sections of Locke’s The Two Treatises of Civil Government. None of these sections contain the phrase, however, and, while scholars frequently quote this phrase, no source beyond Strauss (besides a general nod to Locke) is given, that I have found.

66 exalted pursuits as the contemplation of the good in itself or of the unmoved mover; they “fayned an higher eleuation of Mans Nature, then was.”148

Throughout his description of human goods, Bacon often speaks of “forms.” Indeed, he defines the good as the preservation, advancement, and multiplication of one’s particular form, and the conservation of the form of human nature. The word “form” is obscure under the best of circumstances, but especially so here because Bacon states in the Advancement that he is initiating a turn away from the forms commonly emphasized by the ancients, towards forms “the disclosures whereof are fruitful and important to the State of Man.”149 What understanding of

“form” – the ancient one or the new Baconian one – is at work in his description of the human goods?

In his discussion of natural philosophy, Bacon commends Plato for realizing “that formes were the true obiect of knowledge.”150 But he criticizes him and subsequent philosophers for concentrating on “the formes of substances” – such as the forms of man, lion, gold, water. As

Kennington observes, “In place of compound substances, Bacon advocates the investigation of the forms of simples.”151 Bacon states:

[T]o enquire the forme of a Lyon, of an Oake, of Gold: Nay of Water, of Aire, is a vaine pursuite: But to enquire the formes of Sence, of voluntary Motion, of Vegetation, of Colours, of Grauitie and Leuitie, of Densitie, of Tenuitie, of Heate, of , & al other Natures and qualities, which like an Alphabet are not many, & of which the essences vpheld by Matter of all creatures doe consist: To enquire I

148 OFB 4.135.

149 OFB 4.83.

150 OFB 4.83.

151 Kennington, “Bacon’s Reform of Nature,” 9.

67 say the true formes of these, is that part of METAPHISICKE, which we now define of.152

To attempt to understand substances in terms of more fundamental parts is not itself a new enterprise, as Kennington remarks; Lucretius undertakes such a task. What is new is that

Bacon’s “simples” are not conceived as substances, as Lucretius’ atoms are, but as properties or qualities – for instance, weight, color, heat. Thus substances such as man and dog are constituted, not out of smaller, more fundamental substances, but out of a collection of properties. Bacon also sees a drastically different aim from knowledge of the simples than did the ancients, namely, an increase in man’s ability to produce works:

For it is a thing more probable, that he that knoweth well the Natures of Waight, of Colour, of Pliant, and fragile in respect of the hammer, of volatile and fixed in respect of the fire, and the rest, may superinduce vpon some Mettall the Nature, and forme of Gold by such Mechanique as longeth to the production of the Naturs afore rehearsed, then that some graynes of the Medecine proiected, should in a fewe Moments of time, turne a Sea of Quick-siluer or other Ma-teriall into Gold.153

Production of effects depends on the investigation and understanding of the forms that constitute things. “Whosoeuer knoweth any forme knoweth the vtmost possibilitie of superinducing that

Nature vpon any varietie of Matter…”154 In contrast, Lucretius studies the atoms in order to achieve tranquility of mind.

Despite Bacon’s rejection in natural philosophy of the ancients’ pursuit of knowledge of the forms of individual substances, he seems to use their meaning of “form” in his description of

152 OFB 4.84. Bacon divides natural philosophy into theoretical and practical parts. The former investigates causes in natural philosophy, the latter effects. The theoretical part is divided into physics and metaphysics. The former investigates efficient and material causes of things; metaphysics is concerned with the formal and final cause.

153 OFB 4.89.

154 OFB 4.85.

68 ethics. The very establishment of “human philosophy” as distinct from “natural” and “divine” philosophy makes it clear that something akin to the ancient understanding of “form” is used by

Bacon. The public good is ranked higher than the private goods because it conserves “a more generall fourme.” He specifies what this means: “the Good of Society the intention whereof embraceth the Fourm of Humaine Nature.”155 The form he is concerned about is that of human beings, rather than the simple natures.156

Nevertheless Bacon’s use of “form” in his discussion of ethics cannot be simply equated with either Plato’s or Aristotle’s notion of form. “The Fourm of Humaine Nature,” which the public good seeks to conserve, is opposed by Bacon to “our owne proper and Indiuidual form,” which is preserved and propagated by the various private goods. Certainly this opposition is opposed to Plato’s theory of the forms, which makes no room for a proper or individual form. It would also be opposed to the traditional understanding of Aristotle’s forms, though whether his substantial forms are universal or not is a debate that has continued to this day.157 More tellingly, however, Bacon’s use of “form” in his description of the good is innovative because it is impressed on the external world. Bacon does not explain what impressing one’s form on the external world is, but his example of Sulla is revealing. Bacon sees Sulla as a preeminent

155 OFB 4.136, 140.

156 As we will see, Bacon does turn to something analogous to his simple forms in his description of the culture of the mind, where he advocates learning about the simple “natures” or “forms” of the affections and states of mind and how they interact. But since the culture of the mind is ordered to achieving the goods of human nature described in the first part of his ethics, knowledge of the forms that are analogous to the simple natures of his natural philosophy are ordered to the conservation and perfection of the human form. Further, while Bacon wants to understand the actions of the parts of the human character, he does not suggest in his ethics that we can understand the whole as constituted by the parts. Kennington argues that Bacon finds no solution for the difficulty of how his simple forms constitute the whole, and that while he continues to pursue knowledge of his forms – notably in the Novum organum – he gradually ceases to speak of simple forms as constituting the whole “substantial” form (“Bacon’s Reform of Nature,” 9-10).

157 See John Elof Bodin, “The Discovery of Form” in Journal of the History of Ideas 4, no. 2 (1943): 177-192, for a rough sketch of the history of this dispute.

69 example of the active good because he tried to make the world conform to himself. That is, he tried to act on the outside world; he is one of those men who are concerned with “Multiplying and extending their fourme vpon other things.” In contrast, the perfection of the human form according to Aristotle consists, not in its ability to impress itself on the outside world, but in choosing according to reason. Indeed, one of its most distinctive characteristics is that it is universally receptive of forms; Aristotle describes it as the “form of forms.”158

Achieving the Human Good

After his division and description of the human goods, Bacon next turns to the “culture of the mind”: he explains how to actually achieve these goods. This is, as he describes it, the

“practicall” part of ethics. To insist that ethics has a practical aspect is nothing new, but to divide ethics into a theoretical and practical part is a marked departure from the ancients. If

Bacon appears to be conciliatory about the ancients’ treatment of the human goods, he sees no such need for discretion regarding the ancients’ advice on how to achieve the human goods.

They have, Bacon says, nearly wholly neglected the second, practical part of ethics, the “culture of the mind.” They indeed acknowledge its importance in passing remarks, but are mistaken in their supposition that they have in fact handled it. Bacon will “enumerate some heads or Points” of this neglected part of ethics.159

158 De anima, 432a2.

159 OFB 4. 146-47. “It is reasonable therefore that we propound it [i.e., the culture of the mind] in the more particularity, both for the woorthinesse, and because we may acquite our selues for reporting it deficient, which seemeth almost incredible, and is otherwise conceiued and presupposed by those themselues, that haue written.”

70 Bacon states that in the culture of the mind, like in any “practicall” pursuit, the first step is to decide “what is in our power, and what not: for the one may be dealte with by waye of alteration, but the other by waye of application onely.” The way of alteration deals with things in our command, such as habit, exhortation, and education. The way of application deals with

“Poyntes of Nature, and pointes of Fortune.” These are givens that do not originate in our willing, but we can mold them or overcome them to attain the human goods: “Vincenda est omnis fortuna ferendo: and so likewise vincenda est omnis Natura ferendo” – “Every fortune ought to be conquered by suffering: and so likewise every nature ought to be conquered by suffering.”160

The first step towards achieving the knowledge necessary for the way of application is to

“set downe Sound and true distributions and descriptions of the seueral characters & tempers of mens Natures and dispositions specially hauing regard to those differences which are most radicall in being the fountayns and Causes of the rest or most frequent in Concurrence or

Commixture.”161 Some of these characteristics that Bacon lists are narrowness of mind, pusillanimity, magnanimity, benignity, and malignity. Information concerning these characteristics can be gained from history, poetry, and daily experience. These sources, however, present information regarding men’s characters in an unprocessed and hence unusable way. Bacon describes literary works and daily experience as fields upon which observations regarding men’s characters grow. Prior moral philosophers have gathered a “few poesies” from

160 OFB 4.147. The quotation is from the Aeneid 5.710: “Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est” (see Kiernan’s commentary, OFB 4.335). Note the use of the passive periphrastic, which in Bacon’s appropriation expresses the obligation or necessity of conquering nature. I will return to this text below, on p. 77. Bacon begins to discuss the “way of alteration” at OFB 4.150.

161 OFB 4.147.

71 these fields, for purely decorative purposes, but have furnished nothing for use in daily life.162

Bacon’s ethics will supply this lack.

A second and similar sort of knowledge is that of the influence on the mind from internal and external causes. The former includes those impressions made by sex and age, health and sickness. External causes are such things as nobility, low birth, poverty, riches, prosperity, and adversity. The dispositions stemming from both these types of causes apparently differ from the characteristics listed in the previous paragraph inasmuch as they are not as foundational or as prevalently mixed with other characteristics. Information regarding these dispositions is as important and proper to ethics as is the treatment of types of soil to agriculture, or the different human constitutions to medicine.163

The final knowledge pertaining to the “wisedome of Application” is the knowledge of the affections. Bacon equates the affections to sickness of the mind: “So it may be fitly said, that the mind in the nature thereof would be temperate and stayed, if the affections as winds, did not put it into tumulte and perturbation.”164 Once again this subject has been neglected by the philosophers, and the poets and historians are the “best Doctors of this knowledge.” From them we can learn the necessary things about the affections:

How affections are kindled and incted: and how pacified and refrained: and how againe Conteyned from Act, & furder degree: how they disclose themseues, how they work, how they varye, how they gather and fortifie, how they are inwrapped on within another, and howe they doe fighte and encounter one with another, and other the like particularityes…165

162 OFB 4.148.

163 OFB 4.148.

164 OFB 4.150; cf. 4.149.

165 OFB 4.150.

72

Bacon lays particular stress on the last point he lists, that one affection can be overcome by another affection. Bacon gives the example of the use by the state of the very strong emotions of fear and hope, excited by punishments and rewards, to contain other more destructive affections.

Aristotle is chastised severely by Bacon for neglecting all the parts of knowledge concerned with the “wisedome of Application.” Aristotle handles poorly the different types of human characters.166 The “impressions of Nature” imposed on the mind by both internal influences (such as sex and age) and external (such as nobility and poverty) are indeed mentioned by Aristotle, but only in his rhetoric and “scattered discourses.” They “were neuer incorporate [by Aristotle] into Morall Philosophy, to which they doe essentiallye appertayne.”

Similarly Bacon says that Aristotle neglects the affections in his ethical treatises, where they principally belong. Bacon acknowledges that Aristotle does deal with the affections in his

Rhetoric insofar as they are influenced by speech, and that Aristotle there “handleth them well for the quantity,” that is, he treats them well given the limited space that he devotes to them. But

“where their true place is, he pretermitteth them.”167

According to Bacon, Aristotle comes closer to truly treating the practical branch of ethics in his Rhetoric than in his ethical treatises. In the latter, Aristotle is concerned with the affections inasmuch as virtue is a disposition that chooses the mean with respect to feelings, between too much and too little.168 In the Rhetoric, he is concerned with affections inasmuch as

166 OFB 4.147-48.

167 OFB 4.149-50.

168 Nicomachean Ethics 2, 1106b19-24: “We can be afraid, for instance, or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, and in general have pleasure or pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well. But having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue” (Irwin, 24).

73 they are a means of persuasion. Knowing how to arouse or quiet them in one’s listeners is necessary for a rhetorician.169 Though Bacon often uses the word “virtue” in his account of ethics, he never gives any description of virtue, let alone a definition, and he never acknowledges

Aristotle’s account of it as a state by which we choose the mean in regard to the affections.

Bacon thinks that Aristotle’s Rhetoric is closer to a truly ethical treatment of the affections because this work shows how to use the emotions to achieve a desired result.

Bacon commends the Stoics for paying more attention to the affections as an object of study for moral philosophy than did Aristotle – more attention, indeed, in Bacon’s reckoning, than virtually any other philosopher. Their method, however, was seriously flawed: their study of the emotions “was after their manner rather in subtiltye of definitions (which in a subiect of this nature are but curiosities) than in actiue and ample descriptions and obseruations.” But

Seneca’s De ira is mentioned by Bacon as one example of a Stoic writing “of an elegant nature touching some of the affections.” 170 More generally, Bacon’s treatment of the emotions as

“diseases and infirmities of the mind” follows Stoic morality. He departs significantly from the

Stoics, however, in his teaching of the use of the emotions as instruments to achieve a desired effect – for instance, he advocates using one emotion to overmaster another.171

Bacon next turns to the “waye of alteration,” which deals with things which are within our own command, things which “haue force and operacion vpon the mind to the wil &

169 See Rhetoric, 2.1-11 (1377b15-1388b30).

170 OFB 4.150. Cf. 4.128: “[T]o show [virtue] to Reason, only in subtilitie of Argument, was a thing euer derided in Chrysippus, and many of the Stoykes, who thought to thrust vertue vppon men by sharpe disputations and Conclusions, which haue no Sympathy with the will of Man.”

171 OFB 4.150. In the following chapter, I will cover more thoroughly Bacon’s substantial departure from the Stoics in his treatment of moral philosophy in general and of the affections in particular.

74 Appetite & to alter Manners.”172 Bacon includes in this group nature, custom, habit, education, example, friends, praise, fame, and studies, among others. He states that he does not have enough time to dwell on them all, but picks out especially habit or custom to discuss, taking exception to Aristotle’s prior treatment of this topic: “The opinion of Aristotle seemeth to mee a negligent opinion. That of those thinges which consist by nature, nothing can be changed by custome…”173 Bacon quotes Aristotle’s example of the stone always falling when thrown, an example Aristotle intends to illustrates that what is by nature is permanent. But though Bacon concedes the force of the example, he rejects the inference that things that are by nature cannot be changed. This is true for the example Aristotle gives, Bacon says, but it is not true for moral matters. Bacon indeed knows that Aristotle says that virtues and vices are according to nature, but not in fact by nature – he says that Aristotle taught “that vertues and vices consist in habit.”174 Jerry Weinberger goes so far as to say that Bacon agrees with Aristotle regarding the mutability of natural things:

When Bacon complains that Aristotle had not considered well what can and cannot be changed by custom, he simply restates Aristotle’s own distinction between those instances in which nature is ‘peremptory,’ to use Bacon’s term, and those instances in which nature allows latitude.175

But Weinberger overstates the agreement between Bacon and Aristotle; the former believes that the latter is too timid in his appraisal of the permanence of nature.

172 OFB 4.150-51.

173 OFB 4.151. Nicomachean Ethics 2, 1103a20-21.

174 OFB 4.151. Nicomachean Ethics 2, 1103a17-18: “Virtue of character results from habit…” (Irwin, 18). Immediately following this statement is Aristotle’s example of the stone being thrown up. He draws a conclusion from his claim that things that are by nature cannot be changed: “And so the virtues arise in us neither by nature nor against nature. Rather we are by nature able to acquire them, and we are completed through habit.”

175 Weinberger, Science, Faith, and Politics, 300.

75 What Bacon objects to is precisely Aristotle’s contention that we cannot bring about or alter things that are by nature. According to Bacon, Aristotle makes too sharp a distinction between what is by nature, and hence unchangeable, and what can be molded by custom. Bacon, in contrast, thinks that just as physical science consists in superinducing forms on others, so too does moral science. Human nature, like nature, can be conquered. Bacon transforms a passage from Virgil: “Vincenda est omnis fortuna ferendo: and so likewise vincenda est omnis Natura ferendo.”176 “‘All fortune ought to be conquered by suffering’: and so likewise, ‘Every nature ought to be conquered by suffering.’” Bacon hastens to add that he does not speak of a “dull, and neglected sufferinge, but of a wise and industrious sufferinge, which draweth, and contriueth vse and aduantage out of that which seemth aduerse and contrary.” Robert Faulkner argues that, for Bacon, human nature “is an underlying force that can be mastered by being channeled.”

There is an “an art of managing the passions,” which “like all Baconian arts, is a management of the forces at hand.” This view of human nature leads to a departure from the ancients’

“orientation by natural ends.”177

The parallels between Bacon’s natural philosophy and moral philosophy have been investigated by other scholars, such as Lisa Jardine, who argues that Bacon introduces into ethics the innovations he makes in natural philosophy. Both the moral philosopher and the natural philosopher are concerned with “manipulating as far as is possible the natural forces at work.”178

176 OFB 4.147. The original is from the Aeneid 5.710: “Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est” (Kiernan, OFB 4.335). Cf. Machiavelli , trans. by Leo Paul S. de Alvarez (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 1989), ch. 25, p. 147, 149: Fortune “demonstrates her power when there is no ordered virtue to resist her”; later he glosses his term “virtue”: “fortune is a woman, and if one wishes to keep her down, it is necessary to beat her and knock her down.”

177 Faulkner, The Project of Progress, 99, 272.

178 Jardine, Discovery and the Art of Discourse, 163. See also 152-53. Jardine, however, lessens the importance of this innovation by deciding that ultimately both sciences make “little advance on traditional rule-of-thumb methods,

76 The similarities between Bacon’s ethics and natural philosophy are highlighted by the that he uses in his description of moral philosophy. The most prevalent one is that comparing moral philosophy to medicine. Prior philosophers, especially the Stoics, employed the metaphor of medicine to describe philosophy, but the metaphor was used to describe the healing action of philosophy on the soul or mind. Bacon extends the comparison to the methods used in the two sciences:

[F]or as in Medicining of the body it is in order first to know the diuers Complexions and constitutions, secondlye the diseases, and lastlye the Cures: So in medicining of the Minde, after knowledge of the diuers Characters of mens natures, it foloweth in order to know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which ar no other then the perturbations & distempers of the affections.179

Similarly, Bacon compares the precise knowledge moral philosophy must have of men’s temperaments and affections to the knowledge agriculture must have of the different types of soil.180

As in natural philosophy, moral philosophy is concerned with a careful analysis of natural states and powers. It is not by a discussion of the wholes which the poets and historians provide, and which Aristotle discusses in his ethical treatises, that moral change can be effected. Rather, the various “natures” which constitute men’s temperaments, and the affections, are dissected and understood in their effects and in the way they mix and interact. This knowledge is then used to achieve a desired end, namely, the preservation and multiplication of self and of human nature. despite the grand claims for the interpretation of nature as universal tool for knowledge.” Jardine seems to overlook the inchoate character of both Bacon’s natural and moral philosophy. Concerning the latter, he states in the Advancement that he is merely setting down “some heads or Points” of moral philosophy, “that it may appeare the better what it is, and whether it be extant” (OFB 4.147). Thus, for instance, he argues for the need of a list of temperaments and affections and their effects in order to achieve desired ends in morality, but he does not himself provide such a list.

179 OFB 4.149.

180 OFB 4.149; cf. 4.147.

77 Learning and the Human Goods

There is a conspicuous absence in Bacon’s discussion of ethics in Book Two of any explicit treatment of learning as a human good. This is a curious neglect, considering that the first book of the Advancement is wholly dedicated to showing the excellence of learning – indeed, to establishing it as one of the highest human goods, if not the highest human good.

Why then does learning receive no mention in Bacon’s treatment of moral philosophy?

Bacon ends his discussion of ethics by listing the greatest way to attain the human good.

This is by constantly holding up before oneself good ends for one’s life. For Bacon the best end is that achieved through charity, by which the good of all is sought:

Aspiring to be like God in power, the angells transgressed and fel: Ascendam & ero similis altissimo [I will ascend and I will be like the most high]: By aspiringe to be like God in knowledge man transgressed and fell. Eritis sicut Dii scientes bonum & malum [You will be as gods, knowing good and evil]; But by aspiring to a similitude of God in goodnesse or loue, neyther Man nor Angell euer transgressed or shall transgresse. For vnto that imitation wee are called, Diligite inimicos vestros…vt sitis filii patris vestri qui in caelis est [Love your enemies…that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven]…181

Here Bacon points to what he identifies in his treatment of the “nature of the good” as the highest good, the good of the human race. But neither here nor there does he specify this highest good any further. What in particular is the good of the human race, towards which charity directs us?

Bacon opens Valerius Terminus, an unpublished fragment on the establishment of natural philosophy composed around the same time as the Advancement, with a discussion concerning likeness to God, identical in structure and meaning to the one given above:

181 OFB 4.155. The quotations are from, respectively, Isa. 14: 14, Gen. 3: 5, and Matt. 5: 44-45 (Kiernan, OFB 4.339). It should be noted that Bacon’s argument for the common good being highest is fundamentally based on fact that the natural drive each thing has to preserve the whole of which it is part is greater than its drive to preserve itself; Bacon’s argument from Christianity serves to corroborate this rational argument.

78 In aspiring to the throne of power the angels transgressed and fell; in presuming to come within the oracle of knowledge man transgressed and fell; but in pursuit towards the similitude of God’s goodness or love (which is one thing, for love is nothing else but goodness put in motion or applied) neither man or spirit ever hath transgressed, or shall transgress.182

Unlike in the Advancement, Bacon in Valerius Terminus is explicit about what “the similitude of

God’s goodness” means. Bacon first argues from the above passage that philosophy should be ordered to man’s good, “the benefit and relief of the state and society of man.”183 He further claims that philosophy as he presents it surpasses the normal ambitions of men towards excellence within their own country, or the excellence of their country in the world: “better again and more worthy must that aspiring be which seeketh the amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over the world.” This latter is “a work truly divine.”184 Bacon’s philosophy will achieve the good of all mankind in a most excellent way.

Returning to the Advancement, it is reasonable to think that Bacon is describing, in the nearly identical quotations from that work and Valerius Terminus, an identical conception of the greatest good for men. Indeed, we can see that what Bacon makes explicit in the unpublished

Valerius Terminus is implicit in the Advancement. In the first book of the Advancement, Bacon points out that the greatest benefactors of mankind are the discoverers of new arts and sciences which work towards the benefit and use of men. They are given divine honors, above the honors accorded to statesmen and civil founders, and justly so:

for the merit of the former is confined within the circle of an age, or a nation: and is like fruitfull showers, which though they be profitable and good: yet serue but

182 SEH 3.217.

183 SEH 3.222.

184 Ibid.

79 for that season, and for a latitude of ground where they fall: But the other is indeed like the benefits of Heauen, which are permanent and vniuersall.185

These discoverers are those who attend to the most universal public good, the best good.186 The best good is again identified as the good of all mankind in his treatment on the nature of the good, but without further specification. Such specification has already occurred in the first book of the Advancement. To use Bacon’s language from his description of the human good, if great statesmen such as Augustus imprint the form of their state on other nations, the natural philosopher does more by imprinting the human form on the natural world itself. In the bold formulation of Valerius Terminus, the Baconian scientist extends the kingdom of man over the world. He thus attains the common good in a perfect and unique way.

As discussed above, Bacon says that man’s attaining the likeness of divinity belongs to the passive perfective good, a good lower than the active good or the common good.187 This seems to contradict the above passages where he states that man when he pursues the common good approaches closest to the divine nature. Perhaps the apparent contradiction can be resolved: man approaches the divine when he perfects himself by the acquisition of those

185 OFB 4.38. Compare this section to that in Valerius Terminus, SEH 3.222. The arguments, and many of the expressions, are identical. In Valerius Terminus Bacon juxtaposes the exhortation to the good of all men and the description of how best to attain it; in the Advancement the corresponding passages are reversed and widely separated. It should be noted, though, that in Valerius Terminus the argument from Christianity for the good of man being empire over nature is arrived at chiefly from a theological argument; in the Advancement Bacon uses the theological argument as corroboration of his rational argument regarding self-preservation and self-propagation as the universal end of all things. Benjamin Milner argues that Bacon in Valerius Terminus presents a theological foundation for his thought, while in the Advancement he does not. See “Francis Bacon: The Theological Foundations of Valerius Terminus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 no. 2 (1997): 245-264. I believe that Milner is on the whole correct, though he downplays the significant use Bacon makes of Christian themes to corroborate arguments from reason in the Advancement. See, for instance, p. 263: “Many of the aphorisms which comprise the theological foundation of Valerius are repeated in Advancement of Learning (1605), but they are dispersed throughout and consequently serve chiefly to provide a pious tone for the work.”

186 The best part of inventions is that which enables all other inventions to be found. The new logic that Bacon says he will deliver (OFB 4.111) is the knowledge “which should purchase all the rest [of knowledge]” (OFB 4.107).

187 OFB 4.140; see above, p. 64.

80 faculties that allow him to attain the common good. The perfection of a man’s own faculties, however, is distinct from his pursuit of good for the human race, even if the former is necessary for the latter.

Summary

According to Aristotle, Bacon’s chief antagonist, we attain happiness by fulfilling our nature, which means acting virtuously. Aristotle defines virtue as the state by which we chose the mean, a mean set by our nature188 and discovered by reason. of human nature, and especially of human nature as manifested in excellent men, reveal the virtues to us and hence set the goals of our action. For Bacon, nature dictates only our continuance, not the particular ends that Aristotle points to as fulfillments of our nature.189 Bacon says that , who possessed “perfect felicity,” “was made up entirely of arts, insomuch that nothing was left to his nature except what art had approved.”190 Human art forms nature.

188 It is true that the mean is relative to each one of us – drinking neither too much nor too little depends on the individual. But that there is a mean between drinking too much and too little, and that by achieving this mean consistently we perfect ourselves, is by nature.

189 See Kathy McReynolds, Enhancing Our Way to Happiness: Aristotle versus Bacon on the Nature of True Happiness (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004), 2-3, who points out that Bacon rejects Aristotle’s ethics as shackling us “to ‘ends ‘ and ‘purposes’ supposedly dictated to us by Nature.” On the other hand, self- preservation and self-propagation, so dominant in Bacon’s account of ethics, are not treated in the Nicomachean Ethics. Self-preservation is indeed treated in Aristotle’s De anima 2, 415a29, where he describes the reproductive power in living things: “The most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible” (On the Soul, trans. J.A. Smith, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Barnes [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995], 661). For Aristotle, the drive to preserve the species springs from the urge all things have to participate in the divine; in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle describes a higher participation in the divine than self-preservation or self-propagation.

190 Bacon says that Julius Caesar, who possessed “perfect felicity,” “was made up entirely of arts, insomuch that nothing was left to his nature except what art had approved” (SEH 6.342).

81 For Aristotle, the intellectual virtues are higher than the ethical virtues. Aristotle’s ethics points to wisdom, a study related to divine things and to an order higher than man, as the highest good a human can attain. “For it would be absurd for someone to think that political science or prudence is the most excellent science; for the best thing in the universe is not a human being.”191 Bacon, however, believes that Aristotle does not understand that “contemplation and action may be more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited.” Nor does he fully understand the limits of human power, which is manifested most not in the dominion over men, but in the dominion of man over nature. Hence Bacon’s ethics points to natural philosophy, not politics, as the most excellent way to extend the kingdom of man and as the highest good as established by reason. If humans have a relationship to a superhuman or divine order, this relationship is not pointed out by his ethics, but by Christianity superimposed on ethics.

Bacon departs from Stoic and Epicurean thought no less decidedly. In Kennington’s elegant formulation, what separates Bacon’s philosophy from theirs “is ultimately the same difference that separates it from Plato and Aristotle: the utter absence of any relation to eternal or deathless beings or an order of nature.”192 This consideration places in context all of Bacon’s surface similarities with these philosophies – for instance, his elevation of the study of nature and his insistence on the primacy of the public good. For Bacon, the study of nature does not refer to the meditation of an eternal unchanging order, the contemplation of which orders man’s soul, but rather to the acquisition of the means to control nature for the relief of man’s estate. And while, like the Stoics, he exalts the public good, what he means by the public good is not a state of

191 Nicomachean Ethics 6, 1141a20-22 (Irwin, 91).

192 “Bacon’s Critique,” 30.

82 things in which the citizens can best act according to nature, but rather access to the benefits arising from the control of nature.

In his methods to achieve the good Bacon is also revolutionary. He criticizes the ancients without exception for their neglect of the culture of the mind; what they lack in particular is the realization that the goods are achieved by a rule and management of affections and states of the soul, analogous to the management of the forms in natural philosophy. Thus Bacon departs from

Aristotle, who holds that reason can inform and civilize the passions; from Seneca, who thinks that the passions can be eradicated; and from Lucretius, who deals with the passions by striving to quiet them through a turn to natural studies, away from public affairs.

3. Christian Charity and the Baconian Good

Bacon makes frequent use of Christian themes and arguments throughout the

Advancement, particularly in his description of the human good. The respect that he appears to accord to Christian teaching, however, has not shielded him from regarding his professions of Christianity. , in the late nineteenth century, remarked on

“the almost constant disputes which have been carried on nearly from his [i.e., Bacon’s] own times to ours as to what the nature of his religious opinions really was.”193 In this section I will first list some prominent examples of authors who have questioned the compatibility of Bacon’s thought with Christian teaching. I will next lay out some instances of Bacon’s use of Christian arguments in the Advancement, focusing on his use of charity in his descriptions of learning and

193 Thomas Fowler, Bacon (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881), 179-180.

83 the human goods. Finally, I will argue that his conception of charity in the Advancement is not compatible with the charity of Christian teaching.

Some Skeptics regarding Bacon’s Christianity

Skepticism about the genuineness of Bacon’s use of religious themes seems to have started during his life. Rawley, Bacon’s chaplain, biographer, and literary executor, refers to such skepticism in the Life of Bacon, where he defends the philosopher’s godliness against the

“world,” which, he states, is “apt to suspect and prejudge great wits and politics to have somewhat of the atheist.”194 He points out the religious writings of Bacon as evidence of his piety. The Enlightenment philosophers, hailing Bacon as their precursor, had varying interpretations of these religious writings. J. A. Naigeon, an ardent atheist, saw the religious themes in Bacon’s thought as exceptions to otherwise lucid content.195 Diderot, however, who claimed that he taught his countrymen to read Bacon, insisted that the latter’s views were not always easy to discern.196 Diderot’s pupil, Antoine Lasalle, speaks in the person of Bacon:

I will not directly attack the Throne or the Altar, because, resting as they do on each other, and on a threefold foundation of ignorance, terror and custom, they are

194 SEH 1.14.

195 J. A. Naigeon, Philosophie ancienne et moderne, vol. 1 (Paris: 1791), 369. Cited in Nieves Matthews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press, 1996).

196 “I think I have taught my fellow citizens to read chancellor Bacon; this wise author has been more pored over in the last five or six years than ever before. We are nevertheless far from appreciating the importance of his works; minds are not yet sufficiently advanced. There are too few people in a position to rise to the level of his meditations; and the number will perhaps never increase by much. Who knows whether the Novum organum, the Cogitata et visa , the book De augmento scientiarum , are not too far above the average reach of the human mind, to become in any century easy and common reading? Only time can resolve this doubt.” “Encyclopedia,” The Encyclopedia, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did222 2.0000.004 (accessed November 17, 2011). Originally published as “Encyclopédie,” Encyclopédie, 5:635–648A.

84 at present unshakable. But, while paying lip-service to them, I shall undermine them both with my principles. . . 197

Lasalle seeks to clarify Bacon’s true intent by offering a translation of his work that is largely purged of religious references. Influenced by the regard of the Encyclopedists for Bacon, Joseph de Maistre, in his scathing work Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, attacks him as a hidden atheist.198 Another Christian, William Blake, in his annotations to Bacon’s Essays, describes

Bacon as “An Atheist pretending to talk against Atheism,” and pens a frustrated exclamation in the flyleaf of the Essays, “Every Body Knows that this is Epi[c]urus and Lucretius & Yet Every

Body Says that it is Christian Philosophy how is this Possible.”199 A number of recent scholars have likewise questioned the genuineness of the theological claims in Bacon’s writings, for instance, Timothy Patterson and David C. Innes.200

There have also been defenders of the sincerity of Bacon’s writings touching Christianity.

Rawley himself, as quoted above, was perhaps the first of these. In 1800 J. A. Emery published his defense of Bacon’s piety, Le Christianisme de François Bacon. In it he decries the

Encyclopediests’ interpretation of Bacon as an atheist, together with their loose translation of the

197 Matthews, Character Assassination, 370. The quotation, translated by Matthews, appears in Lasalle’s translation into French of Bacon’s works (Oeuvres Complètes, trans. Antoine Lasalle, 15 vols [Dijon: 1799-1803], 11.378).

198 The Catholic Maistre saw in Bacon not only “an antichristian incredulity, but a fundamental impiety and a veritable materialism.” He admits the contradictions between these traits and Bacon’s professed Christianity may be the fruit not of dissimulation but rather of a mind “deprived of fixed principles on all points,” a deprivation he attributes in large part to Bacon’s Protestant faith. But, especially in light of the championship of Bacon by the Encyclopedists, he suspects Bacon of hypocrisy and atheism. An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon: Wherein Different Questions of Rational Philosophy Are Treated, trans. and ed. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1998), 300, 301, 305.

199 The Complete Poetry and of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 626, 620.

200 Timothy Patterson, “On the Role of Christianity in the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon,” Polity 19, no. 3 (1987): 419-442. David C. Innes, “Bacon’s New Atlantis: The Christian Hope and the Modern Hope,” Interpretation 22, no. 1 (1994): 3-37.

85 philospher’s works.201 More recently, Stephen A. McKnight argues that Bacon is a devout

Christian whose beliefs are foundational to his work, and Steven Matthews argues that his conceptions of charity and natural philosophy are heavily influenced by early Christian fathers such as Ireneaus.202

Wormald refers to these disputes, and argues that Bacon’s religious beliefs are not a subject for scholarly discussion: “Since there are no means of checking and so of correcting judgments upon a person’s inner morality or belief, these exercises should be abstained from as unworthy of the breath, ink or print which is expended.”203 Wormald seems to conflate Bacon’s

“inner morality” and his published statements about Christianity. It is true that the state of

Bacon’s conscience is a matter outside the purview of philosophy. Nevertheless, because he invokes Christian charity to corroborate or even to ground his revolutionary new philosophy, and given the history of skepticism regarding his Christianity, the place it holds in his thought cannot be ignored. We do not do justice to Bacon’s thought if we, deliberately or unwittingly,

“Christianize” his teachings regarding the human good, philosophy, and their relationship. The influence on our understandings could work the other way as well. Bacon’s version of charity could, to some extent, influence contemporary understandings of Christianity, especially with regard to the place of humanitarianism within Christianity.

There are two distinct questions: Was Bacon sincere in his professions of Christianity?

And is the version of Christian charity presented in his writings a legitimate form of

201 Nieves Matthews, Character Assassination, 371-372.

202 Stephen A. McKnight, The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006); Steven Matthews, Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

203 Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, Politics and Science, 1561-1626, 15.

86 Christianity? I will focus on the second question, which seems prior to the first and more fundamental. It is only given the incompatibility of Christianity and Bacon’s version of it that the first question acquires more than a purely historical interest. And that incompatibility and its impact on our understanding of Bacon’s philosophy do not seem dependent on whether or not he willfully deceived his readers.

Bacon’s Appeal to Christianity and Charity in the Advancement

Bacon’s first discussion of the relationship between Christianity and his philosophy appears early in Book One, where he defends learning against the attacks of the divines. One of the accusations is that excessive knowledge makes a man swell with pride: “knowledge hath in it somewhat of the Serpent, and therefore where it entreth into a man, it makes him swel. Scientia inflat [Science swells].” But Bacon claims that it is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which makes learners swell up. God indeed has “framed the minde of man as a mirrour, or glasse, capable of the Image of the vniuersall world.” Nothing is denied man’s scrutiny. But knowledge, “if it bee taken without the true correctiue thereof, hath in it some Nature of venome or malignitie, and some effects of that venome which is ventositie or swelling.” This corrective is charity: knowledge must be “referred to the good of Men and Mankind.”204 Bacon concludes his defense of learning against the divines by urging men to “endeauour an endlesse progresse or proficience in both [divinity and philosophy]: only let men beware that they apply both to

Charitie, and not to swelling; to vse, and not to ostentation; and againe, that they doe not

204 OFB 4.6-7.

87 vnwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.”205 He presents Christianity not as an obstacle to his learning, but rather as an inducement to undertake it. He implies that the old learning, which, as he describes it throughout the remainder of the first book, serves “swelling” and “ostentation” rather than the good of mankind, contradicts Christianity. He argues that his new philosophy, in contradistinction to the old, is infused with and directed by charity, aims at the “good of Men and Mankind,” and is eminently in accord with Christianity. Christian charity turns one away from the old philosophy to his new philosophy; learning only achieves its true purpose when it is undertaken with charity.

In Bacon’s treatment of ethics he turns again to the relationship between charity and his philosophy. He introduces his discussion of the nature of the good with a criticism of his predecessors drawn from Christianity. The ancient philosophers’ interminable disputes concerning happiness or the highest good, “the doctrines concerning which were as the heathen

Diuinity, are by the christian faith discharged.” Christianity teaches that we are happy in this world only “by hope of the future world.”206 Bacon himself, of course, does discuss the nature of the good. But his conclusions regarding human goods and their hierarchy are corroborated, he claims, by the Christian teaching regarding charity. Thus, his elevation of the common good over the particular good is confirmed by Christianity: “there was neuer any phylosophy,

Religion, or other discipline, which did so playnly and highly exalt the good which is

Communicatiue and depresse the good which is priuate and particuler as the Holy faith.” The extreme manifestation of this is the saints who even at times wish themselves “Anathematized,

205 OFB 4.9. As I will discuss below on p. 98, Bacon severely mitigates, to the point of nullifying, his exhortation to progress in divinity.

206 OFB. 4.135.

88 and razed out of the Booke of life, in an extasie of Charity, and infinite feeling of

Communion.”207

According to Bacon’s interpretation in the Advancement, the elevation of action over the old, sterile contemplation of Aristotle reflects Christian divinity. In this life, only God and angels, not men, are allowed to be “lookers on.” Even the Christian institute of monasticism derives its nobility from the fact that it performs the duty of praying or of receiving and promulgating the law of God. “But for contemplation which should be finished in itselfe without casting beames vpon society, assuredly diuinity knoweth it not.”208 Charity turns towards action.

Aristotelian contemplation is rejected by Christian charity; Baconian contemplation is approved.

At the close of his thematic discussion of ethics in the Advancement, Bacon turns again to

Christian charity. As noted above,209 he holds that the most effective way to attain the human good is to set before oneself excellent ends to aim at. Bacon contrasts this way with the way of attaining virtue by seeking to acquire good habits. In the latter way a person attends to one or the other of the virtues; in the former way a person becomes good all of a piece. This latter person,

Bacon says, is the one who Aristotle states “ought not to bee called vertuous, but Diuine.”210

Pliny notes such a divinity in the Emperor Trajan in virtue of the good he did his subjects, saying

“That men needed to make noe other praiers to the Gods, but that they woulde Continue as good

207 OFB 4.136-37.

208 OFB 4.137.

209 Page 79.

210 OFB 4.154. See Nicomachean Ethics 7, 1145a20-21. Note that Aristotle spends the majority of his ethics discussing not the divine state, but the virtuous and vicious states, and the states framed by these latter two, as attained by habits. See also Ethics 10, 1177b27-1178a2, where Aristotle identifies the life of wisdom as “divine in comparison with human life,” and urges his readers to “go to all lengths to live a life in accord with our supreme element” (Irwin, 164-65).

89 Lords to them, as Traiane had been: as if he had not beene onely an Imitation of diuine nature, but a patterne of it.”211 Trajan’s heroic or divine virtue is manifested in the governance of his people. Pliny exalts the pagan emperor because by his care for the Roman Empire he approaches the divine nature, and Bacon sees in this a foreshadowing of Christian charity – despite the fact that neither Pliny nor Trajan was a friend to Christianity.

Bacon claims that Christianity has advanced beyond the great virtue of the pagan statesmen. Charity is the end that, when held before one’s mind, leads one to the greatest goodness, the imitation of the Christian God. All other “excellencyes,” according to Bacon, allow for excesses. Charity alone is excepted:

But by aspiring to a similitude of God in goodnesse or loue, neyther Man nor Angell euer transgressed or shall transgresse. For vnto that imitation wee are called, Diligite inimicos vestros…vt sitis filii patris vestri qui in caelis est, qui solem suum oriri facit super bonos & malos [Love your enemies…that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to shine over the good and the evil]…212

Bacon describes the goodness by which we approach to God as doing good to all men, justos et unjustos, thus imitating the divine nature described by the ancients as the “Optimus Maximus” and by Christian scriptures as one whose “mercy is above all his works.”213

As argued in the previous section, Bacon presents his new learning as a good which fulfills charity. Pagan statesman achieved the human good in an eminent way through the governance of many; Christian scientists can achieve the human good in a still more divine way

211 OFB 4.154. Panegyricus Traiani 74: “Quid enim felicius nobis, quibus non iam illud optandum est, ut nos diligat princeps, sed dii, quemadmodum princeps?” “For what is happier for us, who ought not now to wish that the prince loves us, but that the gods love us as the prince does?” This speech was not, as Bacon says, for a funeral oration – it was composed at the beginning of Trajan’s reign (Kiernan, OFB 4.338).

212 OFB 4.155. The quotation is Matt. 5: 44-45 (Kiernan, OFB 4.339).

213 OFB 4.155.

90 through the extension of the human kingdom over the world. Richard Kennington summarizes

Bacon’s use of charity: “The doctrine of charity allows Bacon, in contrast to Machiavelli, to present his teaching as the perfection of Christianity. … In this way a biblical sanction has been found for the limitless scientific mastery of nature and the technologizing of human life.”214 The mastery of nature for the relief of man’s estate is the perfect fulfillment of charity.

The Compatibility of Christian Charity and Baconian Charity

The claim that Bacon justifies his new learning in part by an appeal to charity is not a controversial one. Authors most adamant in their defense of Bacon as an orthodox Christian, such as Stephen McKnight, argue that Bacon presents a novel and powerful way to accomplish

Christian charity. The question which gives rise to disagreement is whether Bacon’s mastery of nature is a genuine expression of Christian charity or is it rather a distortion, or even in contradiction to, Christian charity.

One difficulty in judging of the compatibility Bacon’s charity with the traditional understanding of charity arises from the indisputable success of the humanitarian appeal of

Bacon’s project. If Bacon did attempt to cloak a temporal humanitarianism with religious apparel, it would be a measure of his success that his innovations are indistinguishable from

Christianity for some thinkers. For instance, Svetozvar Minkov, in a perceptive review of Steven

McKnight’s The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought, notes: “McKnight’s argument characteristically maintains that any interpretation that sees Bacon as skeptical about

214 Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision of Machiavelli” in On Modern Origins, 70.

91 the goodness of Christian charity is untenable because it is not ‘commensurable with Bacon’s references to Christian charity.’” But Bacon’s references to charity, according to Minkov, obscure for McKnight a “number of serious deviations of Bacon from Christianity.” 215

In light of the fact that later understandings of charity could be influenced by the humanitarian project in large part initiated by Bacon, it is helpful to turn to an account of

Christian charity put forward by William Perkins, a Puritan contemporary – Perkins was born three years before Bacon, and came to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in June 1577, a little over a year after Bacon left Trinity College, Cambridge.216 A consideration of the similarity and dissimilarity of Francis Bacon’s and William Perkins’ views of charity is helpful in judging the place of Christian charity in the Advancement. Perkins was one of the most influential preachers among Bacon’s English contemporaries, 217 and hence could with reason be considered a suitable basis for comparison. Further, he has numerous similarities with Bacon: his claims concerning the necessity of labor and the relationship between labor, the common good, and charity, contain obvious parallels in Bacon’s own work.

Bacon frequently speaks of the “reliefe of Mans estate” as the goal of goodness.218 All knowledge and action must be referred “to the good of men and mankind.”219 Perkins, in his theology of men’s calling, describes the necessity of working for the common good: “And the

215 Minkov, “The Roots of Modernity,” The Review of Politics 69, no. 2 (2007): 296-98.

216 The Work of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward (Berkeshire: The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 3. It is noteworthy that Bacon’s mother, Anne, had pronounced Puritan sympathies.

217 The Work of William Perkin, 24; William Perkins: 1558-1602: English Puritanist: His Pioneer Works on Casuistry: “A Discourse of Conscience” and “The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience”, ed. Thomas F. Merrill (Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: B. De Graaf, 1966), ix.

218 OFB 4.32; see also Of the Interpretation of Nature, SEH 3.233, 244.

219 OFB 4.7.

92 end of man’s calling, is not to gather riches for himself, for his family, for the poore; but to serve

God in serving of man, and in seeking the good of all men; and to this end men must apply their lives and labors.”220 In his Treatise of the Vocations, Perkins glosses “for the common good” as meaning “for the benefit and good estate of mankind” – “of all men, everywhere, as much as possible is.”221

Both authors emphasize the order of knowledge to utility. Bacon is clear throughout the

Advancement that knowledge is not for pleasure, nor for its own sake, but for the benefit of men.

Perkins too rejects knowledge for its own sake: the only intellectual virtue in his moral theology is prudence, which is ordered to human action.222 Human action itself is ordered to the common good, rather than the individual good, a common good that is achieved by the activity of labor. It seems, then, that both authors look to charity towards fellow-men to provide guidance for human action.

There is, however, at the very least, a major difference in emphasis. Spiritual rather than material goods are at the center of Perkin’s teachings on the duties of man: “The common good of men stands in this; not only that they live, but that they live well, in righteousness and holiness and consequently in true happiness.”223 The highest calling is administering to the spiritual needs of men: “If gifts will serve a choice must be made of the calling of a prophet or teacher, and that above all other.”224 In the Advancement, however, Bacon emphasizes the material well-

220 Cases of Conscience, in English Puritanist, 191.

221 A Treatise of the Vocations or Callings of Men, in The Work of William Perkins, 449. See also 452, where Perkins describes the second duty of our general vocation as “to further the good estate of the true church of God.”

222 Cases of Conscience, 165-166.

223 A Treatise of the Vocations, 449.

224 Ibid., 460.

93 being of man rather than a spiritual. He teaches a science that will rule nature for the “for the glorie of the Creator, and the reliefe of Mans estate.”225 The greatest benefactors to men are not preachers or spiritual leaders, but the inventors of new arts and sciences that tend to the expansion of the kingdom of man over nature.226

It could be argued that Bacon’s treatment of charity in the Advancement does not contradict the Christian idea of charity, but rather focuses on one aspect of it. The material side of Christian charity – represented by the corporal works of mercy – has in the past often been emphasized by Christians. So Bacon’s emphasis on the temporal expressions of charity could be construed not as contradicting the traditional understanding of this virtue, but rather as focusing on one part of it. But a comparison of Bacon with Christian thinkers such as Perkins shows that the former exalts the temporal well-being of man in a peculiar way for a Christian. Indeed,

Perkins states that “we must in this life resolve ourselves to seek no more but things that be necessary and sufficient for us and ours. For to seek for abundance is not lawful . . . .” He urges us to “turn our affections from the world to better things.”227 Such formulations are inimical to

Bacon’s project of mastery of nature. As Richard Kennington observes:

Bacon’s version of charity is much too worldly to be considered peculiarly biblical or Christian… Baconian charity is thoroughly humanistic, dropping the traditional insistence on the absolute primacy of the love of God, and showing little interest in the traditional care for the heavenly destiny of one’s neighbor.228

225 OFB 4.32. Advocating proficiency in “for the glorie of the Creator” indeed seems to touch on the spiritual welfare of men. But it does not in fact contradict the primacy of the temporal for Bacon: spiritual welfare is identified with a temporal, scientific dominion over nature.

226 OFB 4.38-39. Natural philosophy takes precedence over that philosophy which represses “the inconueniences which grow from man to man.” Bacon mentions religion as part of this latter, with its “Sermons” and “haranges.”

227 A Treatise of the Vocations, 466, 467.

228 Kennington, “Bacon’s Reform of Nature,” in On Modern Origins, 5.

94 Temporal well-being is at the center of Bacon’s ethics: the height of virtue – which he explicitly identifies as charity – is to display a god-like beneficence to the human race by extending man’s dominion over nature.

Concern for the expansion of the human kingdom is, on Bacon’s telling, the seemingly exclusive concern of contemplation. Religion has hindered this expansion. Zagorin points out that “in explaining the historical reasons for the backwardness of natural philosophy, Bacon always assigned a large importance to the role of religion.”229 Bacon indeed attempts to reverse this historical process: he discourages the pursuit of branches of knowledge, such as divine philosophy and divinity, that are concerned with things other and higher than humankind. We suffer, Bacon says, from an “excesse” of divine philosophy. There has been the “consumption of all that euer can be said in controuersies of Religion, which haue so much diuerted men from other Sciences.” Divinity also has been filled up; there is “no space or ground that lieth vacant and vnsowne in the matter of Diuinity,” an excess that Bacon hopes will turn thinkers toward natural philosophy.230 The knowledge and the action that Bacon recommends throughout the

Advancement – a work that is a survey of all knowledge – is focused resolutely on man’s temporal kingdom. It makes no effort whatsoever to develop a divine philosophy of its own.

The reduction of Christian charity by Bacon to concern for the temporal well-being of humankind seems also at odds with the Christian notion of man as a wayfarer or sojourner on this earth. St. Paul describes Christians as transients in this world: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.”231 Perkins urges each man to “turn his heart from

229 Zagorin, Francis Bacon, 47.

230 OFB 4.79,181,192.

231 Hebrews 13:14. See also, for instance, John 18:36, Col. 3:2, Phillipians 3:20, and 1 Peter 2:11.

95 the pelf of this world and to seek wholly after spiritual and heavenly things.”232 Numerous other passages in the epistles and gospels confirm this description of Christians as aliens or wanderers in this world. St. Augustine most famously expresses this idea in his division of the kingdom of

God and the kingdom of man, presented in his De civitate dei. Several authors have pointed out the difference between the Christian goal of the heavenly city and the temporal kingdom that

Bacon aims for.233

The Advancement also touches briefly on a distinctive feature of Bacon’s philosophy: a portrayal of the conquering of nature by the arts and sciences as an attempt to overturn the curse occasioned by Adam’s sin.234 The return to man’s prelapsarian state, which Bacon offers in several works as a goal of his scientific project, has been used as evidence both for and against his adherence to Christian teaching. Some authors, such as Stephen McKnight, see Bacon’s scientific project as motivated by a desire to overcome the effects of the Fall. His conviction in the Advancement “that the human condition can be restored and humanity can regain its prelapsarian condition” is taken as evidence of his Christianity.235 On McKnight’s account,

Bacon sees his philosophy as a project “that allows humanity to transform the corrupt and

232 A Treatise of the Vocations, 467.

233 See, for instance, Benedict XVI’s Spe salvi and David Innes’s “Bacon’s New Atlantis: The Modern Hope and the Christian Hope.” Both these authors describe the differences between Bacon’s philosophy and Christianity in terms of hope. In Bacon’s words, “hope must be the portion of all that embark on great enterprises” (OFB 4.46). Baconian charity and Christian charity both look to a future fulfillment for humans, one grasped in the present by hope. But the object of these hopes is radically different.

234 OFB 4.121: “[F]or Man still striueth to reintegrate himselfe in those benedictions, from which by his fault hee hath been depriued…hee hath striuen against the first generall Curse, by the inuention of all other Artes.” See also the opening paragraphs, which speak of man’s reason being clouded as a result of the fall, and ways to overcome this deficiency. This is a theme Bacon will emphasize more in later works.

235 McKnight, “Religion and Francis Bacon’s Scientific Utopianism,” Zygon 42, no. 2 (2007): 469.

96 disordered world into paradise on earth.”236 But there are serious problems with such a reading.

Though McKnight apparently sees nothing incompatible with Christianity in this promise of a temporal paradise, it is hard to reconcile this temporal paradise, brought about by human efforts, with Christian beliefs. It is incompatible with the Christian teaching that man is a wayfarer in this life, who reaches his true home only in the next. And the presumption that the punishment assigned to all men by an all-powerful God can be reversed by the actions of certain humans is likewise problematic. Such an account of reversing the curse of the fall seems more in accord with the myth of Prometheus, a story about the defiance of a god for the sake of mankind, than with Christianity.237

The same criticisms, roughly, apply to attempts to place Bacon within the millenialist movement.238 Some authors, such as Charles Whitney, have connected the fairly widespread millennialism in Bacon’s time with his themes of renewal and instauration.239 Bacon’s works clearly make use of these social and religious tendencies. But the kingdom towards which millennialism looks is brought about by the intervention of God, not by human action.240 As

Irenaeus describes, after the resurrection of the just and the final judgment, God will present a

236 Ibid., 470.

237 See Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity, 79.

238 See Steven Matthews, “Apocalypse and : The Theological Assumptions and Religious Motivations of Francis Bacon’s Instauration” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Florida), 91-99, for a discussion of millennialism in Bacon’s milieu and an argument for his place within this movement.

239 Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity, 43-46.

240 See, for instance, Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 5.32-36. This is the millenialist work most connected by scholars to Bacon’s instauration (Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity, 44; Steven Matthews, “Apocalypse and Experiment,” 96-97).

97 new, renewed earth to the righteous. The heavenly kingdom will come down to earth and followers of Christ, resurrected, will receive the reward for their faithfulness:

For it is just that in that very creation in which they toiled or were afflicted, being proved in every way by suffering, they should receive the reward of their suffering; and that in the creation in which they were slain because of their love to God, in that they should be revived again; and that in the creation in which they endured servitude, in that they should reign. For God is rich in all things, and all things are His.241

This account does not diminish or obscure the distinction between a this-worldly happiness achievable by man’s efforts and the reward given to the just by God, as Bacon’s use of charity does. 242

Summary

In many ways, Reformed Christianity, exemplified in England by William Perkins, fits well with the use Bacon makes of Christian charity in the Advancement. The Reformers rejected the Aristotelian elevation of contemplation and the contemplative institution of monasticism.

The emphasis on labor, on calling or vocation within the world, and on the active working for the common good are all themes received from Luther and Calvin and prominent in Perkins. Bacon uses and develops these themes in his presentation of his ethics. His use of charity in his moral

241 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, v. 9, trans. by Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1869), 141.

242 To return briefly to the question of whether Bacon was sincere in his profession of Christianity: The strongest arguments that he was not sincere are, first, that it would have been unlikely that a thinker of his caliber would overlook the incompatibility of his thought and Christianity; and second, that he seems in his some of his writings, particularly in De sapientia and the Essays, to have serious reservations about the Christian faith, reservations not explicitly made but visible nonetheless. The strongest arguments that he was sincere are, first, his devotional writings, particularly his private prayers; and, second, the testimony of his friends, such as Rawley and Toby Matthews. I think Bacon was sincere in his professions. Bacon’s best biographer, Nieves Mathews, appears to agree (Character Assassination, 369-73), though she largely skirts the issue – perhaps a testimony to its difficulty.

98 philosophy, connected as it is to these themes, seems at first glance to fit in well with

Reformation theology. Nevertheless, his reduction of charity to a this-worldly concern, reaching its peak in a purported effort to return mankind to the Garden of Eden by , is incompatible with Reformed Christianity, and indeed with any established tradition of

Christianity. Bacon seeks to establish his ethics through a novel understanding, or even a misunderstanding, of Christian charity.

CHAPTER TWO

STARTING POINTS AND ENDS IN DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM

Introduction

Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his celebrated on Francis Bacon, defends the philosopher against those who accuse him of “underrating the importance of moral philosophy.”

While Macaulay freely admits that the bulk of Bacon’s works are devoted to natural philosophy, since at the philosopher’s time “the arts which increase the outward comfort of our species” were

“most unduly depreciated,” the essayist argues both that Bacon has a moral philosophy and that its principles and spirit are identical to those of his natural philosophy:

In the Novum Organum . . . he distinctly and most truly declares that his philosophy is no less a Moral than a Natural Philosophy, that, though his illustrations are drawn from physical science, the principles which those illustrations are intended to explain are just as applicable to ethical and political as to inquiries in the nature of heat and vegetation. He frequently treated of moral subjects; and he brought to those subjects that spirit which was the essence of his whole system.1

Several recent scholars have agreed, in varying degrees, with the above assessment. Lisa

Jardine, for instance, argues that for Bacon the principles of ethics and physics are “analogous.”

She uses the word “analogous” again to describe the relationship between Bacon’s proposed investigations and dissections of the affections in ethics and his investigations of the “simple natures” in natural philosophy.2 Further, her view is that Bacon “maintains that the inductive

1 “Lord Bacon,” in Critical and Historical Essays, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1850), 120-21. Macaulay is referencing The New Organon, 1.127; see also NO 1.80.

2 Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 159-61, 162-63. See also B. H. G. Wormald, Francis Bacon: History, Politics and Science, 1561-1626 (Cambridge: 99

100 method is to be applied in all three branches of philosophy,” that is, in natural, human, and divine philosophy. However, she does not believe he delivers on his promise to use his new inductive method on human philosophy: “Not even the outlines of such an application are to be found in his works.”3

Robert K. Faulkner, on the other hand, believes such an application does exist, and more than in outline: “There is little doubt that Bacon extends the reign of his new science or art,” i.e., to moral and civil science. Not only do Bacon’s natural and moral philosophy share common principles and method, but his moral philosophy is modeled on his natural: “Many Baconian works revamp ethical and political science in just such a spirit [i.e., the spirit of his natural philosophy].” 4

Not all Baconian scholars, however, agree with Macaulay that Bacon’s moral and natural philosophies are different aspects of a “whole system.” Perez Zagorin, for instance, states flatly that Bacon never carried out the “sweeping claim” in The New Organon that Macaulay references above. It “remained no more than an untried theoretical possibility. Bacon’s moral and political reflections were therefore independent of his natural philosophy and must be understood in terms of their own principles.”5 Ian Box argues that Bacon was “content to accept an uneasy alliance of Christian charity and public service as principles on which to base conduct.” And while Box closely connects Bacon’s scientific project to his moral philosophy

Cambridge University Press, 1993), 44-45. Wormald distinguishes two programs on which Bacon embarks, a moral-political-theological one and one devoted to natural philosophy. Bacon “nevertheless follows two lines of thought not two forms of thought”; thus “a difference in procedure is scarcely to be expected.”

3 Jardine, The Art of Discourse, 150.

4 Robert Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 272-73.

5 Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 129.

101 (“there are both civic and Christian underpinnings to the Instauration”), Box does not suppose that Bacon derives particular concerning natural processes from the principles of

“Christian charity and public service” in the same way that he derives particular truths regarding morality from these principles.6

Adjudicating between these various opinions about the relationship between natural and moral philosophy in Bacon’s writings is made more difficult because the above authors are often unclear in what sense they are using the word “principle.” As Aristotle teaches, principle can be said in many ways.7 Among Bacon’s commentators, Kennington is a laudable exception to the tendency to loosely use the word “principle.” In several essays, most notably “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon 1,” Kennington carefully examines Bacon’s teaching regarding his departure from the ancients.8 “Bacon’s Critique” is a discussion of Bacon’s claim in the New Organon that his philosophy differs from that of the ancients in three respects: its end, its order of demonstration, and its starting point. While Kennington does little expressly to compare Bacon’s natural and moral philosopher, restricting the scope of his discussion largely to

Bacon’s departure from the ancients in natural philosophy, his work serves as a useful basis for an examination of the principles animating Bacon’s natural and moral philosophy.

6 Ian Box, “Bacon’s Moral Philosophy” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. by Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 274, 277. See also Brian Vickers, Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxxv, who argues that Bacon’s earlier ethical reflections (in, for instance, “Of Tribute”) were of a piece with classical and Renaissance moral philosophy; gradually this classical bent is “joined and ultimately overshadowed by Christian ethics, especially the concept of Charity.” Christian charity is for Vickers the supreme principle guiding human action in Bacon’s mature ethics.

7 Metaphysics 5.1.

8 Richard Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon 1,” in On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 17-32.

102 In this chapter I will examine De sapientia veterum for Bacon’s account of the relationship between natural and moral philosophy. This work, though it does not indeed treat the methods of the sciences in any detail, is suitable for such an examination in virtue of the attention it pays to both nature and human nature. As Paolo Rossi states, “In just over sixty pages Bacon outlines with considerable art and dexterity the basic aspects of an organic world picture.”9 Despite its impressive breadth, however, it was long neglected as an important philosophical work of Bacon, as Fulton H. Anderson lamented in the early sixties. James

Spedding and Robert Leslie Ellis even decided to place the work among Bacon’s literary works rather than his philosophical works, in what remains the standard complete edition of his writings.10 More recently, some scholars have begun to take greater notice of it, although it remains underappreciated. Scholarship on the De sapientia veterum, setting aside general overviews of the work, falls broadly into three categories. Several scholars focus on Bacon’s use of myth in this work, though these tend to accept Spedding’s and Ellis’s classification of it as literary rather than philosophical.11 Others have used De sapientia to investigate Bacon’s natural

9 Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, trans. Sacha Rabinovitch (London: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 126. See also Heidi Studer, “‘Grapes Ill-trodden…’: Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of the Ancients” (Ph. D. diss., University of Toronto, 1992), 16: “In terms of the range of themes, moreover, [Of the Wisdom of the Ancients] is one of his most comprehensive works.”

10 Fulton H. Anderson, Francis Bacon: His Career and His Thought (New York: University of Southern California Press, 1962), 57: “The work is unquestionably one of the most significant contributions to philosophy in the history of English thought. Its almost complete neglect by commentators is among the strangest phenomena in the history of philosophical exegesis. Why Bacon’s editors, Spedding and Ellis, neglect to include the piece among his philosophical works is difficult to say.”

11 See Rhodri Lewis, “Francis Bacon, Allegory, and the Uses of Myth,” The Review of English Studies 61, no. 250 (2010): 362, n.12, for a bibliography of such studies.

103 philosophy.12 Finally, scholars have investigated the political teachings contained in De sapientia.13

The De sapientia also contains significant ethical considerations; it has several essays explicitly focusing on moral philosophy and several others touching on it. Bacon indeed planned to include this work in the collected volume, Opera Moralia et Civilia.14 The first translator of

De Sapientia into English (1619), Sir Arthur Gorges, who was presumably commissioned by

Bacon, spoke highly of the work’s contribution to moral philosophy. Comparing it to Utopia, the work of another Lord Chancellor, Gorges comments that “it is hard to judge to whether of these two worthies policy and morality is more beholding.”15 But while several of the scholarly works on the political teachings of the De sapientia naturally touch on its ethical teachings, almost no one has focused on the moral philosophy presented in this work, let alone on the relationship between the philosophies of nature and morality found therein.

Heidi Studer is a notable exception; she focuses on the ethical thought of De sapientia in

“Strange Fire at the Altar of the Lord: Francis Bacon on Human Nature.”16 Studer does indeed look at the relationship between natural philosophy and moral. But she views De sapientia with

12 Graham Rees draws on the De sapientia veterum in several of his studies on Bacon’s theory of matter. See, for instance, “Atomism and ‘Subtlety’ in Francis Bacon’s Philosophy,” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 549-71. See also Peter Pesic, “Wrestling with Proteus: Francis Bacon and the ‘Torture’ of Nature,” Isis 90, n. 1 (1999): 81-94; Sophie Weeks, “Francis Bacon and the Art-Nature Distinction,” Ambix 54, no. 2 (2007): 101-29.

13 Heidi Studer, “Francis Bacon on the Political Dangers of Scientific Progress,” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 31, no. 2 (1998): 219-234; and “‘Grapes Ill-trodden…’: Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of the Ancients.” Also Timothy H. Paterson, “Bacon’s Myth of Orpheus: Power as a Goal of Science in Of the Wisdom of the Ancients” in Interpretation 16, no. 2 (1989): 427-44. Paterson begins this argument with what I believe is the best treatment of Bacon’s intentions in using the interpretations of myths as a philosophical vehicle.

14 SEH 6.607.

15 The Wisdom of the Ancients and New Atlantis, trans. Sir Arthur Gorges (London: Cassell and Company, 1900), 9.

16 Heidi Studer, The Review of Politics 65, n.2 (2003): 209-35.

104 our modern history of technological warfare constantly in the forefront; she is primarily concerned with seeing how moral or political philosophy can restrain the destructive power of technocracy. Bacon is not ignorant of this aspect of moral philosophy, but it is by no means his dominant concern in the De sapientia.

The few general studies of Francis Bacon’s De sapientia typically scant its moral teachings. Lisa Jardine, for example, states that “Bacon appears to take the myths relating to natural philosophy [in the De sapientia] more seriously than the moral and political myths. His interpretations of the former have a forcefulness and directness which is somehow lacking in the latter.”17 She notes that Charles Lemmi and Paolo Rossi seem to share her assessment, judging by the disproportionate amount of time these authors spend on the myths devoted to natural philosophy in their discussions of De sapientia.18 Judging from his decision to place it among his moral and civil works, however, Bacon himself appears to disagree with this appraisal of the relative worth of the natural and moral philosophy contained in this work. Among these general studies there is again a noteworthy exception: Howard B. White, in “Bacon’s Wisdom of the

Ancients,” examines Bacon’s moral fables, and makes several valuable observations.19 The last section of this chapter will be in large part an expansion on his remarks about the utility of moral philosophy as a preparation for natural philosophy.

17 Jardine, The Art of Discourse, 192.

18 Ibid. See Paolo Rossi, From Magic to Science, ch. 3; Charles W. Lemmi, The Classical Deities in Bacon: A Study in Mythological Symbolism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933).

19 Howard B. White, “The Wisdom of the Ancients,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (1970): 107-29.

105 The present chapter falls into four sections. In the first, I will discuss certain preliminaries to the main question of the relationship between moral and natural philosophy in

De sapientia, mainly its title, its literary form, and its order. Of particular concern in the first section are the uncharacteristic praise Bacon seems to offer the ancients in this work; the unusual literary form of De sapientia, the purpose for which is not immediately apparent; and the question as to whether there is an principle underlying the order in which individual myths appear.

The second section investigates the division of the essays, focusing in particular on the most fundamental division of the fables, that into human and natural philosophy. I will attempt to uncover Bacon’s reason for establishing this as the fundamental division in De sapientia.

The third section investigates and compares the principles of the natural and moral philosophy in De sapientia. I set aside the question of method, as that is barely touched on in this work, and focus on the starting points and the ends.

The fourth section examines the moral philosophy of De sapientia insofar as it is a useful, even necessary, preparation for Bacon’s natural philosophy. I believe that this use as a preparatory tool helps answer certain questions about the place which Bacon assigns De sapientia in his oeuvre, and about the differences between the state of maturation of the natural and moral fables.

106 1. Preliminaries: Title, Literary Form, Order

Title and Literary Form

Bacon published De sapientia veterum in 1609.20 In 1619, an English translation by Sir

Arthur Gorges was published. It is likely that Gorges’ translation was authorized by Bacon. As

Bacon was the second most powerful man in England and Gorges was a minor noble, a translation could scarcely have been published without Bacon’s approbation. Nevertheless, because the extent of Bacon’s involvement in the translation is not, to my knowledge, known, and because Gorges’ translation is not always entirely accurate, I will treat Bacon’s Latin edition as authoritative. Thus, while I will generally use Gorges’ translation, I will occasionally revise it. I will always give the Latin version of quoted texts from De sapientia.

As Howard B. White points out, the title itself of De sapientia veterum – The Wisdom of the Ancients – draws attention.21 Bacon is not known for his reverence towards the ancients.

Just prior to the De sapientia, he wrote a short work called Redargutio philosophorum – The

Refutation of Philosophers. In this work, most likely written in 1608, Bacon amply documents his dissatisfaction with previous philosophers and his sense of doing something radically new – to the point where he refuses to engage in arguments with his predecessors individually, since there are no common principles from which to argue.22 As Howard B. White and others argue,

20 For all publication dates in this chapter, I use the chronology in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, xiii ff.

21 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 107ff.

22 SEH 3.557.

107 Bacon does not contradict his antagonistic stand to Greek philosophy in De sapientia.23 It is clear that his wise ancients are not from the standard canon of ancient philosophers. They are not the pre-Socratic philosophers, towards whom Bacon is frequently complimentary; still less are they the philosophers after Socrates. They greatly predate even Homer, , and the other poets, who, Bacon alleges, have passed on through their fables the remnants of knowledge received from these most ancient of the ancients. Indeed, Bacon is clear that they are not even

Greek.24

De sapientia veterum is composed of 31 essays. Each essay first presents a fable from classical mythology and then Bacon’s interpretation of that fable. Bacon purports to find in the myths a primordial deposit of wisdom.25 Whether he truly believed in such a deposit is a disputed point. An obvious difficulty with believing that he was sincere in such claims lies in the fact that he contradicts himself on this point numerous times in his writings. Paolo Rossi traces these changes and argues that there is a development of Bacon’s thought on this point that culminates in the view set forth in De sapientia.26 Paterson, however, points out that this explanation is unsatisfying: not only is Rossi forced to posit “four reversals in Bacon's attitude

23 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 109.

24 WA 17-18; SEH 6.627: “Many of these fables seem not to be invented of those by whom they are related and celebrated, as by Homer, Hesiod, and others: for if it were so, that they too beginning in that age and from those authors by whom they are delivered and brought to our hands, my mind gives me there could be no great or high matter expected or supposed to proceed from them in respect of these originals.” The fables are “as sacred relics or abstracted airs of better times, which by tradition from more ancient nations fell into the trumpets and flutes of the Grecians.” (Ex fabulis complures nullo modo nobis videntur ab eis inventae, a quibus recitantur et celebrantur, Homero, Hesiodo, reliquis; si enim liquido nobis constitisset eas ab illa aetate atque illis authoribus manasse a quibus commemorantur et ad nos devenerunt, nil magni certe aut excelsi ab hujusmodi origine nobis [ut nostra fert conjectura] expectare aut suspicari in mentem venisset.… Atque haec res existimationem earum apud nos auxit, ac si nec aetatis nec inventionis poetarum ipsorum essent; sed veluti reliquiae sacrae et aurae tenues temporum meliorum; quae ex traditionibus nationum magis antiquarum in Graecorum tubas et fistulas incidissent.)

25 “Praefatio,” SEH 6.625-28.

26 Rossi, From Magic to Science, 85-96.

108 towards myth in six years” but Rossi also neglects at least two more apparent reversals in works composed well after De sapientia, in the Novum Organon and De Augmentis. Paterson argues for a conscious deception on Bacon’s part: “Rather than attempting to save the theory by adding to it still more epicycles upon change-of-mind epicycles, it seems to me simpler, far more plausible, and more consistent with Bacon’s obvious stature as a thinker to assume that he always meant what he said in speaking of the pretended existence of ancient wisdom as primarily a means of adding prestige to his own thoughts through a conscious deception, and that he wrote

Wisdom of the Ancients intending precisely that deception of many of his readers.” 27 Paterson’s argument, I believe, effectively dispenses with Rossi’s thesis concerning a development of

Bacon’s views on myths as a repository of ancient wisdom.

The use of ancient myths for the exposition of philosophy was not unique to Francis

Bacon, as he acknowledges in the preface to De sapientia. On the contrary, it dates back to antiquity, and was an established literary form in his time.28 Bacon, however, is harsh in his assessment of other similar treatments: they have attained only “vulgar and general things”

27 Patterson, “Myth of Orpheus,” 430. Patterson cites, among other texts, Novum organum 1.122 (OFB 11.182): “Nos autem scimus, si minus sincera fide agere voluissemus, non difficile fuisse nobis, ista, quae afferuntur, vel ad antiqua saecula ante Graecorum tempora (cum Scientiae de Natura magis fortasse, sed tamen maiore cum silentio floruerint, neque in Graecorum tubas & fistulas adhuc incidissent) vel etiam (per partes certe) ad aliquos ex Graecis ipsis referre, atque astipulationem & honorem inde petere: more nouorum hominum, qui nobilitatem sibi ex antiqua aliqua prosapia, per genealogiarum fauores, astruunt & affingunt. Nos vero rerum euidentia freti, omnem commenti & imposturae conditionem reijcimus . . . .” (But we know, if we wished to act with less than sincere faith, it would not have been difficult for us to refer those things, which are brought forward, either to the ancient ages before the time of the Greeks (when science of nature perhaps flourished more, but nevertheless with greater silence, and had not yet happened upon the trumpets and pipes of the Greeks) or even (in certain parts) to some among the Greeks themselves, and in this way to seek assent and honor: in the manner of new men, who add and invent nobility to themselves from some ancient family, through the favor of genealogies. But we, trusting in the evidence of things, rejected every condition of falsehood and deceit . . . .)

28 Lewis, “The Uses of Myth,” 370-73. Ancient philosophers also interpreted the myths of the poets; Plato alludes to this practice in the Republic when he says that the myths of Homer and Hesiod describing the evil deeds of the gods should not be allowed, whether or not they have an allegorical meaning (378d).

109 (vulgaria quaedam et generalia), not attaining the “true virtue, genuine propriety, and full depth”

(vim veram, et proprietatem genuinam, ac indagationem altiorem) of the fables. Thus Bacon himself in his treatment will be “new in common things” (in rebus vulgatis novi).29 His own attempt at this form was to prove immensely popular during the seventeenth century, going through numerous editions in several languages.30 Popular fashion, however, is inadequate to explain the use of such a distinctive mode of writing, especially in an author who so carefully thought out questions of literary form and the impact his writing had on his audience.31 Bacon himself gives reasons for the use of myths in his preface to De sapientia and also in the De augmentis, where he states that a parable “is of two uses, and is applied to contrary things. For it makes for covering; it makes also for a vivid representation.”32

The latter use is familiar to us. Truths are presented in a more accessible manner via parables. Bacon claims parables are especially useful – even necessary – when presenting to men new ideas, especially those that contradict common, received opinion.33 Our experience

29 WA 20, SEH 6.628.

30 Lewis, “The Uses of Myth,” 364: “De sapientia would go through at least sixty editions of varying sorts by the end of the seventeenth century: fourteen Latin, twenty-one English, eleven Italian, eleven French, two Dutch and one German.”

31 Bacon discusses various literary forms in De augmentis 2.13, 6.2. For evidence of his careful consideration of his audience see the letter to Bishop Andrewe requesting his advice concerning Cogitata et visa (LL 4.141). “I hasten not to publish; perishing I would prevent. And I am forced to respect as well my times as the matter… [M]y request to you is, that not by pricks, but by notes, you would mark unto me whatsoever shall seem unto you either not current in the style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient for the person of the writer; for no man can be judge and party: and when our minds judge by reflection of ourselves, they are more subject to error.” This concern helps explain the wide variety of literary forms Bacon uses.

32 De augmentis 2.13, SEH 1.520: “Est autem usus ambigui, atque ad contraria adhibetur. Facit enim ad involucrum; facit etiam ad illustrationem.”

33 WA, 18-19, SEH 6.628: “This [i.e., the parable] is it, I say, that leads the understanding of man by an easy and gentle passage through all novel and abstruse inventions which any way differ from common received opinions... And in these days also, he that would illuminate men’s minds anew in any old matter, and that not with disprofit and harshness, must absolutely take the same course, and use the help of similes.” (Nimirum ut in inventis novis et ab opinionibus vulgaribus remotis et penitus abstrusis, aditus ad intellectum humanum magis facilis et benignus per

110 confirms this: Aesop’s fables are used to introduce moral behavior to children, and parables were chosen as a fitting vehicle for the revelations of the New Testament. Bacon ends the Preface to the De sapientia with a statement that the work means to be innovative; it will not make do merely with uncovering known but long forgotten truths: “I, if I be not deceived, shall be new in common things. Wherefore, leaving such as are plain and open, I will aim at farther and richer matters.”34 Fittingly, then, he uses fables to present his philosophy.

Concealment is also a recognized purpose of speaking in parables, though less familiar than illumination. When the disciples asked Christ why he spoke in parables, he responded,

“Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” 35 The parables can both illuminate and conceal only if there are different groups of hearers. Bacon indicates that the De sapientia will have different audiences:

If these things which I bring appear common to anyone, then certainly it is not my place to judge what I have accomplished. But I have striven that, passing by apparent and worn out things and common topics, I might confer something for the hardships of live and the secrets of sciences. Therefore to the vulgar capacity these things will be vulgar. But they will not forsake the higher understanding, but rather, I hope, lead it.36

parabolas quaeratur.…Atque etiam nunc, si quis novam in aliquibus lucem humanis mentibus affundere velit, idque non incommode et aspere, prorsus eadem via insistendum est, et ad similitudinum auxilia confugiendum.)

34 WA, 20, SEH 6.628: “Nos autem erimus (ni fallimur) in rebus vulgatis novi, et aperta et plana a tergo relinquentes, ad ulteriora et nobiliora tendemus.” My translation; the two dedications are not in the Gorges translation. Cf. SEH 6.619.

35 Matthew 13:10-11 (King James Version).

36 SEH 6.619-20: “Quod si cui ista quae affero vulgata esse videantur; certe quid effecerim, judicium meum non est; id tamen secutus sum, ut manifesta, et obsoleta, et locos communes praetervectus, aliquid etiam ad vitae ardua et scientiarum arcana conferam. Erunt itaque captui vulgari vulgaria: altiorem autem intellectum fortasse non deserent, sed potius (ut spero) deducent.” See Cicero’s De inventione 2.47-48; “common topics” were lists devised by rhetoricians that could be applied to numerous cases.

111 Given the different audiences, it is necessary to conceal from some while revealing to others.

The first myth in De sapientia, “Cassandra, or Frankness” speaks of the necessity of employing an art of speaking which, rejecting open speech, notes “the differences between the more judicious and more vulgar ears, and the due times when to speak and when to be silent.”37

The title and literary form of this work – a work which is designated by Bacon himself as focusing on ethics and politics – tell us important truths about the moral teachings it contains.

Bacon, however deeply engaged with the tradition of moral philosophy, is offering something new. The ancient wisdom he seems to acknowledge in the title is not that of prior moral philosophers. Even allowing that he truly believes the doctrines he teaches were present already in the myths, he is explicit that none of his contemporaries have uncovered them besides him.

As well, his advocacy of parables for illuminating novel and difficult subjects indicates that he is offering a new doctrine via his fables. And his description of parables as concealing truths from the vulgar invites his readers not to receive his moral teachings as a repetition of common beliefs, but rather, in company with Bacon, to pass by “the plain and open” and aim at “farther and richer matters.”

37 WA, 24. SEH 6.629: “aurium etiam magis peritarum et magis vulgarium differentias, tempora denique tum loquendi tum silendi.” The translation of the essay’s title is mine; the orginal is “Cassandra, sive Parresia.” “Parresia” is a transliteration of the Greek παρρησία, which is translated as “freespokeness,” “openness,” “frankness.” It is composed from πα̑ς ῥη̑σις, “saying all.” See Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, 7th ed., s.v. “παρρησία.” Commentators on Bacon have noted the self-referential character of “Cassandra.” See, for example, Studer, “Grapes Ill-Trodden,” 50-51.

112 Order

Most treatments of the De sapientia divide the essays into groups, and attempt to understand the text by analysis of the various groups of fables. Rossi, for instance, divides the fables into “philosophical” fables (this is Rossi’s rather misleading term for natural philosophy),

“ethico-psychological” fables, and “political” fables.38 Studer takes exception to this way of proceeding and proposes that any true understanding of De sapientia must take into account the relative order of the fables – more precisely, must show that the fables, beginning with the first and proceeding to the last, have an intelligible order without which the book cannot be understood. For Studer, the proof is in the pudding: the unfolding of the argument of the book

“alone would prove the book is an ordered whole.”39 While a full analysis and critique of

Studer’s own unfolding of De sapientia is clearly beyond the scope of this work, I will briefly point out difficulties with some of Studer’s initial arguments that any understanding of De sapientia must uncover an order in her restricted sense. She states that Bacon gives us indications that he is concerned with order throughout the book, and mentions in particular

“Prometheus,” which “mentions his concern with the order.”40 But Bacon in this fable is specifically addressing the order of that fable. We would expect any essayist to present an ordered essay; it does not follow that there is an order of the various essays collected in one volume. According to Studer, an “even clearer indication of the existence of an order is that the

38 Rossi, From Magic to Science, 96-116. Jardine follows Rossi (The Art of Discourse, 180). See Studer, “Grapes Ill-Trodden,” 29-30, for a discussion of divisions employed by different authors.

39 Studer, “Grapes Ill-Trodden,” 32.

40 Ibid., 31.

113 relationships between the characters of the book undergo development.” Studer’s example is

Juno, who in the second fable, “Typhon, or a Rebel,” “comes on stage as a violent trouble- maker,” representing “the people of the kingdom.” In a later essay, “Juno’s Suitor, or Baseness”

(16), “Jupiter has learned how to deal with her and their relationship is settled.”41 A problem with this interpretation is that Studer assumes that Juno symbolizes the same thing in all the fables in which she appears. In fact, she does not. In “Typhon,” Juno symbolizes a prince’s

“dominion,” which resents his power.42 In “Juno’s Suitor,” on the other hand, Juno represents those in power: They are those from whom men beg something, who are “of haughty and malignant spirits (intimated by the person of Juno).”43 Now this group indeed includes the many, as Studer claims, but it is not restricted to them; certainly Bacon throughout his life sued for grace from aristocrats of “haughty and malignant spirit.” There is no reason to assume the various characters in the myths all represent the same thing throughout the book. Indeed, in the preface, Bacon cautions us against such an assumption: “Neither let it trouble any man, if sometimes he meet with…something transferred from one fable to another, to bring in a new allegory.…”44

Further, Studer’s assumption that any competent treatment of a work must contain an account of its sequential order does not accord with Bacon’s own discussions regarding order in his works. In both the Advancement and De augmentis, Bacon speaks of “the doctrine

41 Ibid.

42 WA 26, SEH 6.630. “For princes may well be said to be married to their dominions, as Jupiter was to Juno” (Reges enim regnis suis, ut Jupiter Junoni, veluti matrimonii vinculo juncti recte censentur…).

43 WA 69, SEH 6.654. “Qui si homines sunt nullis ipsi dotibus et ornamentis insigniti, sed tantum ingenio sunt superbo et maligno (id quod sub figura Junonis repraesentatur). . . .”

44 WA 16, SEH 6.626. “Neque illud quenquam moveat…si ex una fabula quippiam transferatur in aliam, et nova allegoria inducatur.…”

114 concerning the method of discourse” (Doctrinam de Methodo Sermonis).45 This teaching was commonly handled under logic or rhetoric. Bacon, however, wishes to recognize the importance of this study by elevating it to its own branch of knowledge, named by him “Wisdom of

Transmission” (Prudentiam Traditivae).46 He presents various divisions of method used in teaching. One of these divisions is that “sciences are handed down either through aphorisms, or methodically” (scientiae traduntur aut per Aphorismos, aut Methodice).47 The latter was the fashion in Bacon’s own time, he says, for the disreputable reason that it can hide ignorance under a show of completion. The aphorisms, however, have excellences that methodical delivery lacks. One of the superiorities of aphoristic over methodical delivery results precisely from the former’s lack of order:

Methodical transmission is fit to win consent or belief, but less fit to point to action, for it exhibits a kind of demonstration in a circle, parts illuminating each other, and therefore more satisfies the understanding. But as actions in common life are dispersed, and not composed in order, therefore also dispersed directions are of more use to them.48

In his preface to The Maxims of the Law, Bacon indicates that he has refrained from putting that particular writing into order, and gives his reason:

Whereas I could have digested these rules into a certain method or order…yet I have avoided to do so, because this delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjoined aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and toss, and to make use of that which is delivered to more several purposes and applications.

45 SEH 1.662.

46 Ibid. In my translation of De augmentis here, and as much as possible at other times, I follow Bacon’s formulation in the Advancement.

47 SEH 1.665.

48 Ibid. “Traditio Methodica ad fidem et consensum valet; ad indicationes de praxi minus innuit; siquidem demonstrationem quandam in orbe prae se fert, partibus se invicem illuminantibus, ideoque intellectui satisfacit magis; quia vero actiones in vita communi sparguntur, non ordine componuntur, ideo magis iisdem conducunt etiam sparsa documenta.”

115 For we see all the ancient wisdom and science was wont to be delivered in that form; as may be seen by the parables of Solomon, and by the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the moral verses of Theognis and Phocylides. . . .49

Bacon’s statements in the De sapientia that different readers receive different teachings from this book fits well with his description of non-methodical delivery. De sapientia could well be a work whose form is intended to leave “the wit of man more free to turn and toss,” thus separating the vulgar understanding from the judicious.50

2. Division of De Sapientia

Bacon himself indicates a division that is useful in interpreting De sapientia. The fables, as he states in the dedicatory letters, are philosophical.51 Throughout the work he divides philosophy into human and natural. While it is easy to marshal textual evidence to show that

Bacon makes this division, the grounds of this distinction are not immediately apparent. What, for Bacon, places man in a privileged category of study such that he is not subsumed under natural philosophy? This question is the more pressing because one effect of the which Bacon helped initiate is to blur the distinction between man and the rest of nature.

49 SEH 7.321. Cited in Jardine, Art of Discourse, 177-78.

50 In Filum Labyrinthi, Bacon indicates that De sapientia has more in common with aphorisms than “methodical writings”: “And how weakly soever the parts are filled, yet they [i.e., methodical writings] carry the shew and reason of a total; and thereby the writings of some received authors go for the very art: whereas antiquity used to deliver the knowledge which the mind of man had gathered, in observations, aphorisms, or short and dispersed sentences, or small tractates of some parts that they had diligently meditated and laboured; which did invite men, both to ponder that which was invented, and to add and supply further” (SEH 3.498). De sapientia is composed of “small tractates.”

51 SEH 6.619: “If the matter of this work [is looked at], it is philosophy” (Si operis materia; ea philosophia est).

116 Natural Philosophy and Human Philosophy

In several places throughout De sapientia, Bacon clearly indicates a division of philosophy into natural and human. In the fable “Orpheus, or Philosophy” (11), Bacon says,

“Orpheus’s music is of two sorts, the one appeasing the infernal powers, the other attracting beasts and trees. The first may be fitly applied to natural philosophy, the second to moral and civil philosophy.”52 The fable “Sphynx, or Science” (28) repeats this division: “Of Sphynx her riddles, there are generally two kinds: some concerning the nature of things, others touching the nature of man. So also there are two kinds of emperies, as rewards to those that resolve them: the one over nature, the other over men….”53 As Studer points out – even while disagreeing with the usefulness of any thematic division of De sapientia – this division resembles Bacon’s division of philosophy into natural, human, and divine in the Advancement and De augmentis, with the important exclusion of divine philosophy.54

What is the basis for this division? It may help to compare it with another, similar division of philosophy, that of the Stoics. Seneca describes the Stoic division of philosophy:

“The majority of authors, and the greatest, have said that there are three parts of philosophy: moral, natural, rational. The first orders the soul. The second looks at the nature of things. The

52 WA 58 (translation revised), SEH 6.647: “Duplex est Orphei Cantio: altera ad placandos Manes; altera ad trahendas feras et sylvas. Prior ad naturalem philosophiam, posterior ad moralem et civilem aptissime refertur.”

53 WA 117, SEH 6.679. “Aenigmatum autem Sphingis duo in universum sunt genera; aenigmata de natura rerum, atque aenigmata de natura hominis: atque similiter in praemium solutionis sequuntur duo imperia; imperium in naturam, et imperium in homines….” Cf. Bacon’s preface, where he says that the fables which he will discuss are “the inventions of men who…had also divers ends;…some having an eye to things natural, others to civil” (Inventa virorum fuerint qui…instituto diversi erant;…alii rursus naturam rerum, alii res civiles sibi proponerent). WA 16, SEH 6.626. Gorges inexplicably translates “civiles” as “moral.”

54 Studer, “Grapes Ill-Trodden,” 30. The resemblance between the division in the Advancement and that in De sapientia is exact when one considers that Bacon in practice neglects divine philosophy in the Advancement.

117 third examines the properties of words and order and arguments, lest false things creep in for true.”55 Seneca here indicates a basis for the distinction between moral philosophy and natural.

They are distinguished because the latter perceives the order in natural things, whereas the former consists in actively ordering the human soul. The human soul is not subsumed under natural philosophy because the wise must introduce order to the soul if it is to achieve its perfection, whereas nature as the Stoics conceive of it is self-ordering.56 In Stoic ethics, the goal or end of human life is defined as living in accord with nature.57 It is because there is a choice for humans to follow nature or not that moral philosophy is distinct from natural philosophy.

Bacon’s division of philosophy into human and natural, however, must have a different basis than the Stoics’, as he is clear throughout his works that his natural philosophy results in a change in the objects studied. For instance, in the Advancement he speaks of the aim of natural philosophy as superinducing forms on any given form. For Bacon, natural philosophy is concerned with the transformation of the given natural kinds, not merely with observing them.

In “Prometheus, or the State of Man” (26), Bacon suggests a basis for his separation of humans from the rest of nature. Rossi rightly describes this parable as “depicting the central

55 Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales 89. “Philosophiae tres partes esse dixerunt et maximi et plurimi auctores: moralem, naturalem, rationalem. Prima conponit animum. Secunda rerum naturam scrutatur. Tertia proprietates verborum exigit et structuram et argumentationes, ne pro vero falsa subrepant.” Translation my own.

56 Similarly, Aristotle’s ethics and politics, concerned with ordering the soul, are an exclusively human concern. His Physics is concerned with observing nature, not ordering it. 57 See, for instance, Arius Didymus’s discussion of the end in Stoic ethics: “Zeno defined the end thus: ‘living in agreement’: that is, to live in accordance with a single and consistent reasoning, as those who live in conflict are unhappy. His successors articulated this further and expressed it thus: ‘living in agreement with nature,’ supposing that Zeno’s expression was an incomplete predicate. Cleanthes, the first to take over the school, added ‘with nature’ and defined it thus: ‘the end is living in agreement with nature.’ Chrysippus, wanting to make this clearer, expressed it this way: ‘living in accordance with experience of what happens naturally.’” Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics, trans. A. J. Pomeroy (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 36.30-38.9. Quoted in , “Ethics in Stoic Philosophy,” Phronesis 52 (2007): 64.

118 position of man in the universe and his constructive powers.”58 Prometheus was a god who made man from various parts of animals; to aid his creation, he stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. The part of the essay relevant to our question is Bacon’s discussion of the name

“Prometheus.” It signifies, Bacon says, providence: “for in the universality of nature the fabric and constitution of man only was by the ancients picked out and chosen and attributed unto

Providence as a peculiar work.”59

Why is man considered the “peculiar work” of providence? Bacon gives two reasons.

The first reason is as follows:

The reason of it [i.e., why man was chosen as a peculiar work of providence] seems to be not only in that the nature of man is capable of a mind and understanding which is the seat of Providence, and therefore it would seem strange and incredible that the reason and mind should so proceed and flow from dumb and deaf principles, as that it should necessarily be concluded that providence is placed in the human soul, not without the example, intention, and stamp of a greater providence.60

Man’s mind is “the seat of providence,” or – in the original meaning of “providentia” –

“foresight” or “foreknowledge.” Hence it is reasonable to assume that man is the special work of a greater providence, which bestows upon man his lesser providence. Here Bacon, following a long tradition of philosophy, attributes man’s special place in creation to his intellect, his ability to foresee. But this is not the primary reason why man should be considered the special work of

58 Rossi, From Magic to Science, 102. Rossi, despite his suggestive statement concerning man’s “constructive powers,” stops short of articulating Bacon’s reason for the separation of man from the rest of creation. White sketches a reason for such a separation; I will discuss this below.

59 WA 100, SEH 670. “Atque in rerum universitate sola desumpta et delecta est ab antiquis Hominis fabrica et constitutio, quae providentiae attribuatur tanquam opus proprium.”

60 WA 100, SEH 6.670. “Hujus rei non solum illud in causa esse videtur, quod hominis natura mentem suscipit atque intellectum providentiae sedem, atque durum quodammodo videtur et incredibile ex principiis brutis et surdis excitare et educere rationem et mentem; ut fere necessario concludatur providentia animae humanae indita esse non sine exemplari et intentione et authoramento providentiae majoris….” Translation revised.

119 providence. Bacon immediately follows the above statement by giving the principal reason:

“But this also is chiefly propounded that man is, as it were, the centre of the world, in respect of final causes, so that if man were not in nature, all things would seem to stray and wander without purpose, and like scattered branches, as they say, without inclination to their end.”61 That is, there is no evidence of providence apart from human providence. How, then, does Bacon maintain a distinction between a greater and lesser providence? Howard B. White insightfully comments on the above passage:

The revolutionary character of this statement may be obscured if we do not recall that final causes, the good at which all things aimed, were once far higher than man. If man is the center of the world as related to final causes, then final causes are not in nature, but in man, that is, not in the nature of man, but in man's work. Moreover, if man is the center of the world, the final causes are man-made final causes.62

Man occupies his unique place in the natural world because he orders the rest of creation by giving things their final cause.63 Bacon is not retracting his numerous statements concerning the uselessness of the ancients’ search for final causes, but rather understands “final causes” differently than his predecessors. As his description of man as a lesser “providence” indicates, and his subsequent examples of man serving as a final cause for other things show, the final causes are not naturally in things. Rather, things achieve their final cause by man’s arts and sciences. Some of Bacon’s examples of final cause are the following: wind is ordered to navigation and used for engines such as windmills; animals are useful for shelter, food, clothes,

61 Ibid. “Verum et hoc praecipue proponitur, quod homo veluti centrum mundi sit, quatenus ad causas finales; adeo ut sublato e rebus homine reliqu vagari sine proposito videantur et fluctuari, atque quod aiunt scopae dissolutae esse, nec finem petere.”

62 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 124.

63 Hence nature itself is part of “the materials to work on” demanded by “the condition of human life.” , Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 22, §35.

120 and medicine for man. Bacon’s notion of final cause is in sharp contrast to that of Aristotle, who teaches the final cause of a thing is attained, always or for the most part, by an internal principle:

“For those things are natural which, by a continuous movement originated from an internal principle, arrive at some end: … always the tendency in each is towards the same end, if there is no impediment.”64 For Bacon, the final cause is an extrinsic principle, applied to things by men.

Bacon, then, describes a quality of humans that separates them from the rest of the natural world. They alone among natural things can introduce ends or purposes into things – not only into their own actions, but into other natural things as well. This distinction provides a basis for Bacon’s division of philosophy into natural and human.

Divine Philosophy

In the Advancement Bacon divides philosophy into divine, natural, and human, even if he in practice neglects the divine. Nowhere in De sapientia does he make such a division. But he does discuss religion several times in the work. These discussions throw light both on the lack of divine knowledge as a major division of philosophy in the De sapientia, and on the relationship between philosophy and religion.

Paolo Rossi argues that one of the major themes in De sapientia is the importance of separating philosophy from matters of faith, for instance, in the theme of the fable of Pentheus in

“Actaeon and Pentheus, or a Curious Man” (10).65 Pentheus climbed a tree to see the secret

64 Physics 2.8, 199b16-18. Aristotle describes the question animating 2.8 at the beginning of the chapter: “We must explain then first why nature belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake of something.…” The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 339-340.

65 Rossi, From Magic to Science, 96-97.

121 rituals of Bacchus, and was punished for this blasphemy by seeing double of everything, including two suns and two Thebes, so that he was interminably traveling back and forth between his visions of the city. Bacon interprets this fable as a cautionary tale about those who

“by the height of knowledge in nature and philosophy, having climbed, as it were, into a tree, do with rash attempts (unmindful of their frailty) pry into the secrets of Divine mysteries.” These individuals are punished by “perpetual inconstancy, and with wavering and perplexed conceits: for seeing the light of Nature is one thing, and the divine another, it happens so to them as if they saw two suns.”66 Thebes, Bacon says, symbolizes the end of actions; those prying “into the secrets of Divine mysteries” are punished with inconstancy and indecision in their actions.

Bacon does not here distinguish between lawful and unlawful knowledge of religious things. In this fable, he sets theology in opposition to philosophy, and appears to discourage any study of the former.

Bacon follows the advice he gives in “Actaeon and Pentheus” in “Prometheus, or the

State of Man” (26). Toward the end of this fable, he states that there may be parts of it that could be interpreted as portraying truths of Christianity. He refuses, however, to develop these thoughts: “But I have interdicted my pen all liberty in this kind, lest I should use strange fire at the altar of the Lord.”67 He will not fall into the error of Pentheus.

66 WA 55, SEH 6.646. “Qui…, per excelsa naturae et philosophiae fastigia (tanquam arbore conscensa) ad mysteria divina aspirant, his poena proposita est perpetuae inconstantiae et judicii vacillantis et perplexi. Cum enim aliud sit lumen naturae, aliud divinum; ita cum illis fit, ac si duos soles viderent.”

67 WA 111, SEH 6.676. “Verum nos omnem in hoc genere licentiam nobis ipsi interdicimus, ne forte igne extraneo ad altare Domini utamur.” Earlier in the fable, Bacon also repeats the warning contained in “Actaeon and Pentheus.” Prometheus attempts to rape Minerva, and for this he is punished by an eagle eating his perpetually regrown liver. This symbolizes, Bacon says, “that when men are puffed up with much learning and science, they go about oftentimes to make even divine oracles subject to sense and reason, whence most certainly follows a continual distraction and restless griping of the mind.” (Quam quod homines artibus et scientia multa inflati, etiam sapientiam divinam sensibus et rationi subjicere saepius tentent; ex quo certissime sequitur mentis laceratio et stimulatio perpetua et irrequieta.) WA 110, SEH 6.675.

122 Elsewhere in De sapientia, however, Bacon seems to disregard his prohibition concerning theological investigation. In particular, “Diomedes, or Zeal” (18) deals with a religious question, and the final fable, “The Sirens, or Pleasures” (31), discusses religion. The former fable deals with the fate of the famed Greek, who alone among ancient heroes did violence against a deity, attacking Venus through the instigation of Athena. The great acclaim he received for this action did not protect him from disputes when he returned home, and he fled to Italy, where for a time he was entertained with honor by King Daunus. But when Italy was struck with calamity, Daunus recalled Diomedes’ impious assault on Venus, and killed him to protect Italy from divine retribution. Diomedes’ companions, during their funeral mourning, were turned into birds who sang beautiful and sad melodies.

Bacon interprets this fable as teaching about the man who “doth propound and make this as the end of all his actions, to worship some divine power…and with force and arms to defend the same” (hunc finem actionum suarum sibi proponit et destinat, ut cultum aliquem divinem…vi et ferro insectetur et debellet).68 Anyone who tries to reform or convert the adherents of another religion, not by argument and pious example, but by violence and death, gains for a time great honor for his zeal and godliness. Yet this glory does not last, as the violent often receive an early death, or the persecuted sect gains power and then the honor of those persecuting them turns to ignominy and hatred. The murder of Diomedes by his host, King Danaus, symbolizes that

“difference of religion breeds deceit and treachery, even among nearest acquaintance” (religionis dissidium, etiam inter conjunctissimos, insidias et proditiones excitet).69 The transformation of

Diomedes’ followers into swans signifies that the final words of the one martyred for his religion

68 WA 76, SEH 6.657.

69 WA 77, SEH 6.658.

123 have great power over his followers, and remain in their memory for a long time. Bacon indicates here that the cycle of religion-inspired violence does not end with the death of the one- time persecutor.

Bacon is not overly flattering of religion in this fable, in particular of Christianity.

Indeed he presents a dilemma to the reader: on the one hand “difference of religion breeds deceit and treachery,” on the other hand efforts to violently unify religions beget more violence.

Perhaps these differences can be overcome non-violently, through argument and pious example – a resolution which would seem eminently in accord with traditional Christian teaching. But

Bacon does not suggest such a solution, and indeed his teaching in “Actaeon and Pentheus” seems to rule out this possibility. Given the inevitability of religious differences, Christianity will always be accompanied by violence. It is noteworthy, too, that this violence is a mark of

Christianity in particular, rather than religion in general. The heathen gods, according to Bacon, do not have “so much as a touch of that jealousy which is an attribute of the true God”

(zelotypia, quod est Dei veri attributum, non tangerentur) and which results in violent zeal for religion.70

In “The Sirens, or Pleasures,” religion again occupies an important role in Bacon’s interpretation. The fable relates how Ulysses and Orpheus used different means to avoid seduction by the unearthly beauty of the Sirens’ songs. Ulysses plugged his sailors’ ears and had himself tied to the mast of his ship in order to avoid succumbing to the Sirens’ song. Orpheus, on the other hand, sang praises to the gods on his harp, drowning out the Sirens’ singing. The

Sirens, Bacon says, signify pleasure. Ulysses’ actions signify the ways in which philosophy

70 WA 76, SEH 6.658.

124 overcomes pleasure. Orpheus’ song indicates a more potent method of subduing pleasure, namely, religion: “They [that] chant and resound the praises of the gods, confound and dissipate the voices of the Sirens, for divine meditations do not only in power subdue all sensual pleasures, but also far exceed them in sweetness and delight.”71 In this fable, Bacon seems to laud the power of religion to control, more effectively than philosophy, the human desire for pleasure.

There are difficulties with this interpretation, however. Orpheus, in the earlier eponymous essay, signifies philosophy. While we should keep in mind Bacon’s admonition in his introduction that the same persons can have different significations in different fables, it is strange that in “Sirens” the remedy of philosophy (the least powerful remedy, Bacon says) is associated with Solomon, the reputed author of three books of the Bible, and the remedy of religion is associated with the pagan musician Orpheus.

Also troubling is the difficulty of reconciling the teaching of this fable with the earlier fables regarding religion, “Actaeon and Pentheus” and “Diomedes.” These fables indict religion for inflaming the passions and weakening the reason. Even if we take Bacon at face value when he says religion subdues pleasure more effectively than philosophy – and the history of religious asceticism may incline us to agree with this judgment – it may be wondered whether Bacon truly holds this as desirable. He hints that he may not when he calls “heroes” those who imitate

Odysseus and are able to experience pleasures without being overcome by them. In any case, the ability of religion to subdue pleasures must be carefully weighed against its tendency to inflame other, more destructive passions.

71 WA 130, SEH 686. “Qui laudes Deorum contans et reboans, Sirenum voces confudit et summovit. Meditationes enim Rerum Divinarum, Voluptates Sensus non tantum potestate, sed etiam suavitate superant.”

125 In neither “Actaeon and Pentheus” nor in “The Sirens” does Bacon insist on the separation of philosophy and theology, as he does in other fables. He is not concerned with the particular teachings of religion or with the content of theology, but with the relationship religion has to the passions, the control of which is a prominent theme of his human philosophy. He does not enter into any properly theological questions, such as which is the true religion. He is not, then, contradicting his earlier, emphatic advice to avoid mingling philosophy and theology. In

De sapientia we see no treatment of divine philosophy, and no concern for the specific teachings of the Christian religion.

The Division of the Fables

Human philosophy is further divided into political and moral by Bacon.72 Since we are primarily concerned with Bacon’s moral philosophy, we must pay particular attention to the distinction between these two. Such is not always an easy task, as Studer points out while arguing against any thematic division of De sapientia. She correctly notes that many fables explicitly deal with more than one type of philosophy.73 Nevertheless, Bacon himself distinguishes fables dealing with moral philosophy from those dealing with political philosophy, both in De sapientia and elsewhere. For instance, in the second book of De augmentis, he divides parables into natural, political, and moral, and gives for an example of each versions of the fables “Pan,” “Perseus,” and “Dionysius.”

72 “Orpheus,” SEH 6.647.

73 Studer, “Grapes Ill-Trodden,” 30.

126 Bacon does not, however, give a basis for the division of human philosophy into political and moral in De sapientia. He does, as we saw above, offer such a basis in the Advancement: ethics is concerned with the individual man, politics with “man conjugate.” It is inevitable, given this basis for the division, that there will be considerable overlap. As Bacon states in the

Advancement, moral philosophy is like the shaping of the boards which will form the whole building, while political philosophy is the joining of the boards together. While the shaping is distinct from their joining, the boards have to be shaped with the whole building in mind. Moral philosophy is concerned with the formation of the individual, while political philosophy is concerned with the state or with the king or prince as ruler of the state.

Thankfully, Bacon gives considerable help in distinguishing the moral fables from the others. He typically states the subject of the fable, either in the opening line of the essay or in the first line of the section explicating the fable. Of the thirty one fables, five focus solely on natural philosophy: “Pan” (6), “Caelum” (12), “Proteus” (13), “Cupid” (17), and “Proserpina” (29). Of the fables treating human philosophy, nine deal with political philosophy: “Cassandra” (1),

“Typhon” (2), “Cyclops” (3), “Styx” (5), “Perseus” (7), “Endymion” (8), “The Sister of the

Giants” (9), “Achelous” (23), and “Metis” (30). Seven focus on moral philosophy: “Narcissus”

(4), “Actaeon and Pentheus” (10), “Memnon” (14), “Tithonus” (15), “Juno’s Suitors” (16),

“Dionysus” (24), and “Sirens” (31). The remaining ten deal with some mixture of natural, political, and moral philosophy.

Bacon himself identifies two fables as especially important to moral philosophy: “Juno’s

Suitor, or Baseness,” which he says is drawn from the deepest parts of morality, and “Dionysus,

127 or Passions,” than which, he says, nothing better is found in moral philosophy.74 While I will draw on all of the fables treating moral philosophy throughout the present chapter, these two serve as the basis for my analysis of the starting points of Bacon’s moral philosophy in the De sapientia. “Orpheus, or Philosophy” (11), “Atalanta, or Gain” (25), “Prometheus, or the State of

Man” (26), and “Sphynx, or Science” (28) are concerned with human philosophy as a whole and put it into a larger perspective, especially in relation to natural philosophy. Considered together, these shed especial light on the relationship between moral philosophy and natural philosophy and on the ends of each.

3. Principles of Natural and Human Philosophy in De Sapientia

The Starting Point

In De sapientia, Bacon treats of the starting point of natural philosophy most thoroughly in the essay “Proteus, or Matter” (13). Proteus, the shepherd for Neptune, knew the past, present, and future, and hence was called on to interpret secret and ancient things. He lived in a great cave, to which he would repair every day to count his seals, and then sleep. To receive his advice, it was necessary for the person seeking it to seize him in sleep and to hold him fast, despite Proteus’ ability to change himself into numerous different forms and creatures. If the seeker of knowledge was persistent, and did not release Proteus, the sea shepherd would finally turn back into his own shape, and answer the questions proposed.

74 WA 69, SEH 654; WA 91, SEH 6.665.

128 This fable, Bacon tells us, pertains to “the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter”

(abdita naturae et conditiones materiae). Proteus represents matter, the most ancient thing next to God. The herd of sea-beasts he watches represents the “ordinary species of sensible creatures, plants, and metals, in which Matter seems to diffuse and, as it were, spend itself.”75 After this matter rests, that is, produces no more species, even as Proteus rests after he counts his flock.

The story up till this point, Bacon says, refers to Proteus unbound: “For the universality of things, with their ordinary structures and compositions of species, bears the face of matter not limited and constrained, and of the flock also of material beings.”76 The fable takes a turn, however, with the description of the forcible seizing of Proteus, which symbolizes the action of the true natural philosopher, the “expert minister of nature” who “encounter[s] matter by main force, vexing, and urging her, as if with intent and purpose to reduce her to nothing.”77 Peter

Pesic emphasizes that “the servant of nature acts ‘as if with the purpose of reducing [matter] to nothing,’ knowing already that all his force and vexation cannot succeed in its ostensible purpose.”78 The natural philosopher’s aim is not to destroy matter, but to observe the true properties of matter, which are hidden under the normal articulation of matter into species. If he has the tenacity to persevere in his course, while matter assumes different forms and shapes, he will be rewarded with the knowledge of all things, past, present, and future.

75 WA 64, SEH 6.651. “Pecus autem, sive grex Protei, non aliud videtur esse, quam species ordinariae animalium, plantarum, metallorum, in quibus Materia videtur se diffundere et quasi consumere. . . .”

76 WA 65, SEH 6.652. “Nam universitas rerum, cum structuris et fabricis specierum ordinariis, est materiae non constrictae aut devinctae et gregis materiatorum facies.”

77 WA 65 (translation revised), SEH 6.652. “Si quis peritus Naturae Minister vim adhibeat materiae, et materiam vexet atque urgeat, tanquam hoc ipso destinato et proposito, ut illam in nihilum redigat.”

78 Pesic, “Wrestling with Proteus,” 86.

129 In this fable, Bacon indicates the starting point of natural philosophy. The skilled practitioner focuses on matter itself; he disregards the appearance of things as divided into species. The natural philosopher is to “vex” matter, in order to force it from its normal appearances and observe its changes and behaviors. Experiment, rather than passive observation of the normal shapes or species under which matter “customarily” presents itself, is the means by which knowledge of nature is acquired. In this fable, Bacon repeats the advice given in the

Advancement to discontinue the examination into “forms” as understood by classical philosophy.

While he does not speak in the De sapientia of “simple forms,” he is clear that the knowledge that the true philosopher seeks is that of characteristics and behaviors that extend across the boundaries dividing things into the already existing species. Bacon’s natural philosopher grasps the universal characteristics of the matter that lies behind the ordinary appearances of things.

Richard Kennington has an excellent description of the difference between Bacon’s starting point in natural philosophy and that of the ancients in their philosophy. In Aristotle’s famous formulations in the Physics and the Ethics, it is necessary to start from what is more known to us and proceed to what is more known by nature.79 As Kennington says, the “necessity of beginning with what is ‘first to us’ is the Socratic correction of his predecessors that is a guiding premise of classical Greek philosophy.”80 For the ancients, we begin natural philosophy from our perception of the natural articulation of things into kinds. Bacon’s true philosopher, on the other hand, does not begin with the normal appearance of things, but rather is intent on forcing nature outside of its normal course in order to attain true knowledge of matter.

79 Ethics 1095a30ff. Cited in Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique,” 20. Physics 184a16-24.

80 Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique,” 20. See also pp. 24-29.

130 There is no moral essay in De sapientia which, corresponding to “Proteus,” discusses the starting point of moral philosophy. Accordingly, the best way to uncover this starting point is to look closely at the moral fables and to see what starting points he employs in his ethical teachings. I will look at two fables that he claims contain important moral teaching, “Juno’s

Suitor, or Baseness” (16) and “Dionysus, or Passions” (24).

The myth “Juno” describes how Jupiter, when he attempted by stealth to mate with his wife, did not disguise himself in his customary way by donning one of the many masks – a bull, an eagle, a shower of gold – that he typically assumed in his amorous adventures. Rather, he became a cuckoo bird, which at its best is a comic and ridiculous bird; moreover, he became a cuckoo that was in a bad way, storm-beaten, drenched, and half-dead. The moral that Bacon draws is that it is not always wise to rely on a display of one’s talents and goodness to obtain the good will and aid of others. It is important to understand the character of the one from whom aid is sought. If this person is haughty and malicious, as Juno, then the display of one’s virtues and good qualities serve rather to prevent help than to procure it. Towards such people one must put aside any show of virtue and assume rather a base and shameful persona, just as Jupiter appeared as a cuckoo.

The fable of Juno’s suitor, as was said, is the first to be identified as pertaining to morals.

Bacon describes it as drawn “out of the bowels of morality” (ex intimis moribus).81 It does not, however, fit typical notions of morality. It is, on the face of it, advice on how to influence a certain type of person in order to achieve what you want. This seems more the province of rhetoric than ethics. Further, the fable’s teaching on shame is innovative. Shame is a central

81 WA 69, SEH 654.

131 theme of the fable – its subtitle, “dedecus,” can even be translated as “shame.”82 This page-long fable contains numerous words describing the shameful and reactions to the shameful:

“baseness,” “ignoble,” “contempt,” “scorn,” “miserable,” “deformity,” “obsequiousness,”

“abject” (dedecus, ignobilis, contemptus, ludibrium, miser, deformitas, obsequium, abjectus). Its teaching concerning shame differs significantly from the classical teaching; it is thus fitting that, as Tom van Malssen notes, it is the “only fable whose narrative is nowhere, in whatever form, to be found in the ancient sources.”83

Aristotle describes shame in his Ethics as “a sort of fear of disrepute.”84 It is appropriate in the young, before they have virtue, so that their passions can be restrained. By it they avoid disgraceful actions and aim at noble ones. They begin to acquire ethical knowledge through habits that are based on the actions and opinions of others. According to Aristotle, the principle of starting from what is most known to us means that in moral philosophy we must begin from belief about the fine and just:

Things are known in two ways, for some are known to us, some known without qualification. Presumably, then, we ought to begin from things known to us. That is why we need to have been brought up in fine habits if we are to be adequate students of fine and just things, and of political questions generally. For we begin from the [belief] that [something is true]; if this is apparent enough to us, we can begin without also [knowing] why [it is true]. Someone who is well brought up has the beginnings, or can easily acquire them.85

82 Lewis and Short (1987), s. v. “dedecus.”

83 Tom van Malssen, The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon: On the Unity of Knowledge (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), 25.

84 1128b11-12 (Irwin, 66).

85 1095b3-9 (Irwin, 4). Italics and brackets in Irwin.

132 In ethics, we start from what is apparent to us through good habits. These habits are acquired under the guidance of others. Shame plays an important role in such guidance, because young people “live by their feelings, and hence often go astray, but are restrained by shame.”86 Shame is for beginners in virtue, who take their orientation from others’ opinions about the disgraceful and the fine.

Bacon’s “Juno,” in contrast, advocates disregarding shame. Departing from the classical teaching of using shame to guide us away from the disgraceful, Bacon teaches us to embrace what is commonly regarded as shameful in certain situations. This disregard of shame is advocated in a situation that Aristotle in his Rhetoric particularly designates as one in which we are most controlled by shame, when we are in front of someone who has something we want.87

For Bacon, the starting point guiding moral inquiries is not the opinion of others. Rather, it is our own knowledge of people’s specific characteristics and natures, and how they interact.

Hence Bacon says that our success in attaining our intentions is “for the most part measured by the nature and disposition of those to whom [we] sue for grace.”88 We must recognize the nature and disposition of other people, and how to move and affect them. And in order to effectively move them, it may be necessary that we “completely change [ourselves] into an abject and degenerate person,”89 that is, that we act shamelessly.

86 1128b19-20 (Irwin, 66).

87 1384a30-31 (Barnes, vol. 2, p. 2205). People feel more ashamed in front of those “who possess any good thing that is highly esteemed; or from whom we are very anxious to get something that they are able to give us.”

88 Ibid. “Id enim succedere pro natura et moribus eorum quos ambiunt et colunt. . . .”

89 WA 69 (translation revised), SEH 6.654. “Neque satis esse si obsequii deformitatem praestant, nisi omnino se in personam abjectam et degenerem mutent.”

133 In the first rank of human characteristics or “natures” are the passions. “Dionysus,” as its subtitle announces, is a study of passions. This helps explain the importance of the fable; Bacon tells us that “there is such excellent morality couched in this fable, as that ‘Moral Philosophy’ affords not better.”90 The other moral fables deal with this or that particular passion – “Juno” with shame, “Tithonus” and “The Sirens” with pleasure, “Narcissus” with self-love – while

“Dionysus” treats of the passions or emotions as a whole. Bacon does not seem to distinguish between passions and affections – the fable deals with “the nature of affection, passion, or perturbation” (natura Cupiditatis, sive affectus et perturbationis).91 The subtitle of “Dionysus” –

“cupiditas” – may lead one to think that Bacon is only speaking of undesirable or bad passions here. But the typically pejorative term “cupiditas” is used interchangeably in the fable with the neutral “affectus.”92 Indeed, “affectus” is used considerably more in the fable.

The fable tells of Semele’s demand from Jupiter, her lover, to reveal himself to her in the same form in which he came to Juno. Jupiter, bound by oath, fulfills her request, and she was consumed by lightening. Jupiter took her gestating infant and put him in his thigh till the infant’s birth. The child, Bacchus, was raised by Prosperina. He had a feminine face, so that it was difficult to determine whether he was a boy or girl. He died and was buried for a while, but then revived. His most famous achievement was the invention of the craft of winemaking. He conquered the world as far as India, and drove in a chariot drawn by tigers and surrounded by goblins and even some of the Muses. Ariadne, whom Theseus rejected, was his wife. The ivy

90 WA 91, SEH 6.665. “Fabula videtur ad mores pertinere, ut nihil in Philosophia morali melius inveniatur.”

91 Ibid.

92 Lewis and Short, s.v. “cupiditas” and “affectus.”

134 was sacred to him; he invented rites and ceremonies, yet was extraordinarily corrupt and cruel.

He had the ability to drive men mad, an ability that was responsible for the deaths of Pentheus and Orpheus, who were both torn apart by devotees of Dionysus. Bacon concludes the fable by noting that the deeds of Dionysus were often confused with those of Jupiter.

Dionysus symbolizes passion, as Bacon interprets the fable. He is the son of Semele, whose foolish desire destroys her, because passion “is always conceived in an unlawful desire rashly propounded and obtained.”93 Bacon explains that Dionysus dying and rising again shows that even if the passions appear to be eradicated, they are rather dormant than extinct. Given occasion, they will quickly revive. Dionysus undertakes “infinite expeditions” in the fable because desire is never satisfied with what it has, but with an infinite appetite always hungers for more. 94 He drives a chariot drawn by tigers, for passions which are elevated such as to conquer reason and lead her in triumph become cruel and ferocious against any attempts at restraint. The grotesque goblins dancing around the chariot illustrate that passions block self-knowledge; those undergoing any strong passions such as anger or love seem glorious in their own eyes, but ridiculous and deformed to others. Bacchus loved Ariadne, who was rejected by Theseus.

Similarly, the passions always desire “things cast off, and by divers men in all ages, after experience had, utterly rejected and loathed.”95 Ivy is sacred to Bacchus, since it grows most fully in the winter, like the passions which always grow great and strong against resistance.

93 WA 91, SEH 6.665. “Cupiditas in voto illicito, prius temere concesso quam intellecto et judicato.”

94 WA 92, SEH 6.666. “Elegantissime autem ponitur affectus provinciarum subjugator, et expeditionis infinitae susceptor.”

95 WA 93, SEH 6.666. “Atque norint omnes, qui affectibus suis servientes et indulgentes, pretium potiundi in immensum augent, sive honores appetant, sive fortunas, sive amores, sive gloriam, sive scientiam, sive alia quaecunque, se res relictas petere, et a compluribus per omnia fere saecula post experimentum dimissas et fastiditas.”

135 In the above interpretations, Bacon gives a sketch of the relationship of passions and reason, one which differs from traditional discussions. For Aristotle, human desires share in reason inasmuch as they can be influenced and informed by reason.96 Ethical virtues are attained when the passions are informed by reason, such that they are docile to the rule of reason and indeed aid the cause of reason. Bacon paints a very different picture. Reason and the passions are at war. The latter are always the fruit of an “unlawful desire.” Their laming of Jupiter indicates their obstruction of good decisions and acts. At no time does Bacon suggest they can be rationally ordered or directed in Aristotle’s sense; rather, they “always covet and desire that which experience forsakes,” as Bacchus lusted after the rejected Ariadne.97 Bacon seems to approach the Stoic view of the passions as sicknesses from which the philosopher strives to be healed when he says that Dionysus is portrayed as causing madness because “every affection is by nature a short fury.”98 But Bacon, unlike the Stoics, does not believe the passions can be eradicated. Attempts to directly curb them make them grow stronger; even when they appear dead they will rise again given the opportunity.

As Bacon describes them, the passions are 1) by their nature opposed to good actions, 2) unable to be informed by reason, and 3) unable to be eradicated. What role then does their study play in ethics? Bacon indicates that their growth can be curbed, not by direct assault, but by removing their occasion. But removing every occasion for the growth of the passions would seem to be impossible for someone who follows Bacon’s oft-repeated advice, both in the

96 Nicomachean Ethics, 1102b31-32 (Irwin, 18). The part of the soul “with appetites and in general desires shares in reason in a way, insofar as it both listens to reason and obeys it. This is the way in which we are said to ‘listen to reason’ from father or friends….”

97 WA 93, SEH 6.666. “Certissimum enim est, affectum id petere et ambire quod experientia repudiavit.”

98 WA 94, SEH 6.667. “Cum omnis affectus et ipse furor brevis sit. . . .”

136 Advancement and in the De sapientia in such fables as “Narcissus,” to eschew retirement and engage in the rough and tumble of public activity. And Bacon goes beyond any cautious prescription to avoid opportunity for arousing passions when he interprets the cryptic closing sentence of his version of the fable of Dionysus: “And the deeds of this god are often confused with those of Jupiter.”99 According to Bacon, this indicates that great and meritorious actions sometimes proceed from “virtue and well-ordered reason, and sometimes from a secret affection and hidden passion, which are so dignified with the celebrity of fame and glory that a man can hardly distinguish between the acts of Bacchus and those of Jupiter.”100 This suggests that any art of managing the passions would look not only or primarily to their reduction, but to their ability, when properly handled, to produce great and illustrious actions. I will return to this suggestion later in the chapter.

“Dionysus” seems to contradict the teaching of “Juno.” The former closes by holding up

“noble and famous acts” as the goal for humans. But in “Juno” Bacon encourages “dedecus,” base or shameful acts. A possible solution of this difficulty is that Bacon encourages acts that are shameful in the eyes of others, specifically those who desire something from us. That is, when it is only the opinion of others that proclaims an action base we should not be deterred from performing it. But there are truly noble actions that humans should aspire to, which are neither Cicero’s “decus” nor Aristotle’s “kalon kagathon.” What are these truly noble actions?

99 WA 91 (translation revised); SEH 6.665. “Atque hujus Dei res gestae cum Jovis rebus fere confunduntur.”

100 WA 94 (translation revised), SEH 6.667. “Postremo illa confusio personarum Jovis et Bacchi ad parabolam recte traduci potest; quandoquidem res gestae nobiles et clarae, et merita insignia et gloriosa, interdum a virtute et recta ratione et magnanimitate, interdum a latente affectu et occulta cupiditate (utcunque famae et laudis celebritate efferantur) proveniant: ut non facile sit distinguere facta Bachi [sic] a factis Jovis.”

137 If Bacon’s starting point in ethics is an understanding of the particular passions and characters of humans, and how to influence and direct them, rather than opinion regarding good or evil, this starting point is of itself directionless; it does not separate truly great actions from other actions.

To distinguish these we need to turn to a consideration of the end of moral philosophy.

The End

The end of natural and moral philosophy is treated most fully in two fables, “Orpheus, or

Philosophy” (11) and “Sphynx, or Science” (28). Bacon introduces the fable of Orpheus by remarking that, despite being widespread, it was never fully interpreted. Upon the death of his wife, Orpheus entered hell to attempt to deliver her from Hades. He was successful, and left with his wife on the condition that he should not look back. He looked back, and his wife was drawn back down to hell. Orpheus fell into a deep melancholy, and withdrew into the desert, where, through the skill of his harp and voice, he drew wild animals to himself, and tamed them.

So great was his power, that he even caused the woods and stones to gather around him in order.

He preserved this harmony until women under a Bacchanalian madness intruded, and overwhelmed his music with their harsh and horrible noise. Immediately disorder entered once again; the wild animals attacked each other, the trees and stones deserted their order, and

Orpheus himself was torn to pieces by the Bacchanalian women.

Bacon begins his interpretation of this fable by noting that the two types of Orpheus’ music – the one that appeases the infernal powers, and the one that influences animals and plants

– signify the two types of philosophy, natural and human. Orpheus’ attempt to save his wife from death indicates that “the most noble work of natural philosophy is the restitution and

138 renovation of things corruptible.” This endeavor is the most difficult of all things, and so “for the most part disappoints in its effect.” This failure is brought about through human failing,

“through curious and untimely diligence and impatience,” as illustrated by Orpheus’ foolish glance back.101

In a deep despondency after her failure to produce immortality, philosophy turns to

“human objects,” and establishes society and states by making people “forgetful of their unbridled affections.” This happens through a natural progression: after seeing the necessity of death consequent on the philosopher’s failure to restore corrupted things, “men’s minds are moved to seek eternity by the fame and glory of their merits.”102 Glory is primarily given to the founders of cities and statesmen. Timothy H. Paterson has drawn attention to the fact that human philosophy is a “derivative and secondary enterprise” according to Bacon’s interpretation of

Orpheus’ myth.103 It comes about because of an initial failure of the natural philosophers to curb their passions, particularly their curiosity and impatience. The moral philosopher, like the natural philosopher, seeks immortality, but in a lesser way, through “fame and glory,” that is, through others’ memories. In “Dionysus,” Bacon includes honor and glory as two of the objects of men’s passions that ultimately fail to satisfy the one attaining them. That the goal of

101 WA 58 (translation revised), SEH 6.647-48. “Opus enim naturalis philosophiae longe nobilissimum est ipsa restitutio et instauratio rerum corruptibilium, et (hujusce rei tanquam gradus minores) corporum in statu suo conservatio, et dissolutionis et putredinis retardatio. . . . Et tamen cum sit res omnium maxime ardua, effectu plerunque frustratur; idque (ut verisimile est) non magis aliam ob causam, quam per curiosam et intempestivam sedulitatem et impatientiam.”

102 WA 58-59, SEH 6.648. “Itaque Philosophia, tantae rei fere impar, atque idcirco merito moesta, vertit se ad res humanas, et in animos hominum suasu et eloquentia virtutis et aequitatis et pacis amorem insinuans, populorum coetus in unum coire facit, et juga legum accipere, et imperiis se submittere, et affectuum indomitorum oblivisci. . . . Atque ista rerum civilium cura rite atque ordine ponitur post experimentum corporis mortalis restituendi sedulo tentatum, et ad extremum frustratum: quia mortis necessitas inevitabilis evidentius proposita, hominibus ad aeternitatem meritis et nominis fama quaerendam animos addit.”

103 Paterson, “Myth of Orpheus,” 436.

139 immortality through fame is ultimately lacking is also suggested by Bacon’s concluding the fable of Orpheus with a somber paragraph describing the ultimate fate of even the most excellent human works. Kingdoms and states, laws and order, all are ultimately overthrown and a dark age follows in which but a few remnants of earlier times survive.

Bacon speaks of the end of natural philosophy and moral philosophy at some length in another fable, “Sphynx, or Science.” This fable tells the story of Oedipus’ encounter with the

Sphynx, a monster who ambushed travelers and asked them obscure riddles. If they could not answer, the monster killed them. Oedipus, when presented with a riddle, answered it correctly, and so gained the upper hand and killed the Sphynx, for which he was made king of Thebes.

This fable, Bacon says, discusses science, especially science “joined with practice”

(conjuncta practicae).104 Throughout the progress of men’s lives, they encounter situations where they are called to contemplate some matter, and their right action depends on solving difficulties correctly. If they do not solve these, their minds are vexed and troubled. There are two kinds of riddles the Sphynx asks, “some concerning the nature of things, others touching the nature of man.”105 Similarly two kinds of rewards are given to those answering correctly, empire over things and empire over man. This empire is connected with the immortality presented in

“Orpheus” as the end of philosophy, since the highest dominion over things is to renew decayed

104 WA 115, SEH 6.678.

105 WA 117, SEH 6.679. “Aenigmatum autem Sphingis duo in universum sunt genera; aenigmata de natura rerum, atque aenigmata de natura hominis: atque similiter in praemium solutionis sequuntur duo imperia; imperium in naturam, et imperium in homines. . . .”

140 things or to prevent decaying.106 Similarly, empire over men is connected by Bacon with preservation of life. Augustus is for Bacon an example of one who has rule over men – it is fitting, Bacon says, that Augustus bore a Sphynx in his signet, “for he (if ever any) was famous not only in political government, but in all the course of his life.” Augustus’ preeminence in the science of man saved him numerous times from “imminent danger and destruction.” 107

There is evidence, though, that Bacon thinks that knowledge of human nature can be employed in a greater way. Augustus, in both the fables “Nemesis” and “Sphynx,” is given as the most eminent example of the person who uses knowledge of human nature to save himself from destruction in the public life and to rule over others. Howard B. White says that Bacon himself is the one who gains empire over the natural world.108 But such an empire is only possible if problems concerning human nature can be solved, since the original attempt to master nature was originally thwarted, as “Orpheus” shows, by the character and dispositions of men.

Towards the end of “Prometheus,” Bacon compares the enterprise of a true natural philosophy to

“games in honour of Prometheus or human nature,” and desires the restoration of these games.

The one restoring these would need an understanding and mastery of human nature surpassing even that of Augustus. In the next section, following and developing the ideas sketched by

Howard B. White, I will attempt to show that the moral fables in the De sapientia give advice necessary for the success of the natural philosopher.

106 Fables throughout De sapientia state or suggest that the ultimate reason to gain power over things is immortality (“Orpheus,” “Prometheus,” “Deucalion”).

107 WA 118; SEH 6.679. “Itaque apposite illud, quod Augustus Caesar signo Sphingis sive de industria sive fortuito usus est. Ille enim (si quis unquam) in politica excelluit, et in vitae suae curriculo plurima nova aenigmata de natura hominis felicissime solvit, quae nisi dexter et paratus solvisset, multoties non procul ab imminente pernicie et exitio abfuisset.”

108 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 125.

141

Commentators have acknowledged the centrality of the question of human immortality and mortality in De sapientia. Svetozar Y. Minkov, for instance, says that in De sapientia the

“primary or fundamental problem is that of mortality.”109 But there is a difficulty underlying

Bacon’s treatment of immortality as the end of natural philosophy and moral philosophy. The difficulty is, in a nutshell, that Bacon proposes immortality as the goal for philosophy, but he also acknowledges that immortality cannot be attained.

Throughout the work, Bacon treats the preservation and prolongation of life as the primary end of natural and moral philosophy.110 At points he states explicitly that immortality can be attained; even that it has been attained by natural philosophy and lost. But he also says that no one individual scientist can perfect philosophy, but rather each does some part and then hands on the work to others: “the perfection of sciences is to be expected from succession, not from the nimbleness and promptness of one only author.”111 It follows that no individual scientist (except, perhaps, the last in a long chain) can in fact achieve immortality. Bacon indeed devotes a whole parable to “Nemesis, or the Vicissitude of Things” (22), which ends with the warning: “And albeit it may be, that such as are cut off by death in their youth prevent and shun

109 Svetozar Y. Minkov, Francis Bacon’s “Inquiry Touching Human Nature”: Virtue, Philosophy, and the Relief of Man’s Estate (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 129. Minkov points to the difficulty that the Bacon promises immortality via science, which cannot finally deliver it. Minkov’s solution is that Bacon is using his scientific project, and its appeal to men’s desire for immortality, as a cloak for his individual, contemplative philosophy. I have discussed Minkov’s argument in the first chapter.

110 “Orpheus” (SEH 6.647-48), “Prometheus” (SEH 6.672-73), “Deucalion” (SEH 6.661-62).

111 WA 110.

142 the power of Nemesis, yet doubtless such whose prosperity and power continue long are subject unto her, and lie, as it were, trodden under her feet.”112

Perhaps science, though it can never fully achieve immortality, comes closer than most human endeavors – which, Bacon claims in the Advancement, all aim at immortality. Its beneficiaries receive length of life and some degree of dominion over nature. Its practitioners receive fame and glory, above that of Augustus. And if we take seriously Bacon’s frequent statements regarding the derivative and unsatisfactory nature of honor, it seems likely that Bacon touches on his own most fundamental purpose when he exhorts his readers to rebuild sciences as though they were “games in honour of Prometheus or human nature.”

The broad question raised at the beginning of the chapter was whether Bacon has different principles for his natural and moral philosophy, as Zagorin and Box maintain, or whether the branches of philosophy have common principles, as Macauley, Jardine, and

Faulkner argue (although they differ on what principles are shared, and often are not clear what they mean by “principles”). The foregoing examination of De sapientia leads squarely to the latter side of the dispute. Bacon’s starting point in moral philosophy is similar to his starting point for natural philosophy. The ethical fables in De sapientia follow the instructions given in the Advancement. The characters and passions of men are treated as unchanging natural forces whose interactions and effects – both within a given human being and between two human beings – the moral philosopher studies, much as the natural philosopher studies not the species as a whole, but the action and interactions of the simple forms cutting across the various species.

112 WA 87, SEH 6.663. “Atque fieri fortasse potest ut qui juvenis fato ereptus sit Nemesin praevertat et effugiat; cui autem diuturna obvenit felicitas et potentia, is proculdubio Nemesi subjicitur, ac veluti substernitur.”

143 Human passions and emotions cannot be informed by reason or eliminated as diseases, as classical moral philosophy taught. Bacon’s natural philosophy and moral philosophy both turn away from the starting point of classical philosophy, what is first for us. His natural philosophy shows this rejection most clearly in his dismissal of the common understanding of the world as fundamentally divided into natural kinds. His moral philosophy rejects shame, which preserves and propagates opinions regarding the fine and the base.

The end of natural philosophy is immortality, Bacon states several times in De sapientia.

Human philosophy, as engaged after the failure of natural philosophy, aims at immortality as well, though in a derivative way, through the regard of others. Both these immortalities are closely tied up with mastery or dominion. Man’s chief desire is for immortality, and he achieves this end only to the extent to which he can impose ends on other things, which, as Bacon states in

“Prometheus,” have no ends or purposes apart from man. Similarly, fame is achieved through the understanding and governance of human nature. Those with less understanding of nature and the means to immortality serve the ends of those such as Augustus, who understand human nature and thus avoid destruction. Bacon’s moral philosophy, however, achieves something more fundamental than honor or personal self-preservation; by removing obstacles to the practice of a true natural philosophy, it promotes the good of the human race.

144 4. Moral Philosophy as a Preparation for Natural Philosophy

Granted that natural and moral philosophy share principles, which science is prior?

Macauley seems to refer to them as coeval;113 Faulkner looks to natural philosophy for priority, pointing to Bacon’s description of natural philosophy in the Novum organum as the “great mother of the sciences”;114 Howard B. White argues that moral philosophy has a conditional priority over natural philosophy.115 To answer this question, it is helpful to note that Bacon in

De sapientia seems to depart from his own advice in the Advancement about how to proceed in moral philosophy. In the Advancement he criticizes the ancients for their superficial treatment or even outright neglect of practical ethics, or the culture of the mind, and advocates creating

“Sound and true distributions and descriptions of the seueral characters & tempers of mens

Natures and dispositions.”116 A similar analysis should be made of the various affections and passions and their effects on each other.117 Bacon’s description of these analyses is an early step toward the method which is the central theme of Novum organum. There he advocates for a new and revolutionary form of induction that works on “tables of instances” and that extends to moral as well as to natural philosophy. Yet in De sapientia there is no attempt whatsoever to the tables proposed in the Advancement, and no concern with method.

113 Macauley, “Lord Bacon,” 120-21.

114 Faulkner, The Project of Progress, 272-73.

115 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 122-24.

116 OFB 4.147.

117 OFB 4.149-150.

145 In this section, I will argue that one of the reasons Bacon wrote the moral fables before fully establishing his induction and before completing the tables of passions and natures is that the work of natural philosophy – and more broadly the establishment of the method for all sciences, including moral philosophy – presupposes the managing of passions and natures that would otherwise obstruct its advancement. This interpretation, if correct, would suggest how

Bacon would situate the De sapientia within the project of his Instauratio Magna, his attempt to establish true science on a new, firm foundation. 118 In fact, evidence that it does find a place within the Instauratio is found in a letter written in 1625, towards the end of his life, to an Italian priest, Father Fulgentius. In this letter Bacon describes his Instauratio and places his moral and political writings, including the De sapientia, after De augmentis, the first part of his Instauratio, and before the Novum Organon, which is the second part. Bacon notes, however, that these moral and political writings are not strictly part of his Instauratio proper: “And this volume is (as

I said) interposed, not following the order of the ‘Instauratio’” (atque hic tomus [ut diximus] interjectus est, et non ex ordine ‘Instaurationis’).119 De sapientia is not strictly a part of his

Instauratio because it lacks tables of instances and there is little or no application of Bacon’s method, which is only developed in the Novum Organon. Bacon places De sapientia within the

Instauratio before his Novum Organon, however, because the establishment of true philosophy has been thwarted by untethered passions, and the De sapientia teaches the way to use passions for the advancement rather than for the destruction of true science. Howard B. White suggests

118 This rough description of Bacon’s Instauratio will suffice for our purposes here; Bacon’s plan of the Instauratio will be treated in detail in the next chapter. The “Instauratio Magna,” Bacon’s scientific project, should be distinguished from the Instauratio magna (1620), the volume containing his most important writings on the project.

119 LL 5.531, 533 (translation revised).

146 such a use of the incomplete moral teaching in De Sapientia, and very briefly sketches some of the ways in which the fables fulfill this role.120 I build on his sketch in the following paragraphs.

I will start with “Prometheus, or the State of Man” (26). Anna-Maria Hartmann points out that, just as “Pan, or Nature” (6) treats of nature as a whole, so “Prometheus” treats of man as a whole.121 In “Prometheus,” Bacon describes man as “the centre of the world, in respect of final causes,” who gives purpose to things so that they serve man.122 This service is necessary because man unaided by art is utterly unarmed and helpless. Bacon then describes some of the traits or dispositions which aid or hinder this effort to subdue nature, focusing at length on the curious virtue of ingratitude. The fable tells us that, after Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man, man responded with anger instead of gratitude, and accused Prometheus before

Jupiter. This ingratitude – a vice, Bacon says, “that in a manner contains all other vices” (quod vitium omnia fere complectitur)123 – was greatly rewarded by Jupiter, who gave man perpetual youth. Bacon interprets this remarkable outcome as follows: “Men’s outcries upon the defects of nature and art proceed from an excellent disposition of the mind, and turn to their good; whereas, the silencing of them is hateful to the gods, and redounds not so much to their profit.”124 Those, on the contrary, who admire and praise human nature and their own knowledge want the state of

120 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 122-24.

121 Anna-Maria Hartmann, “Light from Darkness: The Relationship between Francis Bacon’s Prima Philosophia and his Concept of the Greek Fable,” The Seventeenth Century 26, no. 2 (2011): 211.

122 WA 100, SEH 6.670. “Verum et hoc praecipue proponitur, quod homo veluti centrum mundi sit, quatenus ad causas finales. . . .”

123 WA 102, SEH 6.672.

124 WA 102-103, SEH 6.672. “Hoc enim vult allegoria; incusationem et naturae suae et artis per homines factam, ex optimo mentis statu proficisci, atque in bonum cedere; contrarium diis invisum et infaustum esse.”

147 extant sciences to be considered complete. Bacon singles out especially the Aristotelians, men of

“foolish and evil dispositions” (inscitiam et malum genium) who cannot abide any suggestion that Aristotle’s philosophy is imperfect.125 Their mindset leads to complacency and stagnation, whereas those accusing nature and the sciences “are ever in action, seeking always to find out new inventions.”126 The gift from Jupiter of eternal youth signifies the ability of science, if not hindered by the sluggishness and complacency of men, to attain prolongation of life.

In “Narcissus, or Self-love” (4), Bacon paints a picture of the man who is made sluggish and complacent by his own supposed excellence. Narcissus was a beautiful but proud youth, who lived a solitary life, accompanied only by a few followers, “to whom he alone was all things” (quibus ipse omnia erat).127 One of these followers was the nymph Echo. One day

Narcissus happened to see his reflection in the water, and was so enamored with the sight that he never left that spot. Wasting away, he was transformed into the flower Narcissus (commonly known as the daffodil), which is sacred to the powers of Hades.

Bacon interprets this fable as showing the inevitable destruction of those who are besotted with their own nature. Howard B. White and others have described his interpretation as an attack against Aristotle and his followers, in particular against their notion of contemplation.128 In “Prometheus,” Bacon identifies Aristotle and his followers as egregious examples of those who are content with nature and what they possess of arts and sciences; such

125 WA 103 (translation revised); SEH 6.672.

126 Ibid. “Illi vere et magis modestum animi sensum retinent, et perpetuo ad novam industriam et nova inventa extimulantur.”

127 WA 30, SEH 632.

128 White, “Bacon’s Wisdom,” 122, 127; Stephen A. Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early- Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47, n. 28.

148 men harm the human race by their complacent stagnation. In “Narcissus,” he uncovers the nature of such men more fully. Their pursuit of contemplation is portrayed by themselves as the fullest life, but in reality such a retirement springs from weakness. Van Malssen observes that

“although the narcissist proudly believes that he is self-sufficient, his self-love is constituted by the very fact that he is being observed and admired by others.”129 Narcissists surround themselves with those who agree with them and honor them, who flatter and applaud everything they say – just as the Aristotelians, who, Bacon states in “Prometheus,” cannot bear to hear any attack on their philosophy. Their seclusion from dissenting voices and avoidance of conflict leads to an utter lack of energy and vigor, so that they accomplish nothing. The flower named for Narcissus is fittingly sacred to the gods below, because “men of this disposition become unprofitable to all human things.” Narcissistic people fail not only others but also themselves.

Because of their lack of fruit their life “passeth and vanisheth as if it never had been, like the way of a ship in the sea.”130 Paradoxically, their self-love and their desire for honor lead them on a path that results in their own most complete obliteration.

In “Dionysus” (24), Bacon is skeptical of attempts to change the traits and dispositions of men. The use of these traits and dispositions, however, can be changed. Bacon argues that great and noble acts “sometimes proceed from virtue…and sometimes from a secret affection and hidden passion.”131 And elsewhere in the De sapientia, he argues that the desire for honor and

129 Van Malssen, Unity of Knowledge, 59.

130 WA 31, SEH 6.633. “Eodem pertinet, quod flos ille diis inferis sacer sit; quia homines talis indolis ad omnia inutiles prorsus evadunt. Quicquid autem nullum ex se fructum edit, sed (veluti via navis in mari) transit et labitur, id apud antiquos umbris et diis inferis consecrari solebat.”

131 WA 94, SEH 6.667. “Postremo illa confusio personarum Jovis et Bacchi ad parabolam recte traduci potest; quandoquidem res gestae nobiles et clarae, et merita insignia et gloriosa, interdum a virtute et recta ratione et magnanimitate, interdum a latente affectu et occulta cupiditate (utcunque famae et laudis celebritate efferantur) proveniant: ut non facile sit distinguere facta Bachi a factis Jovis.”

149 applause can be harnessed to produce good deeds. Self-love propels Orpheus, the philosopher, as well as Narcissus, the recluse. Philosophers “seek eternity by the fame and glory of their merits.”132 In “Prometheus,” Bacon compares the games of Prometheus, in which men ran a race carrying a burning torch, to the development of arts and sciences, and urges men to seek honor and glory through natural philosophy. “It were therefore to be wished that these games in honour of Prometheus or human nature were again restored, and that matters should receive success by combat and emulation….”133 Not only is it possible to harness the desire for glory and honor to philosophical achievement, but it is necessary for the better accomplishment of philosophy.

Bacon contrasts the Aristotelians, so happy with the supposed perfections of both their nature and science, and hence so sluggish in improvement, with those querulous concerning their nature and the knowledge that they possess. The latter are symbolized in the Promethean myth by men turning on Prometheus and condemning him and his fire before Jupiter. The unthinking many condemn this as ingratitude, “a vice that in a manner contains all other vices” (quod vitium omnia fere complectitur).134 Bacon, however, praises such men: “men’s outcries upon the defects of nature and art proceed from an excellent disposition of the mind.”135 True knowledge

132 WA 59, SEH 6.648. “Quia mortis necessitas inevitabilis evidentius proposita, hominibus ad aeternitatem meritis et nominis fama quaerendam animos addit.”

133 WA 111, SEH 6.676. “Haec sunt illa, quae in fabula ista vulgari et decantata nobis adumbrari videntur; neque tamen inficiamur, illi subesse haud pauca, quae ad Christianae fidei mysteria miro consensu innuant; ante omnia navigatio illa Herculis in urceo ad liberandum Prometheum, imaginem Dei Verbi, in carne tanquam fragili vasculo ad redemptionem generis humani properantis, prae se ferre videtur.”

134 WA 102; SEH 6.672.

135 Ibid. “Incusationem et naturae suae et artis per homines factam, ex optimo mentis statu proficisci, atque in bonum cedere; contrarium diis invisum et infaustum esse.”

150 of the pitiful state of man’s situation in the world, and of the primitive state of his science, involves not only an intellectual exertion but a moral one. The philosopher’s accusation of his nature and his inherited scientific knowledge is an accusation not only against his philosophical predecessors but against God: “The accusation of Prometheus, their [i.e., men’s] author and master, though bitter and vehement, will conduce more to their profit, than to be effuse in the congratulation of his invention.”136 Thus the true philosopher appears ungrateful and vicious both to the many and to the adherents of traditional philosophy. He must become base inasmuch as he strips the apparent grandeur from human nature and proclaims its imperfection, and inasmuch as he embraces ingratitude, regarded as one of the basest of vices. Bacon prepares such a man by the teaching of the moral fable “Juno” (16), which attempts to overthrow traditional teachings on shame and instructs men to embrace the base in certain situations. The natural philosopher who has understood the teaching of “Juno” will not balk at the expedient of being ungrateful and ignoble, provided he attain the end in view, “new benefits and greater favors” (novas eleemosynas et donaria) for mankind.137

Other essays in De sapientia speak of the relationship between the passions, religion, and science. Bacon, throughout his writings, warns that religious controversy, whether carried out verbally or through warfare, hinders scientific progress. In the Advancement, Bacon makes the historical argument that the multiplication of religious disputes has hindered the progress of science. In the same year that he published De sapientia, Bacon, in a letter to Toby Matthew, expresses in an elegant metaphor the relationship between religious dissension and science:

136 WA 104; SEH 6.672. “Incusationem Promethei licet authoris et magistri, eamque acrem et vehementem, magis sanam et utilem quam gratulationem effusam esse; denique opinionem copiae inter maximas causas inopiae reponi.”

137 Ibid.

151 “Myself am like the miller of Huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows; for while the winds blew, the wind-mills wrought, and the water-mill was less customed. So I see that controversies of religion must hinder the advancement of sciences.”138 In De sapientia,

Bacon furthers our understanding of this correlation between religious controversy and scientific stagnation, and our ability to successfully avoid the former, by uncovering some of the human passions that lead to religious controversies.

In “Diomedes” (18), as was discussed above, Bacon treats of the passion of religious zeal. True to his belief that the passions cannot be extirpated and can rarely and with difficulty be hidden or suppressed, Bacon does not attempt to persuade people to set aside their zeal for one religion over against others. Rather, as in many of his essays in De sapientia, such as “Juno”

(16) and “Narcissus” (4), Bacon argues that some particular attempt to fulfill the passion in question has an effect opposite to that intended. In particular, when zeal against false religions takes the form of religious warfare, it strengthens rather than weakens those religions. Pious souls may believe that action against false religions should be undertaken by words and not swords, and Bacon seems to indicate as much when he speaks of those who “endeavor to reform and convince any sect of religion…not by the force of argument, and doctrine, and holiness of life, and by the weight of examples and authority, but labor to extirpate and root it out by fire and sword and tortures.”139 Nevertheless, Bacon does not advocate religious controversies even when undertaken by words alone, as his passages in the Advancement decrying the adverse effect

138 LL 4.137-38. This quotation provides the title of H. B. White’s influential book on Bacon’s politics, Peace Among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968).

139 WA 76-77, SEH 658. “Qui itaque sectam aliquam religionis, licet vanam et corruptam et infamem (id quod sub persona Veneris significatur), non vi rationis et doctrinae, et sanctitate vitae, atque exemplorum et authoritatum pondere, corrigere et convincere; sed ferro et flamma et poenarum acerbitate exscindere et exterminare nituntur. . . .”

152 of theological controversy on science show. And in “Actaeon and Pentheus, or a Curious Man”

(10), as was noted above, Bacon discourages all human attempts to penetrate theological questions. Curiosity, our desire to know, should not be trained on divine things, lest we have two contradictory guides to life’s actions, just as Pentheus saw two suns and two Thebes. The inference seems to be that only natural reason should guide our understanding. At the least, it is clear that interdicting rational investigation into theological subjects would prohibit religious controversy as traditionally understood. And in the absence of this controversy, true natural philosophy has more chance to thrive.

In “Memnon, or the Premature” (14), Bacon discusses human behavior which he elsewhere (notably in “Ericthonius” [20]) reveals as harmful to the pursuit of natural philosophy.

Memnon, the son of the goddess Aurora, joined the Trojans in their war against the Greeks, and rashly ventured into single combat with Achilles, who killed him. Bacon interprets this fable as referring to the fates of talented young men, who, “puffed up with the glittering show of vanity and ostentation, attempt actions above their strength,” and are overcome.140 Such men are led to destruction by two unchecked passions, impatience and vanity.

The relationship of these two passions to natural philosophy is discussed in “Ericthonius, or Imposture.” Vulcan attempted to make love to Venus, who resisted; in their struggle Vulcan’s semen spilled on the ground, and Ericthonius arose from it. Ericthonius’s upper body was beautiful and proportionate, but below the waist he was deformed, with his legs small and shriveled, in appearance like an eel. According to Bacon, this story represents the struggle of art

140 WA 66; SEH 652-53. “Atque inanium et externorum specie tumidi, majora fere viribus audent, atque heoes fortissimos lacessunt, et in certamen deposcunt, et impari congressu succumbentes extinguuntur.”

153 to subdue nature. Art fails, producing only “imperfect births and lame works, fair to the eye, but weak and defective in use.”141 Nevertheless, such an issue pleases some, imposters who parade the pitiful results of science with pride. The remedy of this situation is achieved by setting aside the attempt “to overcome nature by force” and instead to “sue for her embracements by due obsequiousness and observance.”142 The same failing and remedy are pointed out in other fables

– in “Orpheus” (11, natural science fails “through curious and untimely diligence and impatience” (per curiosam et intempestivam sedulitatem et impatientiam).143 In “Promethus”

(26), greed and vanity lead men to turn from the slow plodding path of true science; their “levity and temerity” (levitatem et temeritatem) are reflected in their quickness to abandon any new endeavor if they do not speedily attain their ends.144 Success, however, comes from succession, as in the relay races with burning torches in honor of Prometheus, that is, of human nature, and not solely from the skill of or for the sake of the individual.

In this section I have argued that Bacon’s moral philosophy serves as a preparation for his natural philosophy. This preparatory moral philosophy, however, is unmethodical and undeveloped inasmuch as it does not proceed inductively, as Bacon argues it should even in such early works as the Advancement. Moral philosophy cannot be perfected until it employs the method laid out in the Novum organum, where Bacon states that natural philosophy is the “great mother of the sciences.” Such a phrase suggests that, whatever relationship obtains between an

141 WA 82, SEH 6.661. “Sed tamen multa machinatione et molitione (tanquam lucta) intercidere atque emitti generationes imperfectas, et opera quaedam manca, aspectu speciosa, usu infirma et claudicantia....”

142 WA 82-83, SEH 6.661. “Qualia fere et inter productiones chymicas, et inter subtilitates et novitates mechanicas saepius notare licet; praesertim cum homines potius propositum urgentes, quam ab erroribus suis se recipientes, cum natura colluctentur magis, quam debito obsequio et cultu ejus amplexus petant.”

143 WA 58, SEH 6.648.

144 WA 105, SEH 6.673.

154 undeveloped moral philosophy and natural philosophy, natural philosophy is prior to any systematic and perfect moral philosophy. I will examine this question in the next chapter.

Conclusion

The unusual form of De sapientia makes the work more effective in teaching new doctrines concerning moral and natural philosophy. The primary division of the fables into human and natural invites an investigation of the similarities and differences between Bacon’s moral and natural philosophy. Their starting points and ends are analogous. Both reject opinion,

“what is most known to us,” as a starting place. They take instead their beginning from investigation of simple natures. Both see immortality as the end; each promises dominion, the one over nature, the other over men. Method or the way for either natural or moral philosophy is not developed in De sapientia. I believe this is explained by the preparatory role of moral philosophy for natural philosophy. Only by using the moral teaching of the De sapientia is it possible to implement the method presented in the Novum organum, which would in turn perfect moral philosophy. In this work, a discussion of the new method of natural philosophy and a more developed account of its starting point will present a more complete picture of Bacon’s new understanding of action and contemplation.

CHAPTER THREE

ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION IN THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA

Introduction

In 1620 Francis Bacon published a volume written in Latin entitled Instauratio magna, which contained preliminaries to and parts of his massive six-part project of the same name, the

Instauratio Magna. He undertook this work, he says, because the “human reason which we use as far as the investigation of nature is not well prepared and built” (Ratio Humana, qua utimur quoad Inquisitionem Naturae, non bene congesta & aedificata sit). Indeed, learning as a whole is in such a bad way that a “general Instauration of the sciences, and arts, and all human teaching” (Scientiarum, & Artium, atque omnis Humanane Doctrinae, in universum Instauratio) is necessary.1 The most substantial part of Instauratio magna was the Novum organum, regarded as Bacon’s magnum opus by almost all his commentators. Bacon himself, in the dedicatory letter to Bishop Lancelot Andrews introducing An Advertisement Touching a Holy

War in 1623 – when the Novum organum was the only one of the parts of the Instauratio Magna published2 – states that Instauratio Magna was the work he “most esteemed.”3 Later in the letter,

1 OFB 11.2.

2 The Instauratio magna closes with the Parasceve ad historiam naturalem and the Catalogus historiarum particularium, both of which belong to the third part of the Instauratio, “Natural .” But they are not themselves natural histories; Graham Rees accurately describes them as “preliminaries” to the third part (OFB 11.xxi). The Novum organum was itself was incomplete; see Graham Rees, OFB 11.xcii. Bacon states in his letter to Andrews that he intends to translate the Advancement into Latin, “not without great and ample additions and enrichment thereof, especially in the second book, which handleth the Partition of Sciences; in such sort, as I hold it may serve in lieu of the first part of the Instauration, and acquit my promise in that part” (SEH 7.14). The translation and adaption was published in 1623 as De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum libri ix.

155

156 Bacon provides a reason for his high regard for that project: in the works of the Instauratio he

“had in contemplation the general good of men in their very being, and the dowries of nature.” 4

Bacon frequently joins his new natural philosophy and man’s good. Throughout his writings, he gives arguments for his new philosophy based on an understanding of the human good. In the Advancement and Proficiency of Learning, Human and Divine, he identifies

Christian charity as the greatest good and states that it is achieved preeminently by the “mastery of nature” for the “relief of man’s estate.” The ethical essays in the De sapientia veterum can, as

I argued in the last chapter, be interpreted as directing human emotions in order to lead men to the new natural philosophy. But Bacon fully lays out his new idea of science and critiques most forcefully the conceptions of contemplation that were at the center of the ancients’ understanding of the human good in the Novum organum. The Advancement, he writes to Bishop Andrewes,

“exhibits a mixture of new conceits and old; whereas the Instauration gives the new unmixed, otherwise than with some little aspersion of the old for taste’s sake.”5 The Novum organum contains Bacon’s most developed and thorough description of action and contemplation. To understand his idea of the human good, it is necessary to closely examine these. As he states in both the Advancement and the Novum Organum, and as Richard Kennington has elucidated in a series of essays, his contemplation is not that of the ancients.6 His new accounts of action and

3 SEH 7.13. “Therefore having not long since set forth a part of my Instauration; which is the work, that in mine own judgment (si nunquam fallit imago) I do most esteem; I think to proceed in some new parts thereof.” The Latin quotation comes from Virgil, Ecologues 2.27. See also De augmentis 5.3 (SEH 4.476).

4 SEH 7.14.

5 SEH 7.13.

6 OFB 4.31-32; OFB 11.18-20, 56-58. See the essays on Bacon in Richard Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philsoophy, eds. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

157 contemplation are best understood in contrast with the ancient accounts of action and contemplation with which he engages.

The importance of Bacon’s consideration, and reconsideration, of the relationship of action and contemplation for his philosophy has been widely acknowledged. The commentators discussing Bacon’s action and contemplation have focused in large part on which of the two is the proper goal of Baconian science.7 Lord Macaulay, drawing an extensive comparison of

Bacon with Plato, whom he regarded as the chief exponent of the ancient belief that contemplation was the end of man, saw Bacon as resolutely rejecting this goal: “In Plato’s opinion man was made for philosophy: in Bacon’s opinion philosophy was made for man; it was a means to an end; and that end was to increase the pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and cannot be philosophers.”8 Stephen Gaukroger, Ian Box, and Robert K.

Faulkner agree that Bacon places action as the highest good.9 There are others, though, who deny that Bacon exalted action over contemplation. Lisa Jardine states flatly that “contemplative truth, not technological advance, is the main goal of Baconian science.”10 Svetozar Minkov

7 In so doing they follow, consciously or not, an ancient tradition. In the works of Seneca, for example, the question of the good life is formulated mainly as a question of whether action or contemplation is the proper end of man.

8 Macauley, Lord Bacon (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873), 106.

9 Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39; Ian Box, “Bacon’s Moral Philosophy” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, 262, 265-66; Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 4, 87-89.

10 Lisa Jardine, Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 116. This statement is quoted in Richard Kennington’s review of Antonio Pérez-Ramos’ Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition (Review of Metaphysics 43, no. 2 [1989]: 415).

158 argues that “for Bacon the best life consists fundamentally in philosophic inquiry” rather than in action alleviating the human condition.11

As Kennington argues, the commentators discussing the relationship of action and contemplation in Bacon do not generally take into account the new nature of Baconian action and contemplation.12 Kennington himself, dwelling on Bacon’s statement that his new logic differs from the ancient’s in its end, its starting points, and its method, traces in a series of essays the distinction between the Baconian account of contemplation and that given by prior philosophers. While I rely heavily on his insights, he focuses on Bacon’s natural philosophy, whereas this chapter focuses on the significance of Bacon’s new action and contemplation for his moral philosophy. I will attempt to understand Bacon’s new action and contemplation – in particular as it differs from that of his ancient predecessors, specifically Aristotle, Seneca, and

Lucretius – and his new idea of the human good which arises from his new conception of action and contemplation.

While this chapter will use the De augmentis and several fragmentary works leading up to the Instauratio magna – particularly Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature: with the Annotations of Hermes Stella (1603), Temporis partus masculus, sive instauratio magna imperii humani in universum (1603), Cogitationes de natura rerum (1604), Redargutio

11 Svetozar Minkov, Francis Bacon’s “Inquiry Touching Human Nature”: Virtue, Philosophy, and the Relief of Man’s Estate (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 23. Minkov, I think, interprets Baconian contemplation as closer to Epicureanism than to any other tradition. See the end of his work, pp. 134-35: “The desire for knowledge, for being aware of our situation, is derivative from or at least consistent with the natural motion of the atom. . . . Mindedness or awareness makes a human being whole. The self-knowing and world-discovering self acquires a sharper definition and determination.”

12 Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon I” in On Modern Origins, 18-19.

159 philosophiarum (1608), and De principiis atque originibus13 – it will focus on the Novum organum. With the De augmentis, it is the only part of the Instauratio approaching completion; it contains Bacon’s most developed account of his philosophy; and it is his most thorough critique of ancient alternatives.

In the first section I will describe Bacon’s Instauratio Magna. I will then outline the

Novum organum, Bacon’s treatment of the second part of the Instauratio.

In the second section I will treat of Bacon’s new conception of action. I will first briefly sketch two prior accounts of action, Aristotle’s and Seneca’s. Next, I will discuss Bacon’s departure from them in his goal for the Instauratio Magna. I will consider the phrase contained in the title of the Novum organum, “the Kingdom of Man,” which signals Bacon’s departure from both Aristotelian politics and Augustinian theology. Novum organum 1.129, a locus classicus for the comparison of Bacon’s philosophy with that of the ancients, also helps illumine his new action. Finally, I will consider Bacon’s description of himself as a new Alexander the

Great, one who will achieve works greater than those of the greatest statesmen and conquerors.

In the third section I will discuss Bacon’s contemplation. I will briefly consider three ancient accounts of contemplation, those of Aristotle, Seneca, and Lucretius. Bacon’s most through critique of ancient contemplation is contained in his famous account of the idols. He attempts to avoid the influence of the idols in large part through his new organon, his new , which differs significantly from Aristotle’s old organon. Central to the new organon and to his new idea of contemplation is his new conception of form. I will end this

13 There is wide disagreement about the composition date of De principiis. Estimates range from 1610 to 1624. See Rees, OFB 6.xxviii, n. 61. Rees himself very tentatively dates it to 1612 (ibid., xxxi).

160 section with a discussion of Bacon’s consideration of the ultimate things, the aim of ancient contemplation.

In the final section, I will discuss the relationship between Baconian action and contemplation. I consider how Bacon’s natural philosophy is both active and contemplative, in contradistinction to ancient philosophy in general and Aristotle’s in particular. Finally, I discuss what the active and contemplative nature of Bacon’s new natural philosophy, which Bacon calls the “great mother of the sciences,” means for other sciences, particularly ethics.

1. Preliminaries: Bacon’s Instauratio Magna and Novum Organum

Instauratio Magna

Charles Whitney traces Bacon’s use of the word “instauratio” and finds that his first known use of the word occurs in Temporis partus masculus, sive instauratio magna imperii humani in universum, an early fragmentary draft of the Instauratio magna tentatively dated around 1602-03. According to Whitney, Bacon “never explained or discussed the notion of instauration,” despite the word’s ambiguity and its importance as the title of his massive project.

Whitney reasonably suggests that this is an example of his “initiative” method of writing, intended to lead the reader to deeper consideration of the matters written about. 14

Whitney points to Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus linguae romanae et brittanae (1565), a work that Bacon was familiar with and approved of, and which gives two distinct meanings of

14 Charles Whitney, “Francis Bacon’s Instauratio: Dominion of and over Humanity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50, no. 3 (1989): 371, 372.

161 “instauratio.” On the one hand it means “restore” or “refresh,” on the other “make new” or

“begin again.”15 This ambiguity would be useful to one who wished to introduce revolutionary changes in a gradual and non-jarring way. Whitney also describes two main contexts for the use of “instauratio” in Bacon’s time. One was the celebration of the “patronage of rulers in restoring buildings and in renewing literature, culture, or public spirit.”16 The other was that of the

Vulgate, which uses “instauratio” or “instaurare” numerous times to describe the restoration of

Solomon’s temple. This use is connected to “a prophetic ‘rebuilding’ of Israel and to a Christian instauration of all things in the apocalypse.”17 Bacon’s use of “instauratio” is apt given both of these contexts: He sees his program as institutional and ideally state-sponsored, and it aims at the restoration of man to his pre-lapsarian state.18

The Instauratio magna is the first published work in which Bacon describes his ambitious project. After a short introduction and dedication, a preface describes the state of the sciences, giving arguments why an instauratio is needed. Next follows a section that lays out a six-part plan for the Instauratio Magna. The Novum organum, the second part of that plan, makes up the bulk of the published volume. Parasceve ad historiam naturalem and Catalogus historiarum naturalium follow; both belong to the third part of the Instauratio Magna.

15 Ibid., 373.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., 377.

18 See, for instance, Valerius Terminus, where describes the aim of knowledge as “a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation” (SEH 3.222). See also the Advancement, OFB 4.121.

162 Bacon’s division of the Instauratio Magna into six parts dates back to an early draft of the

Novum organum titled Partis instaurationis secundae delineatio & argumentum (1607). Though

Bacon here does not describe the first book, Ellis notes that the description of the parts that he does give “agrees exactly with the design ultimately developed in the Distributio Operis.”19 A clear goal and a stable outline underlie the constant revision and refinement of the details of his

Instauratio Magna.

The first part of the Instauratio is a summary of present learning. This summary contains a division of the sciences that includes not only developed sciences but also ones that have been partially or entirely ignored. Bacon says in the Instauratio magna that this first part is lacking, but the divisions of the science “can be sought in some part” (nonnulla ex parte peti possunt)20 from the Advancement. His translation and rewriting of the Advancement, the De augmentis, serves as a more full exposition of the first part.21

The second part contains Bacon’s method for perfecting the use of the intellect. The intellect must undergo this perfection “to overcome the dark and difficult things of nature” (ad

Naturae ardua & obscura superanda).22 As indicated by the title of the Novum organum, Bacon aims to replace the induction and demonstration of Aristotle’s old Organon with a more sophisticated induction. A necessary prequel to the perfection of the intellect is an understanding of the idols of the mind, which distort and corrupt its operations.

19 SEH 3.543. For the history of the six-part distributio, see Rees, OFB 6.xvii-xix, OFB 13.xix-xxv, OFB 11.xix- xxii.

20 From the title page of the Novum organum (OFB 11.48).

21 SEH 7.14.

22 OFB 11.28.

163 The third part of the Instauratio Magna is the Phenomena of the Universe (Phaenomena

Vniversi), a natural history of “every kind of experience” (omnigenam Experientiam).23 It comprises lists of the various occurrences of natural bodies and “virtues,” such as hot, cold, heavy, light, etc. A major difference between Bacon’s proposed natural history and other extant histories is Bacon’s insistence that the free workings of nature are less important than nature

“restrained and vexed” (constrictae & vexatae).24 The Instauratio magna ends with a section entitled Catalog of Particular Histories (Catalogus historiarum particularium), listing 130 proposed natural histories.

The fourth part is a number of examples showing how different objects are investigated by the new method. It is a “particular and detailed application of the second part” (Secundae

Partis applicatio particularis & explicata); it provides models of how the new philosophy should proceed. 25

The fifth part, which Bacon says is required only for a time, lists the discoveries that he has made in his philosophical labors. These are not acquired by the new method, and hence lack the certitude he hopes to achieve in his new philosophy, but nevertheless serve “like tents placed on the road” (tabernaculorum in via positorum vice), as resting points, for minds working towards the true philosophy. 26

All the other parts are ordered to the sixth part, which “finally uncovers and proposes that philosophy, which is drawn from and set up by this kind of legitimate, chaste, and rigorous

23 OFB 11.36.

24 OFB 11.38.

25 OFB 11.42.

26 Ibid.

164 examination.”27 The completion of this part, Bacon says, is beyond his own strength. He gives the beginning, but “the fortune of the human race will give the end” (exitum generis humani fortuna dabit).28

Plan of the Novum Organum

While Bacon presents his new method in the second book of the Novum organum, in the first book he prepares human minds to receive this method. He divides this book into two parts.

He calls the first part of the first book, aphorisms 1-114, the “destructive part” (pars destruens), consisting of three refutations: of reason, of demonstrations, and of particular philosophies. The second part, aphorisms 115-130, gives “true opinion” (verae opiniones) about his work, so that readers might get an overall sense of what Bacon does in the second book and be favorably predisposed to it. 29

Bacon opens the work by setting out the most general relationship between man and nature (aphorisms 1-4). Man must observe and be obedient to nature in order to conquer it; man conquers nature only by using the workings of nature. Aphorisms 5-10 describe the failure of the current science to conquer nature. And just as traditional science hasn’t achieved works, so traditional logic hasn’t discovered new sciences, because its starting points are incorrect and its

27 OFB 11.44. “Eam demum recludit & proponit Philosophiam, quae ex huiusmodi … inquisitione legitima, & casta, & seuera educitur & constituitur.”

28 Ibid.

29 For Bacon’s description of the two books, and his division of the first book into two parts and his description of these parts, see OFB 11.172, 196.

165 demonstrations useless (11-30). Aphorisms 31-37 discuss the difficulties of introducing the new logic, and the ways to effectively make such an introduction.

Bacon introduces the idols and gives a brief description of the four kinds of idols in aphorisms 38-44. He then discusses the idols in depth: the idols of the tribe (45-52), the idols of the cave (53-58), the idols of the forum (59-60), and the idols of the theater (61-67). The next three aphorisms summarize the idols and discuss the demonstrations currently in vogue, which he calls depraved and “like the fortifications and protections of the idols” (veluti munitiones quaedam sunt & praesidia).30

In aphorisms 71-77, Bacon discusses the signs which show current philosophies are inadequate. Throughout these aphorisms he develops a rich if brief analysis of the history of philosophy. In the next sections he discusses the reasons why philosophies so stagnant and corrupt have risen and survived. He ends with a discussion of men’s lack of hope (92), “by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of the sciences” (longe maximum progressibus

Scientiarum....obstaculum).31 He aims to remove despair and cultivate hope by correcting past errors (93-107). He gives several more reasons for hope in aphorisms 108-114. In aphorism 115 he sums up the destructive part of the Instauratio, while describing what the rest of Book One will do: sketch out the form and end of Bacon’s new method so that his readers may not be predisposed against it.

Bacon first seeks to remove possible false opinions about his aims: he wants neither to found a philosophical sect (116), nor to prematurely attempt to extract beneficial works from his project (117). In the following aphorisms (118-126) he answers possible objections to his work.

30 OFB 11.108.

31 OFB 11.148.

166 He then removes possible misapprehensions about his work (127-28). In aphorism 129 he undertakes the richest discussion in any of his works on the goal of science. Aphorism 130 ends the first book by looking forward to Book Two, where Bacon describes the interpretation of nature.

Faithful to his axiom that the end governs the way of proceeding,32 Bacon opens Book

Two of the Novum organum with a discussion of the aim of human power and human knowledge. Human power aims “to generate and draw over a new nature or new natures above a given body” (super datum Corpus nouam Naturam, siue nouas Naturas generare & superinducere); knowledge aims to discover the form of a given nature.33 Bacon spends the next seven aphorisms defining form and nature, as well as terms which arise in connection with the above goals, “latent process” (latens processus) and “latent schematism” (latens schematismus).34 He divides the sciences into Metaphysics, which investigates the forms, and

Physics, which investigates latent process and latent schematism (aphorism 9).

Bacon next sets out the process by which we determine the form of a nature, using heat as an example. He first sets out three tables, of instances, negatives, and comparatives. After the submission of the tables, induction proper can begin. In aphorisms 16 and 17, he indicates the necessary method: forms are discovered not by looking at where the nature is, but by rejection and exclusion of natures which do not always accompany the nature in question. After giving an example of this rejection (18), he gives a preliminary definition of the nature of heat.

32 Parasceve 2, OFB 11.456.

33 OFB 11.200.

34 I use Rees’s translations here.

167 In aphorism 21, Bacon lists nine “aids of the intellect” (auxilia intellectus) in performing induction.35 Graham Rees describes the aids of the intellect as “labour-saving devices or shortcuts intended to accelerate or make more rigorous the search for forms by providing logical reinforcement to induction, correcting the deficiencies of the intellect, and making stronger and more precise the data on which Bacon’s programme rests.”36 Though in aphorism 21 Bacon says he will speak about all these aids, he only speaks of one, the Instances with Special Powers, which takes up the rest of Book Two (aphorisms 22-52).

Bacon closes the work by recalling the aim of his Instauratio Magna: “a correction of man’s state and the growth of his power over nature.”37 He draws his much-used comparison between the effects of religion and science: the former restores man to his state of innocence, the latter to his dominion over nature.

2. Bacon’s Action

Prior Accounts of Action: Aristotle and Seneca

In the final book of his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle uses the political life as a foil while arguing for the superiority of the philosophic life. He concludes that men who pursue either of these lives are happy in some way.38 In the Politics Aristotle states that “it is evident that these

35 OFB 11.272.

36 OFB 11.lxxviii.

37 OFB 11.446. “Vnde necesse est sequi emendationem Status hominis, & Ampliationem potestatis eius super Naturam.”

38 1178a10.

168 two ways of life are the ones intentionally chosen by those human beings who are most ambitious with a view to virtue, both in former times and at the present; the two I mean are the political and the philosophic.” 39 Why does the political life have the stature it does in Aristotle’s ethical works, such that, with the contemplative life, it is the chief contender for man’s highest good? To answer this question it is necessary to look at Aristotle’s teaching about the relations between political action, virtue, and happiness.

Happiness is first brought up in connection with political activity. Early in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asks “what is the good that we say political science seeks?

What, [in other words,] is the highest of all the goods achievable in action?”40 All agree on the name of the thing: happiness. This is the chief good of men, and what it is and how it is achieved are the overarching questions of the Ethics.41 To determine where happiness truly lies

Aristotle seeks the function of a man, since happiness is the highest good and “the good, i.e.,

[doing] well, for a flautist, a sculptor, and every craftsman, and, in general, for whatever has a function and [characteristic] action, seems to depend on its function.”42 Man’s function cannot be something common to animals, so the activities of nutrition and sensation are ruled out. What distinguishes men from other animals is reason. When men act according to reason they achieve their particular excellence, called virtue. Aristotle gives his famous definition of virtue in the second book of the Ethics: “Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean

39 1324a29-32. Translated by Carnes Lord in Aristotle: The Politics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 199-200.

40 1095a15-17. Translated by Terence Irwin in Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999), 3. Brackets are in Irwin’s translation.

41 See Sarah Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 24 ff.

421097b25-28. Irwin, 8. Brackets in Irwin’s translation.

169 relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it.”43 Thus, Aristotle says, the virtuous man is happy, since he acts according to reason, and so does well activities pertaining to man. If there is more than one virtue, the man who practices the greatest virtue will be the most happy.44 For the next four books, Aristotle discusses the particular ethical and intellectual virtues.45

In the last book of the Ethics, Aristotle states that the activities of the ethical or practical virtues are concerned with political or military matters.46 Public life is the largest field open to the ethical virtues. It is here that just and courageous actions can have the greatest size and scope, and so the person engaged in political life can have the best opportunity to exercise the highest practical virtue. Further, as Aristotle briefly explores in the final chapter of his ethics, the politician can legislate against vicious behavior and for virtuous, so that from an early age citizens will be accustomed to avoiding the bad and pursuing the good. Thus political action can have a great influence on the virtue of the members of the community. For these reasons,

Aristotle regards political activity as the highest expression of practical virtue, though still subordinate to contemplation.

43 1107a1-3. Irwin, 25.

44 1098a17.

45 I will discuss Aristotle’s distinction between ethical and intellectual virtues in the section on contemplation.

46 1177b7-8. For a discussion of the political life as the highest exercise of ethical virtue, see Gabriel Richardson Lear, Happy Lives and the Highest Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 180-81.

170 Seneca also regards political activity highly. For Seneca, as for Stoics in general, the status of political activity and philosophical activity is considered by ethics. 47 The goal of a human is to live according to nature.48 This is the fundamental principle of morality. In one sense, nature has a broad meaning and refers to the order and workings of the whole universe.

This notion of cosmic nature gives rise to the attitude described as Stoic: the acceptance of the way things are, which requires the recognition of what is in our control and what is beyond our control. Human nature, as well as cosmic nature, is a guide for human action. Seneca and the

Stoics, like Aristole, find our proper nature by examining what separates us from other things, namely, our reason. Hence to live according to nature means to perfect our reason. Our reason is properly manifested in virtuous action, that is, in ordering and making rational the actions of our daily lives.49

Participation in political activity is drawn from human nature. Humans are by nature social, and so, like all social animals, they exhibit altruistic behavior.50 This altruistic instinct

47 The brief outline of Stoic ethics given here is a general one. It is generally accepted that Seneca does not differ in fundamentals from the orthodox Stoic position. See John M. Cooper, “Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Seneca” in Knowledge, Nature, and the Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 309; John M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé, “General Introduction” in Seneca: Moral and Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1995), xvi-xvii; Julia Annas, review of Brad Inwood’s Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2006): 449-456. To claim that Seneca is a representative Stoic is not to deny, of course, that he introduces new emphases and makes innovations and refinements in Stoic teaching. Thus Brad Inwood argues for the conservatism of Seneca’s moral philosophy, while claiming he was “an original and innovative exponent of Stoic doctrine” whose contributions “did not entail major philosophical change.” Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3.

48 For cosmic nature and human nature as the first principles of Stoic ethics, see Brad Inwood and Pierluigi Donini, “Stoic Ethics” in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. Keimpe Algra et alia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 675-676, 682, 686. I use their expression “cosmic nature.”

49 Ad Lucilium epistulae morales 92, especially 10-12.

50 See Malcolm Schofield, “Social and Political Thought” in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 760- 768, on the Stoic’s teaching about the naturalness of social and political life for humans. This paragraph is drawn mainly from him. See also Eric Brown, “Contemplative Withdrawal in the Hellenistic Age,” Philosophical Studies 137 (2008): 83-84.

171 finds expression in care for one’s community, among other ways. Hence political activity is a duty placed on humans by their nature, provided they have the opportunity to engage in it. In De tranquillitate animi, Seneca advises his father in law that retreat from political life should be undertaken only with reluctance – indeed, only under compulsion: “This is the sort of thing you should do: if Fortune has thrust you away from the first role in the state, you should still stand your ground and shout your support, and, if anyone blocks your throat, you should stand there nonetheless and support in silence.”51 This attitude reflects the standard Stoic teaching. As a character in the same dialogue notes, the three founders of Stoicism, Zeno, Cleanthes, and

Chrysippus, all encouraged their disciples to engage in politics.52

When Seneca defends his own retirement from political life, he does so on the grounds that one can be of more use in retirement than in active life. In his eighth letter to Lucilius, written after his retirement from Nero’s court, he defends himself from the charge of forsaking the Stoic precept to “die in harness,” to never cease from activity.53 He claims that he has retired to be useful to more people, since his teachings touch more people than political activity can.

They help not merely those in his political community but people throughout the world and subsequent generations. Bacon, reflecting on his exile from the English court, took inspiration from Seneca’s action in exile, stating that Seneca “spent his time in writing books, of excellent argument and use for all ages.”54

51 On The Tranquility of the Mind in Seneca: Dialogues and Essays, trans. John Davie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 121.

52 Ibid., 113. See also De otio 1.5 and Epistulae 68.1, referenced in Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics, 340.

53 Epistulae 8. “I have only buried myself away behind closed doors in order to be able to be of use to more people.” Translated by Robin Campbell in Seneca: Letters from a Stoic (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 44. See also De otio in Moral and Political Essays, 175.

54 Dedication to Advertisement Touching a Holy War, SEH 7.13.

172 What form does Seneca’s help take? Primarily ethical: what he is teaching “might be compared to the formulae of successful medications, the effectiveness of which I have experienced in the case of my own sores.”55 He does not defend the contemplative life on the grounds that knowing is the best thing for man – indeed, in his essay De brevitate vitae he refers contemptuously to learning that is not useful for anyone. Rather, he defends the contemplative life on the grounds that it can be the most useful for men. Other philosophical schools treat contemplation as the end of human life; Stoics, however, “treat it as an anchorage, not a harbor.”56

The Goal of the Instauratio Magna

In Bacon’s Temporis partus masculus (1603), the narrator describes the goal of a new scientific enterprise: “In truth I am going to lead nature to you, and subject her with her offspring to you. . . . So, my son, might I enlarge the never sufficiently deplored narrowness of the human empire over the universe to its given boundaries . . . .”57 From his earliest drafts of the various parts of the Instauratio Magna, Bacon sets action, specifically the mastery of nature, as the end of his science.

55 Epistulae 8 (Letters from a Stoic, 45).

56De otio 7.4 (Moral and Political Essays, 179).

57 SEH 3.528: “Sed revera naturam cum fetibus suis tibi addicturus et mancipaturus. . . . Ita sim (fili) itaque humani in universum imperii angustias nunquam satis deploratas ad datos fines proferam (quod mihi ex humanis solum in votis est).”

173 Throughout Bacon’s discussions of the goal of science, he attacks prior philosophers’ conceptions of that goal. For instance, in Valerius Terminus (1603) he contrasts the true end of science with those commonly pursued:

And therefore it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honour or fame, nor inablement for business, that are the true ends of knowledge; some of these being more worthy than other, though all inferior and degenerate: but it is a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation. And to speak plainly and clearly, it is a discovery of all operations and possibility of operations from immortality (if it were possible) to the meanest mechanical practice.58

Bacon repeats this statement of the goal several places, notably in the Advancement and the

Novum organum. There are important modifications introduced in later works, notably in the diminishing of the religious basis of his argument for man’s end. But overall his critique remains substantially unchanged, focusing always on the mastery of nature as the true end of knowledge, an end neglected by the ancients.

In Valerius Terminus, Bacon calls the false ends of knowledge “degenerate.” They are not merely unworthy, as we might call unworthy the purpose of a doctor who practices medicine solely with the purpose of making money and treats healing people merely as a means to that purpose. Such a doctor can still be an effective doctor who accomplishes the true end of medicine, healing people. But those who treat knowledge as having an end other than operations to relieve man’s estate do not achieve true knowledge. Thus Bacon compares knowledge that is only aimed at our satisfaction to a prostitute, who produces pleasure but no offspring. And he

58 SEH 3.222.

174 compares knowledge that aims at glory to the golden balls thrown by Hippomenes that hindered

Atalanta’s running, which signifies true knowledge.

Men are called to think more carefully about the end of knowledge, Bacon says. He quotes Seneca: “De partibus vitae quisque deliberat, de summa nemo” (Everyone thinks about the parts of life, no one about the highest [part of life]). Men have received their “final ends from the inclination of their nature, or from common example and opinion, never questioning or examining them” and so it is unsurprising that they have wandered greatly from the course.59

Bacon especially criticizes knowledge that has contemplation for its end, as that of the ancients.

Those who have sought knowledge for itself have “propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely satisfaction (which men call truth) and not operation.”60 It is easier to attain satisfaction than to find new inventions and operations. In one of his most striking images for ancient philosophy, he compares it to the monster Scylla, who was a beautiful woman above the waist but composed of dogs and tentacles below. Her lower half, useless for generation, is an image of the “endless distorted questions” of ancient philosophy.61 His knowledge, by contrast, will be fruitful.

The chief traditions of ancient philosophy teach that philosophical knowledge is an end in itself. Bacon has a different conception of knowledge: its characteristic feature is the power it will give humans over nature – a goal foreign to ancient philosophy. This goal is summed up in the phrase in the title of the Novum organum: “The Kingdom of Man.”

59 Ibid. 232.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., 233.

175 The Kingdom of Man

Perez Zagorin notes that little attention has been paid to the importance of Bacon’s phrase, “The Kingdom of Man.” It first appears in the title introducing the first book of the

Novum organum: Aphorismi de interpretatione naturae, et regno hominis.62 Similar formulations do appear in prior works, for instance in De interpretatione naturae prooemium, where Bacon says that the man who could “kindle a light in nature” and so “make manifest whatever is most hidden and bring it into view seemed to me the enlarger of the human empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror of necessities.”63

Bacon’s use of the phrase “kingdom of man” brings to mind the Christian, and notably

Augustinian, tradition of distinguishing the City of God from the City of Man. Less obviously, this phrase also indicates a different conception of action than that advanced by Aristotle. For

Aristotle, the active life is achieved most perfectly in the political realm, which is limited and defined by the city-state. As Aristotle says, since the city is the “most authoritative of all

[communities] and embraces all the others,” therefore “it aims at the most authoritative good of all.” Human actions find their largest possible scope in the city: “[Man] alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things [of this sort]; and partnership in these things is what makes a household and a city.” The virtue of justice is something that properly belongs

62 Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 78.

63 SEH 5.18: “Si quis non particulare aliquod inventum, licet magnae utilitatis, eruat, sed in natura lumen accendat, quod ortu ipso oras rerum quae res jam inventas contingunt illustret, dein paulo post elevatum abstrusissima quaeque patefaciat et in conspectum det, is mihi humani in universum imperii propagator, libertatis vindex, necessitatum expugnator visus est.”

176 in a city. 64 Even though, as Alasdair MacIntyre notes, during Aristotle’s life Macedon became

“the first of the new large-scale states” which subsumed smaller states and would eventually

“destroy the πόλις as a political entity,” Aristotle treats the city-state as self-sufficient and complete.65

Bacon, however, uses the phrase “kingdom of man” to indicate a larger field of action than the political. In several places throughout his works, he compares the new action of his philosophy with the old actions of military achievement and political rule. From his earliest sketches of the Instauratio Magna, he describes it as greater than any political nation:

I found, however, nothing of so great a worth for the human race than the discovery and growth of new things and arts, by which men’s life might be improved. . . . And I noted that the acts of heroes, who founded cities, or were prominent law-givers, or administered just empires, or conquered unjust rulers, were circumscribed by the narrowness of places and times: but I thought that the invention of things, although a matter of less pomp, was more accommodated to the reckoning of universality and eternity.66

Bacon’s argument is that the dominion of nature is more universal in space and time, and hence greater than political rule. This passage stands in contrast with the most famous text about the founding of the most famous city, Virgil’s Aeneid. In a widely known passage, Anchises,

Aeneas’ father, foretells the greatness of Rome. He grants that other nations are superior in arts and sciences, but claims the greatest honor, that of political rule, for the Romans.67 In another

64 1252 a4-5 (Lord, 35); 1253a17-19 (Lord, 37); 1253a38.

65 Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 99: Politics, 1252b28-1253a1.

66 De interpretatione naturae proemium (1603), SEH 3.518: “Inveni autem nil tanti esse erga genus humanum meriti, quam novarum rerum et artium, quibus hominum vita excolatur, inventionem et auctoramentum. ... et acta heroum, qui vel urbes condiderunt, vel legumlatores extiterunt, vel justa imperia exercuerunt, vel injustas dominationes debellarunt, locorum et temporum angustiis circumscripta esse notavi: rerum autem inventionem, licet minoris pompae sit res, ad universalitatis et aeternitatis rationem magis accommodatam esse censui.”

67Aeneid 6.847-53:

177 famous section of the Aeneid, Jupiter declares, “I place neither boundaries nor times for [the

Romans]; I have given them empire without end.”68 The Roman Empire, according to Virgil, is the greatest empire because it is universal in space and time. But in fact even the Roman Empire was limited by geographical boundaries and time. Using the same criteria as Virgil, “the reckoning of universality and eternity,” Bacon judges that the empire of man over nature excels political empire precisely because the latter is not universal in space or time, while the former is

– or rather, will be.

Bacon’s kingdom does not differ from other kingdoms merely by being more comprehensive. Like Virgil when speaking of the paradigmatic political empire, Bacon uses the language of domination and control in speaking of his kingdom. But the dominion is of a different type. The power of his kingdom is arrayed not against other political units, each of which attempts to secure the good life for its subjects against competing claims. It is nature which must be conquered and overcome rather than other nations. The comparison between his philosophical project and political rule is repeated and refined throughout his work, for instance,

“Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.”

Bacon may have this passage in mind when making his own comparison – the verb debellare appears in both. Bacon’s sciences are not of the same kind as Virgil’s, who mentions arts and sciences – sculpture, oratory, and astronomy – that are not ordered to man’s dominion over nature.

68 Aeneid 1.278-79: “His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono; imperium sine fine dedi.”

178 in the Advancement and De augmentis, in Temporis partus masculus, and in Cogitata et Visa. It appears finally in its most polished form in the Novum Organum 1.129.

Novum Organum 1.129 is a locus classicus of Bacon’s treatment of the end of science;

Kennington describes it as “a critical text for the relation of Bacon to ancient philosophy.”69

This aphorism is the second to last in the first book. It marks the end of the critical work of the first book, as the last aphorism serves as an introduction to the second book. Bacon begins the aphorism with an introduction explaining why he is speaking about the end of his philosophy.

He then gives several arguments showing the excellence of the goal of his philosophy.

In his first argument, Bacon repeats the comparison he makes in several of his works: in ancient times, founders of cities and lawgivers are regarded as heroes, but divine honors are given to the discoverers of things (Rerum Inventoribus).70 This happens because the benefits from discoverers benefit more people than do those of political founders and last longer – in fact, are virtually eternal. Further, political betterment usually comes about through violence, while discoveries do not. Kennington suggests that Bacon is disingenuous here in arguing that greater glory accrues to inventors rather than political founders; as Bacon was well aware, “the origin of inventions and arts is often obscure and the identity of political benefactors much better attested.”71 We have already seen that, despite Bacon’s appeal to the ancients, his position is not that of Virgil. Neither is it the opinion of the ancient philosophers. See, for instance, Aristotle’s

69 Richard Kennington, “Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon 1,” in On Modern Origins, 29.

70 OFB 11.192.

71 Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision of Machiavelli,” in On Modern Origins, 61.

179 famous praise of the founder of cities in the Politics: “The one who first constituted [a city] is responsible for the greatest of goods.”72

Bacon invites the reader to look at the difference between civilized and savage men – between the residents of Europe and the Americas. “He will think they differ so much, that it rightly can be said that man is a god to man – not only because of aid and beneficence, but through the comparison of their states.”73 Bacon looks at three recent discoveries, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. These have altered the whole world. Indeed, “no empire, sect, or star” (non Imperium aliquod, non Secta, non Stella) has exerted a greater influence.74 Graham

Rees remarks that this statement “that technology is the engine of history would have seemed quite daring to those inured to traditional providentialist views.”75 It also would have seemed daring to those who thought that politics is the sphere for exalted action.

Bacon, developing an argument he uses several times in his works, explains the superiority of his new action over traditional political action by identifying three grades of human ambition. This first grade is the ambition to increase one’s power within one’s country.

This is “common and base” (vulgare est & degener). The second grade is those who want to increase the power of their country among the human race. This position has more dignity than the first, but just as much lust for power. Finally, there is the ambition “to establish [instaurare]

72 1253a30-31 (Lord, 37).

73 OFB 11.194: “Ea[m] tantum differre existimabit, vt merito Hominem homini Deum esse, non solum propter auxilium & beneficium, sed etiam per status comparationem, recte dici possit.” According to Thomas Fowler, the quotation is from Caecilius Comicus. Bacon’s Novum Organum (London: MacMillan and Co., 1878), 329, n. 69.

74 OFB 11.194. “Secta” can mean either a philosophical or religious group (among other possibilities). See Lewis and Short (1987), s.v. “secta.”

75 OFB 11.535.

180 and increase the power and empire of the human race itself over the whole universe of things.”76

This ambition is both sounder and nobler than the other two. The higher action is concerned with the more universal good; the highest action with the most universal good of all, that of the whole human race.

Nevertheless, though Bacon describes his new action as aiming at the dominion of nature and thus transcending the old action concerned with dominion over other men and nations,

Bacon cannot escape the question of the relationship of his scientist to other men. His quotation from Comicus (the complete quotation is “homo homini deus, si suum officium sciat”77) indicates that the superiority – and perhaps dominion – of the scientist extends not just to nature but to other men. We will turn to this relationship in the following section, which discusses his self-anointing as a new Alexander the Great.

Bacon’s formula, “The Kingdom of Man,” alludes to the traditional Christian concept of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, as Perez Zagorin points out.78 Perez acknowledges that Bacon’s formulation of kingdom of man sets up a parallel hope for man, but claims that it does not in any way militate against the kingdom of God.

76 OFB 11.194. “Quod si quis humani generis ipsius potentiam & imperium in rerum Vniuersitatem instaurare & amplificare conetur; ea proculdubio Ambitio (si modo ita vocanda sit) reliquis & sanior, est & augustior.”

77 Fowler, 329, n. 69.

78 Zagorin, 78. “In the religious society to which Bacon belonged, [the formulation “kingdom of man”] could not help also standing in tacit contrast to the kingdom of god in which the faithful Christian placed his ultimate hope. Without in the least detracting from the object of this hope, Bacon was positing alongside of it another kingdom, that of life on this earth of which man would be the sovereign.” “Kingdom of God” appears in Matthew 6:33, Mark 1:15, Romans 14:17, John 3:5. “Kingdom of Heaven” appears throughout the Gospel of Matthew, for example, Matthew 5:3 and Matthew 7:21.

181 Cardinal John Henry Newman, in discussing the new, utilitarian direction of Baconian knowledge in The Idea of a University, seems to maintain something like this position as well.

Bacon turned from liberal learning to practical knowledge, with beneficent results for men – “it aimed low, but it has fulfilled its end.” Newman goes so far as to attribute a divine mission to

Bacon: “His mission was the increase of physical enjoyment and social comfort; and most wonderfully, most awfully has he fulfilled his conception and his design. . . . He was the divinely provided minister of temporal benefits to all of us.” Newman did deprecate the “tendencies of his philosophy, which are, as we see at this day, to depreciate, or to trample on Theology.”

Nevertheless, Bacon himself foresaw these tendencies with “a prophetic misgiving,” and insisted that his philosophy was an “instrument of that beneficent Father” who when he came to earth

“took on Him first and most prominently the office of assuaging the bodily wounds of human nature.”79 In his brief treatment of Bacon in The Idea of a University, Newman does not discuss whether the “tendency” of Bacon’s philosophy to trample on theology was inherent in his science or not, though he certainly indicates that he thinks Bacon does not believe so.

Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Spe salvi, agrees with Zagorin that Bacon’s philosophy sets up a parallel hope for mankind, while emphatically disagreeing with him that this does not detract from the Christian hope. Bacon articulates the foundations of a new era centered in “a new correlation of experiment and method” and “a new correlation between science and .”80 Such a correlation entails that “the dominion over creation —given to man by God

79 Cardinal John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Washinton, DC: Regenery Publishing, Inc., 1999), 107- 08. Newman distinguishes the practical knowledge of Bacon from “liberal knowledge,” knowledge that is for its own sake. Though, as the quotations above show, he is grateful to Bacon for his contribution to the comforts of mankind, it is clear that his sympathies are with liberal knowledge: he says that Bacon “in the littleness of his own moral being, but [typifies] the intellectual narrowness of his school” (ibid., 109).

80 Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, par. 16.

182 and lost through original sin—would be reestablished.” According to Benedict, a “disturbing step has been taken”:

It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level – that of the purely private and other-worldly affairs – and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith, which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus hope too, in Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith in progress. For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis, totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the kingdom of man.81

Bacon’s new philosophy presents a faith and a hope that “displaces” the Christian faith and hope

– it renders their presence unnecessary by substituting a new goal and a new project. It is appropriate, on this reading, that Bacon’s use of the phrase “kingdom of man” recalls St.

Augustine’s famous description of the antagonism between the city of God and the city of man.

Bacon’s project is ultimately futile, according to Benedict: “Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world.”82 This freedom, which needs to be directed towards the good by individuals, cannot have its direction guaranteed by any external structure:

Man can never be redeemed simply from outside. Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive.83

81 Ibid., par. 17.

82 Ibid., par. 24.

83 Ibid., par. 25.

183 Bacon’s new project promises too much: no less than “the good of men in their very being.” Such a good cannot be imposed from the outside, no matter how majestic the project attempting the imposition.

The New Alexander

To describe the scope of his scientific project, Bacon compares himself to Alexander the

Great.84 He is well aware that the comparison can be problematic, as it brings up an image of force against other men. Indeed, he also compares Aristotle to Alexander, his student, to emphasize the philosopher’s unjust and violent attack on other philosophers. Both these comparisons appear in Redargutio philosophiarum (The Refutation of Philosophies), an unfinished work in which Bacon describes the address of a wise man to an assembly in Paris of various men who have care for the common good, such as politicians and churchmen.

Near the beginning of his discourse, the wise man quotes Lucan, who describes the influence of Alexander on Julius Caesar and others: “Happy plunderer of lands, put forth as a not beneficial example to the world, that so many lands are able to be under one man.”85 Such a

84 OFB 11.154.

85SEH 3.561. “Felix terrarum praedo, non utile mundo Editus exemplum, terras tot posse sub uno Esse viro.” This quote is also applied to Aristotle in De augmentis 3.4, where Bacon calls him the “anti-Christ.” See Lucan’s Pharsalia, 10.20-28: “Illic Pellaei proles vesana Philippi, Felix praedo, iacet, terrarum vindice fato Raptus. Sacratis totum spargenda per orbem Membra viri posuere adytis. Fortuna pepercit Manibus, et regni duravit ad ultima fatum. Nam sibi libertas umquam si redderet orbem, Ludibrio servatus erat, non utile mundo

184 one, the wise man says, was Aristotle, Alexander the Great’s teacher, who destroyed the variety and abundance of early Greek learning and so was a “happy plunderer of learning”: “for in no way was he useful to human things, who led so many excellent intellects, so many (I say) free heads into slavery.”86

Near the end of the address, the wise man again returns to Alexander the Great, but this time he compares him to himself. But he hastens to warn his listeners not to accuse him of vanity. Alexander the Great was considered divine and his deeds were regarded as portents by men close to his time, such as the orator Aeschines, who describes him and his influence thus:

“We surely do not live a human life, but were born for this, that posterity might proclaim wonders about us.”87 But with distance, his exploits were viewed more coldly, and the great

Roman historian Livy came to an accurate assessment of them: Alexander merely set aside vain fears.88 Bacon’s wise man, the new Alexander, embraces this assessment. He welcomes the advances by later philosophers which he lays the groundwork for – they will be “free, subjected now to themselves, knowledgeable about their own strengths.”89 They will pass far beyond his beginnings. The wise man only lays claim to this, that he showed what the “true and legitimate

Editus exemplum, terras tot posse sub uno Esse viro.”

86 SEH 3.561. “Nullo enim modo ille utilis rebus humanis, qui tot egregia ingenia, tot (inquam) libera capita in servitutem redegerit.”

87 SEH 5.584. “Nos certe vitam humanam non degimus; sed in id nati sumus, ut posteri de nobis portenta pradeicent.”

88 Livy discusses Alexander in the History of Rome, Book Nine, ch. 17, as Rees points out (OFB 11.529).

89 SEH 3.585. “Ita et nos simile quiddam a posteris audiemus; postquam emancipate, et sui jam facti, et proprias vires experti, initia nostra magnis intervallis superaverint.”

185 lowering of the human spirit can accomplish” (vera et legitima spiritus humani humiliatio possit); like Alexander, he set aside vain fears.

In the Novum organum Bacon repeats his charge against Aristotle. Just like the Ottoman emperors destroyed their relations, so Aristotle destroyed other philosophers to ensure that no one coming after him would usurp his place.90 Bacon himself does not do this. He eschews the violent rhetoric of Aristotle. He comes not to overthrow by argument and dialectics, but rather to teach men whose minds are prepared for him. Thus he takes for himself the description Borgia gave of the French invading Italy, “that they came with chalk in their hands that they might mark their lodgings, not with weapons that they might force themselves in.”91 Rather than attacking future philosophers, he welcomes them to the project which he has started but is beyond his power to finish.92 Indeed, as Gaukroger argues, a “large-scale co-operative workforce” is necessary for the implementation of Bacon’s method.93

But Bacon also knows that the state of science is popular. This has indeed resulted in stagnation, since “with the people the doctrines which flourish most are either contentious and combative, or showy and empty.”94 It is not just the contentiousness of other philosophers that can destroy true philosophy, but also the contentiousness of the masses. So Bacon must win them over as well. And he does this by promising to attain the “general good of men in their

90 OFB 11.106. See also the preface, OFB 11.10-12.

91 OFB 11.76. “Dixit Borgia de expeditione Gallorum in Italiam, eos venisse cum creta in manibus vt diuersoria notarent, non cum armis, vt perrumperent . . . .”

92 See OFB 11.22-24, 44.

93 Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 160-165.

94 OFB 11.14. “Atque apud populum plurimum vigent doctrinae, aut contentiosae & pugnaces, aut speciosae & inanes . . . .”

186 very being”; he will “try to restore and increase the power and empire of the human race itself over the whole universe of things.”95

Unlike the political action of the ancients, which is concerned with the perfection of self or of one’s nation, Bacon seeks the good of humankind. Aristotle’s political action, by contrast, is parochial. Seneca indeed, like Bacon, seeks an action more universal than political action. He defends his retirement on the grounds that he is helping more people by his writings than he would by action in the political life. Bacon’s universal good of mankind has strong echoes of

Stoicism, with its insistence that the shared rationality of all men forms a universal city which it is the philosopher’s duty to serve and help. But the good aimed at in each instance is very different. As we saw earlier, Seneca’s philosophy is therapeutic, aiming at the order of the soul.

He regards his teaching as more useful than political action because it is more universal, inasmuch as it can reach a wider audience, in space and time, than one’s political community.

But he knows that he will in fact change relatively few people by his teachings. He does not seek the perfection of the human race “in its very being,” but rather the perfection of individuals who by understanding his teaching and applying his precepts will, like himself, be healed. What is aimed at in the case of the one listening to the philosopher is the same as what the philosopher attains: calmness of mind, order of the soul, death of passions. Bacon’s benefaction, in contrast, does not aim at reproducing the state of the natural philosopher in all men, but at increasing their comforts and pleasures, and reducing their pains and miseries.

The majority of men will participate in Bacon’s philosophy not by advancing the science or understanding it but by enjoying the benefits of a science that masters nature for the relief of

95 SEH 7.14; OFB 11.194. “Quod si quis humani generis ipsius potentiam & imperium in rerum Vniuersitatem instaurare & amplificare conetur; ea proculdubio Ambitio (si modo ita vocanda sit) reliquis & sanior, est & augustior.”

187 man’s estate: his science “does not descend to the understanding of the vulgar, except through utility and effects.”96 This idea of action is very different from Seneca’s, who aims to help perfect the philosophical few as he has perfected himself, and from Aristotle’s, for whom perfection consists in good habits of the soul and who describes laws as the attempt by the virtuous law-giver to compel the many towards something approaching virtuous behavior. It is not necessary that all men share in the rigor and discipline of the scientist. Most are passive participants in the empire of man over nature; they reap without sowing. While not all men will care to seek, or have the ability to prosecute, the painful therapy of Seneca, the benefactions that

Bacon’s scientists will give them are pleasant, with effects which they have not struggled for.

Hence Bacon’s science, once men either believe in its promises or experience them for themselves, will be universally accepted and supported as no prior philosophy was.

What benefit do the scientists themselves receive? Bacon points out that the discoverers of inventions were awarded divine honors by the ancients; the one who finds a universal way to uncover inventions will be regarded even higher.97 But Bacon also points to another good the scientist receives, that of contemplation: “The contemplation itself of things just as they are, without superstition or imposture, error or confusion, is more worthy in itself than all the fruits of discoveries.”98 And finally, Bacon, speaking for himself, claims that the work of expanding the human empire over nature is so great that it is its own reward, apart from any external benefit.99

96 OFB 11.56. “Non praesto est; neque in transitu capitur; neque ex praenotionibus Intellectui blanditur; neque ad vulgi captum, nisi per vtilitatem, & effecta descendet.”

97 OFB 11.192; 194-196. 98 OFB 11.196. “Contemplatio Rerum, prout sunt, sine Superstitione aut Impostura, Errore aut Confusione, in seipsa magis digna est, quam vniversus Inuentorum fructus.”

99 OFB 11.4. “Hoc quod agitur, Nihil est; aut Tantum, vt merito ipso contentum esse debeat, nec fructum extra quaerere.”

188 There will, then, be two distinct goods involved in Bacon’s new action, his empire of man over nature. There is the good of the scientist, Alexander-like, god-like, who furthers the empire of mankind over nature. And there is the passive good of the many, which will experience the ease, health, and pleasure that such an empire bestows.

Only the minority of men will reject this ease and pleasure. Bacon cannot completely remove conflict, however. Such an empire over nature will produce things deleterious to man as well as pleasant, as he acknowledges in De Sapientia Veterum.100 Thus the question arises as to the control of the scientific process – what discoveries it aims at and their dissemination. Does this fall to the scientist, or to the old political philosopher? According to Aristotle, the political philosopher aims at the greatest good for men and for the city. But on Bacon’s account, the natural philosopher seeks a more universal good for humans than the political philosopher, and so can hardly be expected to be ruled by him. I will return to this question in the following chapter about the New Atlantis, Bacon’s portrait of the new society that his new philosophy will bring about.

3. Bacon’s Contemplation

Prior Accounts of Contemplation: Aristotle, Seneca, Lucretius

While Aristotle presents the political life as the highest expression of ethical virtue, it is not the highest life absolutely. According to his arguments at the end of the Ethics, this honor

100 See especially the nineteenth fable, “Daedalus, or Mechanic.”

189 belongs to the contemplative life.101 This life is the principal manifestation of the intellectual virtues, which Aristotle discusses in Book Six.102 The intellectual virtues are habits of the part of the soul which has reason “fully, within itself.” They are distinguished from the ethical virtues, habits of the appetitive part of the soul, which “seem[s] to be nonrational, though in a way it shares in reason.” The “fully rational” part of the soul is also divided into two parts: “with one we study beings whose principles do not admit of being otherwise than they are, and with the other we study beings whose principles admit of being otherwise.”103 To the first part belong the intellectual virtues of understanding, scientific knowledge, and wisdom; to the second belong art and prudence.

It is wisdom that is the primary intellectual virtue, Aristotle argues. He defines it as

“both scientific knowledge and understanding about the things that are by nature most honorable.”104 It is the most excellent habit of that part of the soul by which we study eternal beings, things that cannot be other than they are.105 The contemplative life is thus devoted primarily to the cultivation of the virtue of wisdom. In Book Ten Aristotle gives his arguments that contemplation is the best way of life.106 It involves the “best thing in us,” reason, and the

101 1177a12 ff.

102 For a succinct discussion of the intellectual virtues, see Aristide Tessitore, Reading Aristotle’s Ethics: Virtue, Rhetoric, and Political Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996), 42-50. His discussion centers on wisdom and prudence, the two central intellectual virtues.

103 1103a3 (Irwin, 18); 1102b13-14 (Irwin, 17), see also 1102b29-1103a3; 1139a7-9 (Irwin, 86).

104 1141b3-5 (Irwin, 91). See also 1141a18-20 and Metaphysics Book One, especially 983a11-12: “All the other sciences are more instrumental than [wisdom], but none is better.” Translated by Hippocrates G. Apostle in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1979), 16.

105 1139a7.

106 1177a11-1177b26 (Irwin, 163-64). See Tessitore, Reading Aristotle, 105 ff., and Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle, 421 ff.

190 highest part of reason, that “which is concerned with the best of the known objects.” It is the most continuous of our activities and the most pleasant; it is self-sufficient and for its own sake.

Further, it is the activity of the greatest leisure, and we think, Aristotle says, that happiness is an activity of leisure. Finally, the life of contemplation is the life closest to the life of the gods.107

As I discussed earlier, Seneca’s contemplation has a practical end. It is essentially therapeutic; it orders the soul. This practical end should not obscure, however, the exalted nature of the object of contemplation or man’s place in the universe. For Seneca, contemplation does not turn man in on himself, but rather points to things prior than himself:

Aware of her [i.e., nature’s] own skill and beauty, she brought us into being to view the mighty spectacle. She would lose all satisfaction in herself, were she to display works so great and glorious, so delicately drawn, so bright and, in more ways than one, so beautiful, to a lonely solitude. . . . Our perspicacity has uncovered a way of investigation and put down a basis for truth, allowing enquiry to proceed from the obvious to the obscure and discover things older than the world itself.108

For Seneca, the first things are reached by human effort. The tool by which this knowledge is reached is logic, which enables us to “proceed from the obvious to the obscure,” as codified by

Aristotle and perfected by the Stoics. Not only are natural forms known, but their eternal principles are as well, as high as this knowledge of the divine is above man: “For knowledge of things immortal, man is all too mortal. So I live according to Nature if I devote myself wholly to

107 1178b8-33. For a discussion of this argument, see Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle, 401-406, and Lear, Happy Lives, 188-193.

108 De Otio in Moral and Political Essays, 176.

191 her, if I marvel at her and worship her.”109 Mortal man is called on to contemplate the eternal truths, the first things, even if that contemplation is an anchorage and not a harbor.

Lucretius, following his master , teaches that theoretical study is not for its own sake, but for the sake of pleasure. At the beginning of Book Two of De rerum natura, Lucretius in a famous passage describes how enjoyable it is to watch, from a safe place, someone in danger at sea. The enjoyment comes, he cautions, not from sadism but from the knowledge that you are free from the sufferings that others are undergoing. Philosophy affords a comparable but much stronger enjoyment: “But nothing is more delightful than to possess lofty sanctuaries serene, well fortified by the teachings of the wise, whence you may look down upon others and behold them all astray, wandering abroad and seeking the path of life.”110 The claim that philosophy affords a great pleasure is not a new one; Aristotle, for instance, maintains it in his Nicomachean Ethics.

But Lucretius follows Epicurus’ lead in placing pleasure as the end of human activity, breaking with such authors as Aristotle and Plato: “We declare pleasure to be the beginning and end of the blessed life . . . and this we make our goal, using feeling as the canon by which we judge every good.”111 It is from Epicurus that Lucretius learns of “the highest good towards which we all are striving.”112 Contemplation, with all else, is rightly ordered to pleasure.

109 Ibid, 177.

110 2.7-10. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse, Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 95.

111 Epistula ad Menoeceum 128, quoted in Michael Erler and Malcolm Schofield, “Epicurean Ethics,” in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 649.

112 6.26. “Exposuitque bonum summum quo tendimus omnes . . .” My translation. See also 2.16-19.

192 This pleasure of contemplation follows from understanding the first principles of things.

Man, through application and following the “superhuman efforts” of the god-like Epicurus, can go beyond the walls of the world and see the eternal, albeit non-divine origins of things:

For I shall begin to discourse to you upon the most high system of heaven and of the gods, and I shall disclose the first-beginnings of things, from which nature makes all things and increases and nourishes them, and into which the same nature again reduces them when dissolved – which, in discussing philosophy, we are accustomed to call matter, and bodies that generate things, and seeds of things, and to entitle the same first bodies, because from them as first elements all things are.113

Lucretius’ first book is dedicated to uncovering the atoms as the first principles of things – principles that are absolutely first and eternal, but non-divine. The remaining books are an application of his propositions regarding the atoms developed in the first book. Such an exercise is only necessary because of the superstition and anxiety man is laboring under: Life “was not possible to be lived well without a pure mind.”114 In this he follows his master’s teaching:

“Were we not upset by the worries that celestial phenomena and death might matter to us, and also by failure to appreciate the limits of pains and desires, we would have no need for natural philosophy.”115 Natural philosophy leads to pleasure by clearing the mind of false and painful apprehensions. This is accomplished by “a scheme of systematic contemplation,” by following reason (ratio).116

113 1.54-61 (Rouse, 7).

114 5.18. “At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi . . . .” My translation.

115 Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, quoted in Erler, 646.

116 The word ratio occurs 119 times in De rerum natura, as counted by the word-search feature at Perseus Digital Library.

193 The Idols

To understand Bacon’s conception of contemplation, it is necessary to look at his critique of ancient contemplation. Much of the first book of the Novum Organum, which Bacon calls the

“destructive part” of his Instauratio, is taken up with a criticism of prior philosophies. 117 This critique is preceded by other attacks on ancient philosophy in Bacon’s writings, such as the

Redargutio philosophiarum, but it is unmatched in depth and subtlety by any of his other critiques,118 or indeed by that of any other early modern philosopher.119 Bacon’s criticism of prior philosophers is principally contained in his description and analysis of the idols. His doctrine of the idols shows a clear departure from the ancients’ conception of contemplation.

“Idolum,” the Latin word that Bacon uses, has two possible translations: it can mean an image or phantasm, or, in Christian use beginning with the Church Fathers, it has the same meaning as its English derivative – something worshipped in place of the true God.120

According to Michèle le Doeuff, the term “idol” initially does primarily carry a religious sense for Bacon, especially in his contrast of idols with divine ideas, but he is careful to separate it

117 OFB 11.172.

118 In the De augmentis, Bacon refers us to the NO for a “full and subtle handling” (tractationem plenam et subtilem) of the idols. SEH 1.643.

119 Richard Kennington states that Bacon’s critique of the ancients “has no rival in length or comprehensiveness in the writings of the seventeenth-century philosophers, for example, Descartes, Hobbes, or Spinoza.” These authors generally neglect to discuss their ancient and medieval predecessors, although “the effect of Bacon’s critique is widely visible” in their writings (“Bacon’s Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon 1,” in On Modern Origins, 17).

120 Lewis and Short (1987), s.v. “idolum.”

194 from religious connotations, as much as he can, in later works, notably the Novum Organum.121

Thus in De augmentis he uses “image” as a synonym of idols; in the Novum Organum he uses

“false notions.” 122 But even in the New Organon he does not entirely relinquish the religious connotation; he still contrasts the idols and divine ideas.123

Both in the Novum Organum and De augmentis Bacon identifies four idols. The idols of the tribe stem from human nature itself. Neither the human senses nor human understanding mirror nature well; both mix the nature of things with human nature, thus corrupting our understanding of the world. The idols of the cave refer to each man’s “individual cave or cavern which fragments and destroys the light of nature.”124 These idols arise from causes such as the upbringing of individual men, their reading, and their particular nature. The idols of the marketplace stem from the association of men with each other, in particular from their communication by words, which distort and obscure reality. Finally, the idols of the theatre are those which stem from the teachings of the philosophers and their rules of demonstration. The name “idols of the theatre” is chosen because “as many philosophies as are received and found,

121 Michèle le Doeuff, “Hope in Science,” in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts: The Art of Discovery Grows with Discovery, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 14-16.

122 SEH 1.643. “Ad Elenchos vero Imaginum, sive Idolorum, quod attinet . . . .” OFB 11.78. “Idola & Notiones falsae quae Intellectum humanum jam occuparunt . . . .” Bacon’s use of the term “idol” has been the object of several studies attempting to uncover his sources, often pointing in different directions. For instance, Graham Rees links Bacon’s idols to epistemological studies by , Kepler, and Walter Burley which use this term. (OFB 11.506-508). This connection is most strongly seen in the De augmentis’ treatment of the function of imagination. In “Idols of the Imagination: Francis Bacon on the Imagination and the Medicine of the Mind,” Perspectives on Science 20, no. 2 (2012): 183-206, Sorana Corneanu and Koen Vermeir trace Bacon’s use of “idols” to Stoic and Neo-Stoic sources.

123 OFB 11.72.

124 OFB 11.80. “Habet enim vnusquisque ... Specum siue cauernam quandam indiuiduam, quae lumen Naturae frangit & corrumpit . . . .”

195 we think they are so many stories performed and played, which make fictitious and theatrical worlds.”125

Bacon describes the idols as false opinions and contrasts them with the true knowledge which his science will provide.126 In this respect the theory of the idols seems to have much in common with the view that his predecessors held of pre-philosophic knowledge. The distinction between opinions – what one holds through custom or personal inclination or on the word of a teacher – and knowledge – what one holds through knowing the causes – was a crucial distinction for the ancient philosophers. They frequently emphasized that men did not heed this distinction and hence confused opinions with true knowledge. Jacob Klein gives a striking portrayal of the “classical picture”:

We do not think, others think for us: customs, current opinions, lawgivers behind some screen, determine what we think and how we think. Moreover, passions obscure any clear vision… The world rules tyrannically over our thinking. We are its slaves. This is, in fact, the great theme of ancient philosophy, which has never been abandoned completely in the vicissitudes of the succeeding ages.127

Bacon seems to be continuing this theme of the ancients. In particular, commentators both on

Plato and on Bacon have noted the connection between Bacon’s idols and Plato’s , the most famous description of the distinction between opinion and knowledge.128 Bacon has high praise for this allegory, calling it a “most beautiful emblem” (pulcherrimum . . .

125 OFB 11.80-82. “Quia quot Philosophiae receptae aut inuentae sunt, tot fabulas productas & actas censemus, quae Mundos effecerunt fictitios & scenicos.”

126 OFB 11.20, 72, 74.

127 Jacob Klein, “The Problem of Freedom,” in Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 118.

128 Diskin Clay, Platonic Questions: Dialogues with the Silent Philosopher (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 230; Edwin A. Abbott, Francis Bacon: An Account of His Life and Works (London: MacMillan and Co., 1885), p. 381, n. 2.

196 emblema) of “exquisite subtlety” (exquisita . . . subtilitate), and most of his brief treatment of the idols of the cave in De augmentis is spent discussing it. In the same place he also points to a philosophy earlier than Plato’s: “That comparison of Heraclites, that men seek knowledge in their own worlds and not in the greater world, agrees well with the emblem of Plato’s cave.”129

This surface similarity of the ancients’ critique of pre-philosophical opinion and Bacon’s idols, however, should not obscure the drastic differences in their critiques. Indeed, Bacon’s doctrine of the idols is in great part directed against prior philosophers. This is evident in idols of the cave, marketplace, and theatres, where he names philosophers or philosophies as his targets. Aristotle is a clear example of one who erected idols of the cave, in that he allowed his predilection for logic to overwhelm all his philosophy. The idols of the marketplace, Bacon says, make the disagreements of the learned center around words rather than things. The last idols, those of the theatres, are simply illusions rising from the different philosophies and the false rules of demonstration. But Bacon criticizes the ancients in perhaps the most fundamental way in the first idol, the idols of the tribe, where he attacks the very possibility of knowledge as envisioned by the ancients. He maintains that “all perceptions both of the sense and of the mind are from the likeness of man, not from the likeness of the universe.”130 That is, rather than reflecting things as they are, senses and the intellect distort the world they supposedly report:

“The human intellect is a kind of uneven mirror to the rays of things, which mixes its own nature in with the nature of things, and twists and stains it.”131 The ancient philosophers did not see

129 SEH 1.645. “Emblemati siquidem illi de Specu Platonis optime convenit parabola illa Heracliti, quod homines scientias in mundis propriis et non in mundo majore quaerant.” Compare NO 1.42 (OFB 11.80).

130 OFB 11.80. “Omnes Perceptiones tam Sensus quam Mentis sunt ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia Vniuersi.”

131 OFB 11.80. “Estque Intellectus humanus instar speculi inaequalis ad radios rerum, qui suam naturam Naturae rerum immiscet, eamque distorquet & inficit.”

197 this; they are, Bacon thinks, naïve in their judgment that the mind mirrors reality and, aided by logic, is able to attain truth. Rather, as he explains in his account of the idols, the mind and the extant logic are the very source of errors.

Why, according to Bacon, does the human mind distort the world? In De augmentis, when explaining the nature of the idols, he explains their presence by saying that “the human mind (covered and darkened by the body) is so far from being like a level, even, and clear mirror

(which receives and reflects wholly the rays of things), that rather it is like the mirror of some magician, full of superstitions and specters.”132 The very nature of the soul is one of the main sources of the idols of the Tribe: “the human soul (since it is itself an even [aequalis] and uniform substance) presupposes and places in the nature of things a greater equality

[aequalitatem] and uniformity than there truly is.”133 Errors are inevitable, “so great is the difference in harmony between the spirit of man and the spirit of the world.”134 He continues this theme in the Novum organum, where he names the “equality of the substance of the human soul” (ex aequalitate substantiae spiritus humani) as one of the origins of the idols of the tribe.135

Bacon’s claim that the mind is heterogeneous with the world, and so does not mirror nature as it is, is in direct opposition to the central tradition of ancient philosophy. Recall

Bacon’s most significant statement regarding the otherness of the mind and the world: “All

132 SEH 1.643. “Nam Mens Humana (corpore obducta et obfuscata) tantum abest ut speculo plano, aequali, et claro similis sit (quod rerum radios sincere excipiat et reflectat), ut potius sit instar speculi alicujus incantati, pleni superstitionibus et spectris.”

133 SEH 1.644. “Animus humanus (cum sit ipse substantia aequalis et uniformis) majorem praesupponit et affingit in natura rerum aequalitatem et uniformitatem, quam revera est.”

134 SEH 1.645. “Tanta est harmoniae discrepantia inter spiritum hominis et spiritum mundi.” See also NO 1.41, 45, 46 (OFB 11.80, 82-84).

135 OFB 11.88. See also OFB 11.78-80, 82.

198 perceptions both of the sense and of the mind are from the likeness of man, not from the likeness of the universe.”136 For Aristotle, as for the Stoics and Epicureans, the defects of pre- philosophical thought are significant. Nevertheless, the fundamental act of the mind is to reflect reality – indeed, the human mind becomes reality, becomes other things, as Aristotle states in De anima 3.8: “The soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible.”137 For Aristotle, not only is the mind not heterogeneous with the universe, as Bacon claims, but, in a way, it becomes the universe. It is true that humans are prone to error, but the fault does not lie with the nature of the mind. Aristotle’s organon, an intellectual science which helps the mind to attain truth, does not overcome or substitute for the natural acts of the mind, but rather perfects and strengthens them, just as the ethical virtues are not against nature, but according to nature.

The idols, which Bacon describes as “false notions which have already seized the human understanding and inhere deeply in it,”138 most obviously pertain to contemplation; they block the mind from knowing truly. What relation do they have to Baconian action? A connection is suggested in the very beginning of the Novum organum, where Bacon states that “he was certain that the human understanding created its own difficulties, and did not use the true aids (which are in the power of man); whence [arose] manifold ignorance of things and from this ignorance

136 OFB 11.80. “Omnes Perceptiones tam Sensus quam Mentis sunt ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia Vniuersi.”

137 431b20-22. Translation from The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 686.

138 OFB 11.78. “Idola & Notiones falsae quae Intellectum humanum jam occuparunt, atque in eo alte haerent . . . .”

199 innumerable losses.”139 The first phrase refers to the idols, rooted even by nature in the human mind;140 the consequence of these idols is “innumerable losses.” We are not able to achieve dominion over nature and supply the numerous wants and desires of men as long as the idols rooted in our mind. As Bacon says, the idols “must be rejected and renounced, and the understanding wholly freed and purified from them; so that not hardly otherwise is the entrance to the kingdom of man, which is founded in the sciences, than the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, into which it is not given to enter, unless under the appearance of an infant.”141

Because Bacon believes that our senses and mind are incommensurable with things, there can be no contemplation in the ancient sense. The intellect is and remains wholly other from nature; it cannot reflect it or become it. How, then, can we know anything, if there is such a natural incommensurability between the mind and things? How can Bacon’s science work?

Bacon provides a solution to this difficulty in his description of the Novum organum, the second part of the Instauratio Magna, in his Distributio operis. He first addresses the inadequacy of the senses:

With great and faithful ministry we everywhere sought and gathered together aids to the sense: that substitutions for what are lacking, and rectifications for variations might be supplied. Neither do we endeavor to do this so much by instruments, as by experiments. . . .We did not pay much tribute to the immediate

139 OFB 11.2 “Cum Illi pro comperto esset, Intellectum humanum sibi ipsi negotium facessere, neque auxilijs veris (quae in Hominis potestate sunt) uti sobrie & commode; unde multiplex Rerum Ignoratio, & ex Ignoratione Rerum detrimenta innumera . . . .”

140 See also 1.41, 1.11, 1.23-24.

141 OFB 11.108. “Atque de Idolorum singulis generibus, eorumque apparatu iam diximus; quae omnia constanti & solenni decreto sunt abneganda, & renuncianda, & Intellectus ab ijs omnino liberandus est, & expurgandus; vt non alius fere sit aditus ad Regnum Hominis, quod fundatur in Scientijs, quam ad Regnum Coelorum, in quod, nisi sub persona infantis, intrare non datur.”

200 and proper perception of the sense, but we lead the thing to this, that sense judges only concerning the experiment, the experiment judges the thing.142

By experiments, Bacon seems to promise, the heterogeneity of man’s senses and the world is overcome.

This use of experiments would be sufficient to open man’s mind to the light of nature, if the mind was a true mirror of things. But even after the defect of the senses is remedied by experiments, the mind cannot mirror the light of nature thus brought in. So induction is necessary to ensure the mind does not err: “the intellect is not able to judge unless through induction, and its legitimate form.”143 Bacon remedies the heterogeneity of the intellect and the world by his new organon, a new method of induction that replaces the old organon.

The Old and New Organons

At the beginning of De interpretatione, a treatise on logic, Aristotle describes the relationship between words and things:

Now spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of – affections of the soul – are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of – actual things – are also the same.144

142 OFB 11.32-34. “Nos multo & fido ministerio auxilia Sensui vndique conquisiuimus, & contraximus: vt destitutionibus substitutiones, variationibus rectificationes suppeditentur. Neque id molimur tam Instrumentis, quam experimentis. . . . Itaque perceptioni Sensus immediatae ac propriae non multum tribuimus: sed eo rem deducimus, vt Sensus tantum de Experimento, Experimentum de Re iudicet.”

143 OFB 11.34. “Intellectum nisi per Inductionem, eiusque formam legitimam, iudicare non posse.”

144 16a4-8. The Complete Works, vol. 1, 25.

201 Aristotle was not ignorant, of course, that names could be misapplied or that there could be slippage between words and things. He deals with this problem in his Sophistical Refutations, which Bacon states has the same relationship to “ordinary logic” as the teaching on idols do to the interpretation of nature.145 He argues that it is necessary to become acquainted with “the force of names” to detect and avoid false arguments:

It is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of them . . . . Just as, in counting, those who are not clever in manipulating their counters are taken in by the experts, in the same way in arguments too those who are not well acquainted with the force of names misreason both in their own discussion and when they listen to others.146

For Aristotle, becoming more proficient in the use of words is the answer to the abuse of words.

His Sophistical Refutations, as well as his other logical works, teach people how to use words so that they will not mislead themselves or be misled by others.

Plato focuses more than Aristotle on the “weakness of language” and the inadequacy of our names and definitions, for instance in the Seventh Letter. For Plato as well, however, this weakness is overcome by words themselves:

Only when all of these things – names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions – have been rubbed against one another and tested, pupil and teacher asking and answering questions in good will and without envy – only then, when reason and knowledge are at the extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object.147

Plato looks to conversation generated in friendship to overcome the weakness of language.

Knowledge progresses from words and definitions; the reality is the final thing achieved.

145 OFB 11.78.

146 165a6-17. The Complete Works, vol. 1, 278.

147 344b. Translation by Glenn R. Morrow in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 1661.

202 In Aphorism 14 of the Novum organum, in a section similar to Aristotle’s commentary on the relationship between words and things in De interpretatione, Bacon explains the basis of reasoning on words and ideas:

The is composed of propositions, propositions of words, and words are tokens of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (that which is the basis of the thing) are confused and rashly abstracted from things, nothing in those things, which are built upon them, is strong. Therefore the one hope lies in true induction.148

For Bacon, the method must establish the meanings of the notions and the words which represent them. All the notions of logic and physics used by philosophers are deceptive, since they are chosen according to common understanding. Hence they obstruct science: “Clearly words do violence to the understanding, and disturb all things.”149 The idols of the marketplace are the

“biggest nuisance of all” (omnium molestissima) and the attempt to cure them by the action of reason on words is doomed to failure, since words themselves “twist back” (retorqueant) and distort the reason.150

So Aristotle’s logic, far from being a cure for the ill effects of naïve words, compounds the problem. According to Bacon, Aristotle dared “to compose a certain art of insanity, and to sacrifice us to words.”151 His philosophy became a philosophy of logical terms imposed dictatorially on nature. He was concerned with the power of words in answering objections,

148 OFB 11.68. “Syllogismus ex Propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba Notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae (id quod basis rei est) confusae sint, & temere a rebus abstractae, nihil in ijs, quae superstruuntur, est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est vna in Inductione vera.”

149 OFB 11.80. “Verba plane vim faciunt intellectui, & omnia turbant . . . .”

150 OFB 11.92.

151 SEH 3.530. “. . . artemque quandam insaniae componere, nosque verbis addicere.”

203 rather than with their inadequacy to reach the nature of things.152 Plato is no better. His attempt to train words to reach things resulted in a fantastic and pseudo-mystical philosophy; lacking any rigorous method, his dialectic degenerates into a babbling that, Bacon says, is aptly described as

“the words of idle old men to ignorant young men.”153

According to Bacon, the problem of words cannot be solved by words. Instead, “it is necessary to have recourse to particular instances, and their series and orders.”154 Keeping close to concrete things, and following a strict method in mapping out their relationships, will permit us to form correct notions and words. A strict method is necessary at the very commencement of philosophy; Aristotle’s logic comes in too late, after perverted notions are already accepted.

Bacon’s method, the induction of the new organon, will be a tool to help ensure that nature as it is reached by men. The aim of science is “to find the form of a given nature.”155 The first step is to compile a thorough list of instances of the property under investigation – Bacon uses heat as his example in Book Two. These tables must include not only the normal workings of nature. Of even greater importance are the aberrations of nature and the results of arts and experiments156 – the pre-theoretical contemplation of the ordinary workings of nature is insufficient as a basis for scientific knowledge. Only once a thorough list is made, and tables organizing the data drawn up, can the intellect begin to work.

152 OFB 11.98-100.

153 Bacon attributes these words to Dionysius, whom Jardine and Silverthorne identify as Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse. They cite Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 3.18. The New Organon, 59, n. 33.

154 OFB 11.92 “[A]deo ut necesse sit, ad instatias particulares, earumque series & ordines recurrere . . . .”

155 OFB 11.200. “Datae autem Naturae Formam, siue Differentiam veram, siue Naturam naturantem, siue Fontem emanationis (ista enim vocabula habemus, quae ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt) inuenire, Opus & Intentio est humanae Scientiae.”

156 NO 1.98 (OFB 11.156) and Parasceve 1, 5 (OFB 11.454, 462).

204 Once the tables are compiled, induction proceeds by negation. It belongs only to God

(and perhaps to angels) “to know immediately the forms through affirmation” (Formas per

Affirmationem immediate nosse).157 Men have to proceed at first through negatives and only at the end do they reach affirmative knowledge. Hence the tables list not only positive instances of the nature under consideration, but also closely related instances where the nature is lacking.

From these tables natures which might be falsely supposed to be the form under investigation can be rejected.158 It is only after such a rigorous process of “rejection and exclusion”

(Reiectionem & Exclusiuam) that the “affirmative form, solid, both true and well determined”

(Forma affirmatiua, solida, & vera, & bene terminata) will remain.159 In his example of heat,

Bacon reaches the following tentative form:

The form or true definition of heat . . . is this: Heat is an expansive motion, confined, and struggling throughout the smaller parts. But the expansion is limited: so that while expanding everywhere, it nevertheless somewhat inclines upwards. But also the struggle through the parts is limited: so that it is not at all slow, but is a rapid motion, and with some impetus.160

Parallel to this definition is a precept for operation, which describes how to bring about the nature of heat in any body capable of receiving it.

157 OFB 11.252.

158 “Nature” or “simple nature” refers to properties such as heat, cold, lightness, and heaviness, which are present in numerous different species, and are the first properties and tendencies of matter (OFB 11. 38-40). “Forms” refers to the laws which “order and constitute” (ordinant & constituunt) any simple nature (OFB 11.254). Forms are found by finding the more general nature whose limitation or specification constitutes the nature under question, as Bacon will discover that heat is a certain type of motion; he will say motion is related to heat like a genus to a species (OFB 11.262, 270) Hence forms are also called natura naturans (OFB 11.200). See Rees, OFB lxx-lxxi, for a good overview of Bacon’s use of “form” and “nature.”

159 OFB 11.254.

160 OFB 11.270. “Forma siue Definitio vera Caloris (eius, qui est in ordine ad Vniuersum, non relatiuus tantummodo ad Sensum) talis est, breui verborum complexu: Calor est Motus Expansiuus, cohibitus, & nitens per partes minores. Modificatur autem Expansio; vt expandendo in ambitum, nonnhihil tamen inclinet versus superiora. Modificatur autem & Nixus ille per partes; vt non sit omnino segnis, sed incitatus & cum impetu nonullo.”

205

Kant, in his description of the revolution of natural science – in which, on his reading,

Bacon plays a major part – focuses on this method that enables man to overcome the heterogeneity of his mind and nature. Kant maintains that Bacon

learned that reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature’s leading- strings, but must itself show the way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason’s own determining.161

Reason is “an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions which he has himself formulated.”162 Only in this way is nature compelled to give up its secrets.

Some commentators on Bacon, however, disagree with Kant’s assessment. According to

Walter H. O’Briant, Bacon attempts to avoid the influence of the idols by a simplification of the process of knowing, especially evident in his Tables of Absence and Presence:

Bacon saw the filling in of these tables as a straightforward task which involved neither sophisticated observation nor finely tuned interpretation. . . . It is just this simplistic and mechanical character of the procedure which made it so appealing to Bacon. I contend he saw in it a way to vitiate the perniciousness of even those Idols which are innate, for how could there be any distortion when the path is so straight and narrow?163

But according to O’Briant, Bacon fails to reconcile the simplicity of method necessary to overcome the idols with the imaginative and creative aspects which he thought were so necessary

161 , Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1965), 20 (KrV B xiii).

162 Ibid.

163 Walter H. O’Briant, “The Genesis, Definition, and Classification of Bacon’s Idols,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 13 (1975): 356.

206 for science. Thus his attempt to avoid the idols in his own science introduces “one of the most fundamental tensions in his thought,” and its success is partial at best.164

Commentators such as Peter Urbach have taken exception to the portrayal of Bacon’s induction as mechanistic, simplistic, and uncreative.165 Even granting that Bacon’s inductive method was not used by scientists, O’Briant falls short in understanding his attempt to avoid the effect of the idols. He does not see Baconian induction as an attempt to bridge the heterogeneity of man’s mind and nature, and hence does not see the drastic change in the very notion of scientific knowledge that Bacon helps brings about – the “revolution,” as Kant names it. Further,

Bacon’s new method of induction is inseparable from his new starting point and a new goal. His replacement of pre-theoretical knowledge with experiments as the starting point of philosophy, and his focus on laws of nature that cut across species, rather than on natural wholes, has put an ineffaceable stamp on the modern scientific endeavor.166 And, if his new organon ultimately fails in providing a particular method of science, as a critique of Aristotle’s old organon it was highly effective.

164 Ibid.

165 Peter Urbach, “Francis Bacon as a Precursor to Popper,” The British Journal for the 33, no. 2 (1982): 113-132.

166 For instance, Richard Feynman makes some key statements in his introductory essays in The Feynman Lectures on Physics that sound very Baconian. He tells us that “the principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth.’” He also says that the scientist, looking at the multitude of objects in the world, attempts to “try to understand this multitude of aspects as perhaps resulting from the action of a relatively small number of elemental things and forces acting in an infinite variety of combinations. . . . In this way we try gradually to analyze all things, to put together things which at first sight look different, with the hope that we may be able to reduce the number of different things and thereby understand them better.” Six Easy Pieces (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 1, 23-24.

207 The rough description of Baconian induction I have given raises several questions: how do we know what natures to investigate? How do we know when our list of instances is complete? Does incompleteness prevent our discovery of the form? Since each form is a

“higher” nature limited in some way, can we reach an absolutely first nature? There are also the vexed questions concerning Baconian induction’s relationship to and influence on modern science, both as it historically developed and as it is practiced today. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to explore such questions. To understand Bacon’s new contemplation, however, it is necessary to look more closely at his central concept of form, particularly in its departure from Aristotelian form.

Baconian Forms

In Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature: with the Annotations of Hermes

Stella (1603) Bacon criticizes Aristotle’s forms and begins to develop his conception of what he will later term “form.” In this work, after introducing “operation” as the true end of science, he derives two directions or conditions guiding science toward operation, the conditions of certainty and liberty. He says that these conditions are theoretically present in some way in Aristotle (“in light, though not in use”).167 He refers to Aristotle’s discussion in the Posterior Analytics 1.4 about the necessary characteristics of the premises of scientific demonstration. Though he does not mention Petrus Ramus, the sixteenth century logician, Robert Leslie Ellis and Angus Fletcher show that he derives his two conditions from Ramus’ interpretation and extrapolation of

167 SEH 3.236.

208 Aristotle’s description of scientific knowledge.168 His description of these conditions in the

Valerius Terminus throws light on the difference between Baconian and Aristotelian forms.

In Posterior Analytics 1.4, Aristotle states what kind of premise is needed for a certain demonstration. He argues that in such a premise, the predicate must be affirmed “universally” of the subject. Aristotle defines “universal” as what belongs to something in every case and follows from the thing’s nature or form. He gives the example of a triangle having its interior angles equal to two right angles – this belongs to every triangle, and follows from the nature of a triangle.

As Ellis shows, this condition of universality is renamed by Ramus the “rule of prudence” and in turn by Bacon as “the condition of liberty.” He defines his “condition of liberty” as fulfilled “when the direction is not restrained to some definite means, but comprehendeth all the means and ways possible.” 169 He gives an example of trying to produce the effect “whiteness.” The first direction mixes air and water, resulting in the whiteness of snow and foam in water. This direction is certain – this mixture will always produce whiteness – but it is not free, since it does not show all the ways of producing whiteness. So Bacon advances to the second direction: whenever air is mixed with any transparent body, whiteness is produced, such as when glass or crystal gets pulverized or when an egg white is beaten. Bacon proceeds in this manner, moving to more and more general instructions for the production of whiteness, till he reaches a sixth direction, that “all bodies or parts of bodies which are unequal equally, that is

168 Ellis, SEH 3.203-5; Angus Fletcher, “Francis Bacon’s Forms and the Logic of Ramist Conversion,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 43, no. 2 (2005): 157-169.

169 SEH 3.204-5; 235-6.

209 in a simple proportion, do represent whiteness.”170 This direction is obscure, but it is sufficient for our purposes to see that the rule of liberty leads to the most universal possible statement of how to achieve a particular effect or quality, in this case whiteness.

Though Bacon at this point does not use the word “form” for whiteness and similar objects of study, he will in later works. But even in Valerius Terminus he identifies his condition of liberty as what Aristotle attempts, unsuccessfully in Bacon’s opinion, to do through his forms:

Neither do I contend but that this motion which I call the freeing of a direction, in the received philosophies (as far as a swimming anticipation could take hold) might be perceived and discerned; being not much other matter than that which they did not only aim at in the two rules of Axioms before remembered, but more nearly also in that which they term the form or formal cause.171

And in the Novum organum, he modifies the term “form” and makes it his own. Now forms are

“those laws and determinations of pure act, which order and constitute some simple nature – as heat, light, weight – in all sorts of matter and susceptible subject.”172

For Aristotle, the criterion of “universality” demands that the property in question come from the subject in such a way that it belongs to every instance of the subject. For Bacon, universality does not refer to something coming from a single substance. His examples in

Valerius Terminus show that properties are not confined to one substantial form – whiteness belongs to many different kinds of things. Indeed, the closer he gets to the true form (the

“condition of liberty) the more different things he can create whiteness in. The universality of

Bacon’s property comes from being able to be brought about in the most possible kinds of

170 SEH 3.237.

171 SEH 3.239.

172 OFB 11.254. “Nos enim quum de Formis loquimur, nil aliud intelligimus, quam leges illas & determinationes Actus puri, quae Naturam aliquam simplicem ordinant & constituunt – vt calorem, lumen, pondus – in omnimoda materia & subiecto susceptibili.”

210 subjects. For Aristotle, the substantial form is the source of properties; for Bacon, the property itself becomes the new nature, unmoored from any specific substantial form, and form is the law that regulates it.

Why does Bacon reject Aristotle’s account of forms? In Valerius Terminus, he argues that the ancients themselves thought that the forms as they conceived them were unknowable.

Bacon quotes Plato as holding that he would revere as a god the one who can divide and define, that is, one who knows “true forms and differences.”173 On Bacon’s reading, Plato through his high praise clearly shows his lack of confidence in attaining the forms. And Bacon agrees with

Plato: if anyone came up with the forms through the “anticipations” of the ancients it would be miraculous. Aristotle and his followers are no better. They state that “there is no true knowledge but by causes, no true cause but the form, no true form known except one.”174 Hence they also agree that there has been little or no true knowledge.

Even if the ancients had been able to arrive at their forms, it would have mattered little.

Their idea of form was deficient and useless, since they neglected the practical end of knowledge and proposed “satisfaction (which men call truth) and not operation” as their end.175 Bacon’s idea of form aims at operation – for example, how to create whiteness in numerous different materials. By contrast, the ancient notion of form is useless: “For though your direction seem to be certain and free by pointing you to a nature that is unseparable from the nature you inquire upon, yet if it do not carry you on a degree or remove nearer to action, operation, or light to

173 SEH 3.239.

174 Ibid.

175 SEH 3.232.

211 make or produce, it is but superficial and counterfeit.”176 In another early work, Cogitationes de natura rerum, he distinguishes between active and inactive principles:

Now by inactive principles I mean those which tell us of what things are made up and consist, but not by what force or in what manner they come together. For with a view to action and the enlargement of the power or operation of man it is not enough, nor indeed of any great use, to know of what things consist, if you know not the ways and means of their mutations and transformations. 177

Aristotle’s forms are inactive because, even assuming we can know Aristotelian forms (and

Bacon makes no such assumption), we are no nearer to action, since the forms attempt to tell us what things are, not how they are made. For Bacon, the substantial form – the form of that which we perceive as a natural whole – is not sought as a cause.

What role do natural wholes have in Bacon’s science? If their forms are not sought as a cause, are they nevertheless a proper object of study? In some works, such as the Advancement of Learning and De augmentis, Bacon discusses how knowledge of just a few forms can give knowledge of all substantial forms, just as knowledge of a few letters can give knowledge of all words.178 And in the Novum organum he states that “copulate forms” or “compound natures” are

“conjunctions of simple natures” and that the study of physics “does not proceed by simple

176 SEH 3.240.

177 SEH 5.424.

178 De augmentis 3.4 (SEH 1.566). Perez-Ramos points out that this image already appears in Lucretius’ De rerum natura and Aristotle’s Metaphysics (“Bacon’s Forms and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, 103-04). Aristotle uses it to totally different effect than do Lucretius and Bacon, however, arguing that it illustrates the need of some cause other than the constituent elements of a thing: “Now since that which is composed of something exists in such a way as to be one in its totality, not like a heap but like a syllable (the syllable is not the letters, and so “ba” is not the same as “b” and “a,” nor is the flesh the same as fire and earth; for after disintegration the flesh and the syllable no longer exist, but their elements, which are the letters for the latter and the fire and earth for the former, do exist), the syllable is not only its letters (the vowel and the consonant) but something else besides . . . . This additional something . . . is the cause through which this is flesh and that is a syllable . . .” (1041b12-27; Apostle, 135-36). Such a cause, Aristotle says, is the form or the substance of a thing.

212 natures, but through concrete bodies as they are found in nature, in her ordinary course.”179

Statements like these make it understandable that commentators such as Lisa Jardine sometimes speak as though the one of the goals of Baconian science is to understand natural wholes: “Bacon believed that the forms of compound bodies can be made accessible to the investigator only by considering the forms of all the constituent simple natures.”180

Bacon is ambiguous about the possibility of understanding compound bodies, however.

In the De augmentis, he suggests that it may be “vain to search for them [i.e, the forms of substances] at all” (omnino de iis inquirere frustra sit).181 And in the Novum organum, he is at pains, as Kennington shows in “Bacon’s Ontology,” to direct men away from the ordinary course of nature and the surface appearance of things – that is, away from the world as articulated into natural kinds.182 In the Parasceve, Bacon says that the history of Arts is more useful than that of

Births – meaning copulate forms occurring in the ordinary course of nature – since “it removes the mask and veil from natural things, which for the most part are hidden and obscured under a variety of shapes and their external appearance.”183 The idols of the mind present copulate forms as natural wholes and as our proper object of knowledge, but the true unity and our true object of contemplation are the simple forms: they are the “union of nature, which is absolutely

179 OFB 11.254. “De Formis copulatis, quae sunt (vt diximus) Naturam simplicium Coniugia ex cursu communi vniuersi, vt Leonis, Aquilae, Rosae, Auri, & huiusmodi . . . .” OFB 11.206. “Secundum genus Axiomatis (quod a latentis processus inuentione pendet) non per Naturas simplices procedit, sed per concreta corpora, quemadmodum in Natura inueniuntur, cursu ordinario.”

180 Jardine, Discovery and the Art of Discourse, 111.

181 SEH 1.565.

182 Kennington, “Bacon’s Ontology,” 45-46. See OFB 11.103, 256.

183 OFB 11.462. “Tollit laruam & velum a Rebus Naturalibus, quae plerunque sub varietate Figurarum & Apparentiae externae occultantur, aut obscurantur.”

213 the principal thing” (vnionem Naturae, quae est res maxime principalis).184 The “principle thing” should not be confused, however, with ultimate causes and principles. Indeed, Baconian form is the principal thing because it supplants the search for ultimate causes.

The Ultimate Causes

Although in the Novum organum Bacon criticizes ancient philosophers for wasting their time investigating the ultimate principles of nature, in his earlier work De principiis atque originibus he himself undertakes such a search.185 Turning from form, he looks to matter as the first principle.

The full title of the work is De principiis atque originibus secundum fabulas Cupidinis et caeli. Sive Parmenidis et Telesii et praecipue Democriti philosophia tractata in fabula de

Cupidine – Concerning the Principles and Origins according to the Fable of Cupid and Heaven.

Or the Philosophy of Parmenides and Telesius and especially Democritus Handled in the Fable of Cupid. “Lucretius” might fairly be substituted for “Democritus.” Ellis throughout his edition of De principiis identifies Lucretius’ De rerum natura as the source of both the quotations and the teachings which Bacon ascribes to Democritus.186 As the title indicates, he investigates the philosophy of the atomists through the interpretation of the myth of Cupid, or Love. In Bacon’s retelling, this is the oldest of the gods, which produced all other gods and things. Love is

184 OFB 11.256.

185 OFB 11.106.

186 SEH 3.79 ff. According to Ellis, Bacon was at times “misled by assuming Lucretius always represents the opinions of Democritus” (SEH 3.83, n.1).

214 parentless, though Bacon adds that in some versions Love came from an egg laid by Night. He has different properties, such as being young, blind, winged, and naked, but his most prominent and peculiar characteristic is the ability to unite different bodies.

This fable, according to Bacon, lays out the philosophy of Democritus. Love signifies matter. It is parentless because it has no cause in nature, but is itself the cause of all things. Its origin from an egg laid by night signifies its obscurity – “the power [of these first particles] can brush against the thought of mortals, but can scarcely enter in.”187 Hence comes the necessity of proceeding by exclusion and negation rather than positive affirmation, which mode of demonstration Bacon calls a sort of ignorance or darkness. From such a via negativa, however, we can reach a “distinct and definite notion” (notio distincta & [minime] confusa).188 Bacon praises Democritus for arguing from the obscurity of matter to the fact that matter, as the primary principle, must be heterogeneous to those things which it causes – it is not similar to anything that the senses encounter.189 But he chides Democritus for not rigorously following through with his insight, and attributing to atoms the same motions that compounds have, such as heavy and light.190 In truth, says Bacon, atoms must be heterogeneous in motion, body, and virtue to all other things.

Bacon also discusses primary matter itself and its properties in De principiis. In the fable of Cupid, Love has various characteristics, such as being winged and young. This signifies that

187 OFB 6.200. “Vis scilicet primis particulis a Deo indita . . . cogitationem mortalium perstringere potest, subire vix potest.”

188 OFB 6.204. Brackets in original.

189 Kennington draws attention to what he calls “the ‘heterogeneity principle’” (“Bacon’s Ontology,” 34).

190 According to Ellis, it is Lucretius, not Democritus, who ascribes heavy and light to atoms (SEH 3.83).

215 matter is not utterly formless, as Aristotle and his followers understood it. Bacon agrees with the ancients such as and Democritus who “set down that matter is active, with some form, and dispensing its form, and having within itself a principle of motion.”191 Further, all actions and motions follow from the activity of prime matter. The second characteristic of matter that Bacon discusses is that it is naked. He divides the opinions of those thinking about first principles into four camps: those who think there is one principle, the diversity within which creates the diversity of things (such as Thales or , who respectively placed water and fire as principle); those, such as Democritus and Lucretius, who think there is one principle, which creates all things by its different “magnitudes, figures, and positions” (diversas magnitudines, figuras, & posituras)192; those who set up many principles of things, whose mixture causes all things (such as Parmenides and Telesius); and those who think there are many or even infinite principles of things, but the principles already have the specific forms of things.193 Bacon agrees with the second position, that of the atomists; all the other positions place some sort of garment on matter, violating the principle of heterogeneity. In the rest of De principiis, Bacon critiques the first position and begins a critique of the second group, particularly of Telesius. This critique of Telesius comprises well over half of De principiis, which ends abruptly, before Bacon completes his critique.

While Bacon thus makes positive assertions regarding prime matter – it is heterogeneous to all other things, and it is active – he makes no progress towards telling us what such a material

191 OFB 6.208. “Quod Materiam activam, forma nonnulla, & formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se principium motus habentem, posuerunt.”

192 OFB 6.210.

193 Bacon never treats of the last group; Ellis identifies it as Anaxagoras (SEH 3.87, n. 2).

216 heterogeneous to all other things would be like, or what action it would possess to give rise to all the different actions of things. He appears to abandon this path of investigation for good. Paolo

Rossi notes that when Bacon turns to first principles in the Novum organum (a work regarded by almost all commentators as posterior to De principiis), he turns definitively away from

Democritean atomism, though conceding that the school of Democritus was at least correct in dissecting nature, and so superior to other later schools.194 He turns not only from the attempt to uncover atoms, but any attempt to discover the first principles of things.195 Nevertheless, his examination of matter as a principle in De principiis appears to have born some fruit. Bacon’s insistence that matter, form, and action “are in no way to be torn apart, only distinguished” (nullo modo discerpenda, sed tantummodo distinguenda)196 leads to his definition of forms as “laws of action” in the Novum organum and helps him avoid the question of what substance such laws inhere in. Further, he returns to the via negativa in the Novum organum for the discovery of forms, though the heterogeneity which his new method remedies is that of our mind and nature, not that of matter and its different manifestations.

Why does Bacon reject the search for ultimate principles in the Novum organum?

Kennington argues that Bacon could not solve the difficulty of uncovering a principle wholly heterogeneous from perceptible things; De principiis “expresses the defeat of theoretical materialism.”197 But in the Novum organum, Bacon does not point to the inaccessibility of first principles, but to their uselessness in natural philosophy. They are useless because it is not

194 Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, 124-26.

195 OFB 11.106, 174.

196 OFB 6.208.

197 Kennington, “Bacon’s Ontology,” 44.

217 necessary to deduce Baconian forms from primary matter. His new method allows for certainty at every step without ascending to first principles.

According to Aristotle, the highest virtue for men is wisdom, and “all men believe that what is called ‘wisdom’ is concerned with the first causes and principles.”198 Man’s highest function cannot be exercised unless he attains knowledge of the ultimate things. For Lucretius as well, happiness demands reaching the atoms as the first principles. Only in this way can the world in its entirety be seen as rational, and superstition and fear avoided. For Seneca, the contemplation of an ordered and rational nature demands the attainment of “things older than the world itself,” the eternal principles of things. Bacon, however, distrusts man’s eagerness to ascend to what is first in itself. Progress in Baconian science does not require a grasp of first principles. Mastery of nature is the end of science, and such mastery proceeds by attaining knowledge of his new forms. This knowledge is secured by his new induction with certainty at each step.

4. The Relationship between Baconian Action and Contemplation

Natural Philosophy: Contemplative and Active

Any attempt to understand Baconian action and contemplation must take into account their relationship, given that Bacon points to a closer union of his action and contemplation as precisely that which separates them from prior accounts of action and contemplation. In the

198 Metaphysics 981b28-29. Apostle, 14.

218 Advancement he states that there are “two wayes” of contemplation, the ancients’ and his own.

His differs from that of the ancients because his contemplation and action are “more neerely and straightly conioyned and vnited together, than they haue beene.”199 Whereas Aristotle and the ancients drew a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical sciences, Bacon does not. In the Advancement, he posits a new division of the sciences in place of Aristotle’s division of sciences into contemplative, productive, and practical.200 What is the connection between

Bacon’s action and contemplation?

Macaulay gives perhaps the most common answer. In his famous essay on Bacon, he argues that what is new about Baconian contemplation is its practical object. That is, the mastery of nature goal guides the scientists to practical considerations. In Macaulay’s view, neither

Baconian science nor the inductive method is new; the novelty consists in the limiting of science to matters that benefit men.201 Baconian action and contemplation are joined by the practical application of theoretical knowledge; there is nothing about Bacon’s contemplation in itself that leads to action. In Macaulay’s account, there seems little to justify Bacon’s statements about the

“two ways of contemplation.” Further, this interpretation ignores the centrality and the novelty of Baconian forms.

In contrast, Pérez-Ramos reads Bacon not as advocating the practical application of theoretical knowledge, but as collapsing contemplation into action. Bacon is “wholly bent on

199 OFB 4.31, 32.

200 See above, pp. 46-49.

201 See also Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 26: “[Bacon’s] new science consisted primarily of a new goal and only secondarily and incidentally of a new method.”

219 subduing rather than contemplating Nature.”202 Pérez-Ramos places Bacon within what he calls

“the maker’s knowledge tradition.” According to his description, this tradition holds that “true knowledge is to be had only of what is made or can be made (reproduced, modeled, fabricated...).” Bacon’s “epoch-making equation between knowledge and power” in his description of forms marks a significant step in this tradition. Pérez-Ramos sums up Bacon’s teaching: “if a scientific statement can lead to the successful (re)production of the phenomenon it purports to describe, however crudely or approximately, then that very statement should be accepted as a full denizen into the realm of practically sanctioned knowledge.” Such a view stands in contrast to Aristotle’s knowledge, a “beholder’s knowledge.”203 On Pérez-Ramos’ reading, Bacon’s contemplation and action are joined because the criterion for determining whether what is held is true knowledge is whether it can reproduce what is described. All science is practical; no purely contemplative science is possible.

In his review of Pérez-Ramos’ Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s

Knowledge Tradition, Kennington takes issue with his core claim that Baconian knowledge is or necessarily leads to making. Kennington cites several counter-examples to this claim, including

Bacon’s doctrine of the idols and the forms themselves. Bacon’s description of the idols serves to destroy them, not make them. And he describes the forms as “eternal and immutable,” and hence they cannot be made. 204 Hence Pérez-Ramos is incorrect in completely collapsing

Baconian contemplation into Baconian action.

202 Pérez-Ramos, “Bacon’s Forms and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition,” 101.

203 Ibid., 110-11.

204 Kennington’s review of Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, 415-416; see NO 2.9. Pérez –Ramos does not, I think, sufficiently heed the distinction between Baconian natures and forms. Knowledge of forms gives the ability to reproduce, not forms, but the natures of which the form is the expression.

220

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses the distinction between contemplative, practical, and productive sciences. Taking natural philosophy as a representative theoretical science, he states that it

happens to be concerned with some genus of being (for it is concerned with such a substance which has in itself a principle of motion and of rest), and it is clear that this science is neither practical nor productive. For in productive sciences the principle of a thing produced is in that which produces, whether this is intellect or art or some power, and in practical sciences the principle of action is in the doer, and this is choice…205

In contemplative sciences, the principles of the things investigated reside in the things themselves. In contrast, the principles of productive sciences (arts such as carpentry or ) reside outside the thing produced, in the one producing; and in practical sciences

(such as ethics or politics) the principle of action is human choice. In the Nicomachean Ethics,

Aristotle discusses the distinction between these intellectual habits further. Since “what we know scientifically does not even admit of being otherwise,” theoretical sciences are concerned with necessary things, and hence eternal things.206 Art, on the other hand, is “the study of how something that admits of being and not being comes to be, something whose principle is in the producer and not in the product.”207 Practical sciences such as politics are similar to art in that they are concerned with things that can be or not be, but distinct in that they are concerned with acting rather than making.208 In sum, Aristotle distinguishes between theoretical science on the

205 1025b19-24. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1979), 102. All subsequent translations from Aristotle’s Metaphysics are from this work, unless otherwise noted.

206 1139b20-21 (Irwin, 88).

207 1140a13-14 (Irwin 88-89).

208 1140a1-6; 1140b4-7.

221 one hand, and arts and practical sciences on the other, because theoretical science look at eternal principles within the object studied, whereas arts and practical sciences are concerned with things that can be or not be, whose principles are in the mind of the one making or acting.

In the Advancement, as I discussed in the first chapter, Bacon departs from Aristotle’s distinction between theoretical and active (that is, practical and productive) sciences. It is not the most fundamental division of sciences for Bacon; indeed, each of the three divisions of philosophy which he names there (natural, human, and divine) has both an active and a contemplative part. He rejects the basis of Aristotle’s division of theoretical and active sciences, the fact that theoretical sciences are concerned with eternal immutable things whereas active sciences are concerned with what can be or not be. Most fundamentally, he rejects it because a science that is not productive is not a science.209 Bacon’s sciences are both contemplative and active because of his understanding of form. On the one hand, the forms are the eternal, immutable principles of things, the contemplation of which gives men joy. Thus Bacon writes in the Novum organum that “the contemplation itself of things just as they are, without superstition or imposture, error or confusion, is more worthy in itself than all the fruits of discoveries.”210

But the forms are also productive: “It is the work and intention of human power to generate and draw over a new nature or new natures above a given body. But it is the work and intention of human science to find the form of a given nature . . . .”211 The forms are the laws of these

209 See the Preface to the NO.

210 OFB 11.196. “Contemplatio Rerum, prout sunt, sine Superstitione aut Impostura, Errore aut Confusione, in seipsa magis digna est, quam vniversus Inuentorum fructus.”

211 OFB 11.200. “Super datum Corpus nouam Naturam, siue nouas Naturas generare & superinducere, Opus & Intentio est humanae Potentiae. Datae autem Naturae Formam, siue Differentiam veram, siue Naturam naturantem,

222 natures, so that “true contemplation and free operation follow from the discovery of forms.”212

Unlike Aristotelian forms, Bacon’s forms, when known, lead to mastery of nature, the Kingdom of Man, as they give us the ability to reproduce simple natures in different situations. Bacon’s natural philosophy is similar to Aristotelian theoretical science in looking at eternal principles residing in things, but similar to Aristotelian art in that this knowledge results in making things that can either be or not be. Bacon’s natural philosophy is both art and science, both active and contemplative.

This connection between action and contemplation explains the ambiguity of Bacon’s judgments regarding their relationship, and the disagreement commentators have about the contemplative or active nature of Baconian science. On the one hand, Bacon’s mastery of nature goal indicates the exaltation of action, and in his earlier works he dismisses contemplation for its own sake. But balanced against these considerations are explicit statements in the Novum organum as to the superiority of contemplation. If Bacon does not unambiguously favor one or the other in the Novum organum, it is because he does not have to. If his action and contemplation are not, as Pérez-Ramos argues, identical, nevertheless his contemplative and active lives are compatible and corroborative. The one who discovers the forms can pursue contemplation; the one who uses knowledge of the forms to subdue nature is benefited by the knower. Hence Bacon does not repeat his indictment of knowledge for its own sake, contained in Valerius Terminus, the Advancement, and other early writings, in the Novum organum. He can praise knowledge for its own sake, since he has established a new kind of contemplation. He

siue Fontem emanationis (ista enim vocabula habemus, quae ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt) inuenire, Opus & Intentio est humanae Scientiae.”

212OFB 11.202. “Ex Formarum Inuentione, sequitur Contemplatio vera, & Operatio libera.”

223 can rely on the natural tendencies of men towards either action or contemplation to together drive his new project.

The Great Mother of the Sciences

Given that Bacon’s natural philosophy is both active and contemplative, what of other sciences? Bacon is open that he is trying to remake not just natural philosophy, but all of philosophy. Indeed, the refashioning of other sciences will spring directly from his new natural philosophy, which “ought to be regarded as the great mother of the sciences. For all arts and sciences torn away from this root perhaps are polished and fashioned for use, but do not grow at all.”213 This statement raises two questions: in what does natural philosophy’s maternity consist, and in what sense are the present, orphaned sciences such as politics and ethics of “use” – which is, after all, what Aristotle and Seneca intended them for anyway.

Bacon writes several texts on natural philosophy’s maternity. He first states what this relationship is not – natural philosophy is not to serve as the minister of medicine and mathematics, or as a pedagogical tool for the young. He advises that no one should expect great progress in the sciences until they are joined to natural philosophy. The failure to do this has led to the shallowness and ineffectiveness of the sciences, including ethics, politics, and logic. True natural philosophy can aid them, Bacon says, by giving them “new strength and growth from the sources and true contemplations of the motions, rays, sounds, texture, and structure of bodies, of

213 OFB 11.124. “Atque haec ipsa nihilominus pro magna Scientiarum matre haberi debet. Omnes enim Artes & Scientiae ab hac stirpe reuulsae, poliuntur fortasse, & in vsum effinguntur, sed nil admodum crescunt.”

224 dispositions of the mind, and of intellectual apprehensions.”214 As Bacon says as early as the

Advancement and repeats in the Novum organum, ethics and politics need tables of instances or natural histories to draw from, and the new organon, the logic of induction that Bacon discovers.215

But granted the necessity of natural histories and a new induction for the other sciences, what gives natural philosophy the privileged place that Bacon accords it? Why is it not merely accidental that Bacon unveils his new induction in a work of natural philosophy rather than ethics or politics? He states that if even a few people undertook his natural philosophy, “the finding of all causes and all sciences would be the work of a few years.”216 The natures and forms, although pertaining to numerous sciences, belong primarily to natural philosophy, because natures are the “first properties and tendencies of matter” (Materiae primis Passionibus ac desiderijs),217 and the study of matter belongs to natural philosophy.

Does this collapse all sciences into natural philosophy? In De sapientia, Bacon divides philosophy into natural and human. The ground of that distinction was that “man is, as it were, the centre of the world, in respect of final causes, so that if man were not in nature, all things would seem to stray and wander without purpose, and like scattered branches, as they say,

214 OFB 11.126. “Ex fontibus & veris contempationibus Motuum, Radiorum, Sonorum, Texturae, & Schematismi Corporum, Affectuum, & prehensionum Intellectualium, nouas vires & augmenta illis impertiri potuerit.”

215 NO 1.127. Also see “Plan of the Great Instauratio,” third part.

216 OFB 11.170. “Apud nos vero si esset praesto quispiam, qui de facto Naturae ad interrogata responderet, paucorum annorum esset Inventio Causarum, & Scientiarum omnium.”

217 OFB 11.38. See also De sapientia, “Proteus, or Matter.”

225 without inclination to their end.”218 In one sense, Bacon’s mature natural philosophy serves to reinforce the central place of man, inasmuch as it aims at the Kingdom of Man named in the very title of the Novum organum. But for a true scientific ethics (unrealized and uninitiated when

Bacon was writing, and not to be confused with the preliminary ethics of the De sapientia), the starting point and the method – the forms and induction – would be the same as natural philosophy.219 Such an ethics would seem to be a branch of natural philosophy. And indeed,

Bacon gives what appears to be a new division of sciences in the Novum organum. He designates two axioms for the transformation of bodies. One looks to simple natures, collections of which constitute bodies; the other proceeds not through simple natures but through bodies as we see them in the ordinary course of nature.220 From these two axioms, Bacon says,

a true division of philosophy arises; the received words (which approach nearest to the indication of the thing) having been carried over to our sense. Namely, that the inquiry of forms . . . consitutes Metaphysics; but the inquiry of efficient, and material, and latent process, and the latent schematism . . . constitute Physics.221

If, as Bacon seems to indicate, this division is exhaustive, then ethics and politics would seem ultimately to be parts of natural philosophy.222 That is, they would bear the same relationship to

218 WA 100, SEH 6.670. “Verum et hoc praecipue proponitur, quod homo veluti centrum mundi sit, quatenus ad causas finales; adeo ut sublato e rebus homine reliqu vagari sine proposito videantur et fluctuari, atque quod aiunt scopae dissolutae esse, nec finem petere.”

219 NO 1.80, 112, 127.

220 NO 2.5.

221 OFB 11.214. “Ex duobus generibus Axiomatum, quae superius posita sunt, oritur vera diuisio Philosophiae, & scientiarum; translatis vocabulis receptis (quae ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt) ad sensum nostrum. Videlicet, vt Inquisitio Formarum, quae sunt (ratione certe, & sua lege) aeternae & immobiles, constituat Metaphysicam; Inquisitio vero Efficientis, & Materiae, & latentis processus, & latentis Schematismi (quae omnia cursum Naturae communem & ordinarium, non leges fundamentales & aeternas respiciunt) constituat Physicam ....”

222 If Bacon’s division here is exhaustive, does he intends ethics to fit into metaphysics or physics? Perhaps, since they deal with man, a product of the “common and ordinary course of nature,” they would fall under physics. In the Parasceve, ad historiam naturalem, et expirimentalem, he lists among his histories a “History of the Passions; as of Anger, Love, Shame etc.” He names this history as the basis of true ethics in NO 1.127.

226 his natural philosophy as Aristotle’s psychology (contained in De anima) bears to his physics, rather than the relationship that Aristotle’s ethics bears to his physics. They are distinguished by the objects studied, but they are not distinguished by different starting points or methods, or by the distinction between action and contemplation.

Bacon does say that, far from desiring the destruction of the extant ethics and politics, he embraces their use and flourishing.223 What does he mean by this, especially in light of his statements concerning the uselessness of ancient philosophy?224 Bacon lists the following uses of the received philosophy in the preface to the Novum organum: “they feed disputes, adorn speeches, add to work for professors and supply the compendia of civil life.” His philosophy, in contrast, is useless for these things, since it “is not at hand, it cannot be picked up in passing, it does not fawn over intellectual preconceptions, neither does it descend to the capacity of the vulgar, unless through utility, and effects.” 225 The corollary seems clear: the old sciences, including ethics and politics, are useful precisely insofar as they are shallow and flatter intellectual prejudices. Bacon repeats the same argument in NO 1.128. As in the preface to the

Instauratio Magna, he mentions only one use that seems actually useful – in contrast to feeding disputes and supplying work for teachers – that is, the old philosophy can be used for “the compendia of civil life” (vitae Ciuilis compendia).226 Bacon seems to concede that, in the

223 NO 1.128; Preface to the Novum organum, OFB 11.56.

224 See the Preface of the Instauratio Magna, OFB 11.10-12.

225 OFB 11.56. “Disputationes alant, Sermones ornent, ad professoria munera, & vitae ciuilis compendia, adhibeantur, & valeant. . . . [Philosophia nostra] non praesto est; neque in transitu capitur; neque ex praenotionibus Intellectui blanditur; neque ad vulgi captum, nisi per vtilitatem, & effecta descendet.”

226 OFB 11.190.

227 absence of any methodical political philosophy derived from the method and principles of natural philosophy, the ancient political philosophy has its uses. Bacon’s description of a more universal action – the creation of the kingdom of man – demotes but does not destroy the achievements of ancient political philosophy. Men still live in community together with shared or opposing goods; men still must order their conflicting desires and actions. That the traditional consideration of politics is still in some measure applicable is indicated by Bacon’s use and approbation of historians such as Livy and Tacitus, and of politicians such as Augustus. How

Bacon foresees the interaction of his new contemplation and action with ancient political theory and existing political structures is the subject of the next chapter.

Conclusion

Bacon’s rethinking of the nature of action and contemplation, and their relationship, comes to a climax in the Novum organum. While that work has few explicit references to ethics, such a reworking of action and contemplation, the central distinction of ancient ethics, inevitably changes the answer to the fundamental question of the human good. Bacon establishes an action greater than political action, one that looks to the good of the human race rather than individual men or particular states. He replaces contemplation of the unchanging order and beauty of the cosmos – a contemplation sought for its own sake in the Aristotelian tradition and ordered only to an interior perfection in the Stoic and Epicurean traditions – with a contemplation which confers an ability to manipulate the world and leads to material well-being. Both this new contemplation and this new action are achieved by his new understanding of forms.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GOOD MAN IN THE ESSAYS AND THE NEW ATLANTIS

Francis Bacon’s ethical and political thought perhaps appear most clearly in his last works, the Essays and Counsels, Civil and Moral and the New Atlantis. The Advancement and the De augmentis contain important treatments of ethical themes, and the De sapientia treats moral and political philosophy as well as natural philosophy. But the Essays, the final and most substantial version of which was published the year before Bacon’s death, focuses on moral and political philosophy, as the full title indicates. And the New Atlantis is Bacon’s most complete sketch of the society brought about by the natural scientist that is the master of nature and the benefactor of humans.

The works are very different, both in style and content. The Essays does not mention natural philosophy; the New Atlantis is a vision of what Bacon’s new scientific project will accomplish. The Essays contains advice for individuals seeking power and argues for a powerful mercantile and imperialist state; the New Atlantis shows a peaceful and secluded society that aims for scientific mastery of nature rather than military or economic conquest. In Novum organum 1.129, Bacon distinguishes three types of ambitious men: those who seek self- aggrandizement within their own nation, those who seek the good of their nation over against other nations, and those who seek the good of mankind as a whole by mastering nature. This distinction will serve as an organizing principle of this chapter.

The first section discusses the moral essays, those dealing with men as individuals. It opens with a consideration of the literary form of the work and the relation the Essays have to

Bacon’s Instauratio Magna. It then turns to human nature, a dominant theme in the Essays. 228

229 Given Bacon’s treatment of nature and form in the Novum organum, specifically, the replacement of Aristotle’s understanding of nature and form, it is difficult to see how Bacon understands human nature and virtue in the Essays. If his works are coherent, the meaning he attaches to “human nature” and “virtue” must be different from the traditional understandings.

The first section of the chapter investigates what Bacon means by these terms.

The second section treats of the political teaching of the Essays. It opens with a brief discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas’ conception of the common good. This serves as a foil against which the political common good of the Essays is outlined. The section ends with a discussion of the good man as portrayed in “Goodness and Goodness of Nature,” an essay that points to something beyond both the self-aggrandizing individual and the imperialist state portrayed in the majority of the essays.

The final section discusses the New Atlantis. It opens with a comparison between nature as conceived by Aristotle and the approach to nature (meaning the whole of natural things) shown in the New Atlantis. The book sketches not only the scientist who masters nature, but also the non-scientist citizens of the New Atlantis. The latter are chiefly discussed in regards to their ability to procreate and their docility. In return, they are partakers of the common good of the

New Atlantis, the fruits of the scientific mastery of nature. This final section closes with the picture of one of the scientists who is responsible for this common good.

230 1. Essays and Counsels, Moral

Literary Form

In 1605 Francis Bacon published the Advancement of Learning, which was reissued, with

“great and ample additions,” as De augmentis scientiarum in 1623.1 Rawley reports that Bacon produced at least a dozen drafts of the Novum organum.2 His plans for an Instauratio Magna date at least as early as 1603,3 and were most fully elucidated, after several iterations, in the

Instauratio magna published in 1620. But of all his works, the Essays and Counsels, Civil and

Moral went through the lengthiest editing process. The edition of 1597 was his first published work and the third edition was published in 1625, one year prior to his death. Almost in the middle of these two bookends of Bacon’s published works was the second edition of his Essays, published in 1612. As well as adding essays – the 1597 edition had ten essays, the 1612 had 34, and the 1625 had 58 – Bacon extensively revised and expanded many of the earlier essays for later editions. Unless otherwise noted, I will treat here of the final edition.

The Essays are unique, stylistically speaking, among Bacon’s work. The closest in form to them is De sapientia, which also treats of a distinct subject in each chapter, but that work differs from the Essays in that each chapter is an interpretation of an ancient myth. The Oxford

English Dictionary lists the original meaning of “essays” as “the action or process of trying or

1 SEH 7.14.

2 William Rawley, The Life of the Right Honorable Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam Viscount St. Alban, in SEH 1.11.

3 Charles Whitney, “Francis Bacon’s Instauratio: Dominion of and over Humanity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50, no. 3 (1989): 371.

231 testing,” but describes a later meaning as “a composition of moderate length on any particular subject.” It traces this use to Montaigne, whose Essais were published in 1580.4 Bacon uses the word in this in the dedication to Prince Henry of the 1612 edition, where he describes Seneca’s

Epistles to Lucilius as “but Essaies – that is dispersed Meditacions.”5 “Dispersed” is defined as

“distributed or spread over a wide area.” The adjective could refer to the content of the individual essays, as Kiernan believes. Though the essays are for the most part very brief, Bacon approaches his topic from different angles, presenting different sides of a proposition and offering considerations drawn from a wide range of historical examples, other authors’ thoughts, and his own experience. The essays as a group are also dispersed, that is, the Essays covers numerous topics, ranging from building houses and planting gardens to analysis of emotions such as anger and love, from marriage to advising kings. But Bacon does restrict the scope of the essays in his title: Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral. They deal with moral and political topics.

Why does Bacon use the form of essays? As the title indicates, Bacon writes essays and counsels on political and moral matters. He describes the way things are and gives advice on how to act. Giving counsel was always a goal of the Essays. Thus Bacon in the 1612 dedication describes his essays as both contemplative and active: “Having devided my life into the contemplative, and active parte, I am desierous to give his M[ajesty], and yor H[ighness] of the fruites of both, simple thoughe they be.”6 Giving advice became more of a concern after his fall from grace in 1621, when he was prosecuted by Parliament for corruption. Broken and in ill

4 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1975 ed., s.v. “essay.”

5 Essays, 317.

6 Ibid. Brackets added.

232 health, Bacon turned from political action to advising men of action, writing to Count

Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador: “Both age, and fortune, and also my talents, which until now I have largely ignored, call me, so that departing from theatre of civil matters I dedicate myself to letters, and I instruct the actors themselves, and I serve posterity.”7 The essays are eminently suited to men of action. As Bacon says in the 1612 dedication, substantial treatments of a topic “requireth leasure in the Writer, and leasure in the Reader.” By contrast, busy men can make time to read the “certaine breif notes” contained in his Essays. The form of the essays was successful, judging by Bacon’s statement that of all his works they “have beene most Currant:

For that, as it seemes, they come home, to mens Businesse, and Bosomes.”8

The audience that Bacon is writing for helps explain why the Essays alone among his philosophical works does not treat directly of natural philosophy. His natural philosophy, Bacon says in the Novum organum, “cannot be brought down to the common understanding.” Most men have neither the ability nor the desire to understand it, as instanced by its dedicatee, James I, who, after reading the Novum organum, described it as “like the peace of God, that passeth all understanding.”9 It will never be adapted to the people at large, except in its effects.10 But numerous men could profit from advice on how to act in moral and political matters; and the

Essays, through such advice, could indirectly even further his scientific project.

7 Letters and Life, 7.285, quoted in Essays, xxvii.

8 Dedication to 1625 edition (Essays, 5).

9 Lisa Jardine, Introduction to The New Organon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xxviii.

10 NO 1.128.

233 The Essays and the Instauratio Magna

But even if the form and general content of the Essays are understandable in view of its audience, its coherence with Bacon’s Instauratio Magna is not clear. In the Novum organum,

Bacon states that ethics will never flourish until it is joined to its “great mother,” natural philosophy. This presupposes the full establishment of natural philosophy, which is far in the future when Bacon publishes the Essays. A true, scientific ethics must be based on the natural histories that Bacon lists in his Outline of a Natural and Experimental History, particularly the

“History of the Passions; as of Anger, Love, Shame, etc.” And, as he states in the Novum organum, it will use his new induction. The Essays presents no tables of instances, nor does it proceed by his new induction. Why does Bacon bother with a pre-scientific ethics, orphaned from natural philosophy? Further, in addition to the problem of method, the contents of the

Essays seem at first glance at odds with the teaching of the Novum organum. Nature, goodness, and virtue are dominant themes in the Essays. In the ancient understanding, human goodness is virtue, which is the fulfillment of human nature. But given Bacon’s replacement of Aristotelian nature and form in the Novum orgnaum with a new nature and form, it is difficult to see how

Bacon can keep the ancient conception of human nature and virtue in the Essays. What meaning, then, does he attach to “human nature,” “goodness,” and “virtue” in the Essays?

The political philosophy presented in the Essays faces the same problems as his ethics, but also adds a new one. In Novum organum 1.129, Bacon compares the ambitions of those who strive to extend their power within their own country and of those who strive to extend their countries’ power in the world unfavorably with those seeking to extend the empire of the human race over things by his new philosophy. Yet several of his essays clearly give advice to the first

234 type of men – indeed, Kiernan argues that the Essays’ “primary emphasis is upon effective, prudential behavior for the individual intent upon ‘making it.’”11 But Bacon also gives advice in the Essays to the second type of ambitious man, the one who wishes to “extend the power and empire of their country.” Of particular note are “Of Empire” and “Of the True Greatness of

Kingdoms and Estates,” aptly described by Richard Kennington as “imperialist and

Machiavellian.”12 Why does Bacon aid those seeking lesser ambitions? Or, in other words, what is the relationship of the Essays to Bacon’s Instauratio Magna, and in particular to the action espoused by Bacon in the Novum organum and other works of the Instauratio?

As discussed in the second chapter, Bacon does assign a place to the Essays within his great project. In a 1625 letter to Fr. Fulgentius discussing his Instauratio Magna, Bacon places the Essays, with other moral and political writings, in a volume between the De augmentis and the Novum organum. He states that these writings are “interposed, and not following the order of the Instauration” (interjectus est, et non ex ordine ‘Instaurationis’);13 they are not properly a part of the Instauration because, as stated earlier, they do not follow the true scientific method.

Nevertheless they are of some utility to Bacon’s project of mastering nature, judging from the fact that he places them within the Instauratio. I argued in the second chapter of this dissertation that the ethical teaching of De sapientia has a relationship to the Instauratio Magna in part because a preliminary understanding and management of the passions is necessary before men can successfully undertake the scientific project. This does not seem to hold true of the Essays,

11 Essays, xxi.

12 Richard Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision,” in On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philsoophy, eds. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 58; 74, n. 7.

13 LL 7.531.

235 at least not in the same way. In De sapientia, natural philosophy is a major focus, and explicit mention is made of the relationship between the passions and natural philosophy.14 By contrast, natural philosophy appears nowhere in the ethics, nor is it readily apparent what the relationship is between the ethical advice in the Essays and the Instauratio Magna.

But if the Essays do not treat directly of the relationship between the passions and natural philosophy, both the Essays and the Novum organum treat of some of the same subjects. In particular, Bacon is at pains to rework the traditional understanding of nature in the Novum organum. And “nature” appears throughout the Essays. In the following sections, I will argue that Bacon develops his new idea of “nature” and the related concepts of “human nature” and

“virtue” in the Essays. His treatment of these topics in the Essays is in accord with that in the

Novum organum.

Human Nature in Aristotle

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives several different meanings of “nature” but concludes that nature “in the primary and main sense is the substance of things which have a principle of motion in themselves qua what they are.”15 William Wallace explains the meaning of

Aristotelian “nature” in this way:

[Nature’s] definition is best sought by comparing things that exist by nature (viz, animals and their parts, plants and minerals) with those that exist by other causes, in particular by art. The former are seen to have within them a tendency to change or to motion. The artifact as such has no similar tendency; it has an

14 See, for example, “Prometheus” and “Ericthonius.”

15 1015a14-16; translation from Hippocrates G. Apostle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1979), 78.

236 inclination to change only insofar as it is made of a natural substance. In this context nature is defined as “the principle or cause of motion and of rest in that in which it is primarily, by reason of itself and not accidentally.”16

As form is more substance than matter is, when speaking of the substance of humans we look to their form.17 And as Aristotle argues in De anima, the form of a living thing is its soul:

The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is the source of movement, it is the end, it is the essence of the whole living body.18

That is, the soul is the efficient, formal, and final cause of a human. The nature, then of humans is primarily their soul, whose chief activity is thought.19

Aristotle’s moral philosophy relies heavily on his understanding of nature. Though the

Nicomachean Ethics has no systemic treatment of nature, it is mentioned several times in the work. Terence Irwin distinguishes two main uses of it: it stands in contrast with law and education; and it indicates the function and end of a thing.20 In the latter use, nature plays a major role in defining what happiness is for men:

For just as the good, i.e., [doing] well . . . for whatever has a function and [characteristic] action, seems to depend on its function, the same seems to be true for a human being, if a human being has some function. Then do the carpenter

16 William Wallace, The Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), 45.

17 Metaphysics 1017b24-25, 1014b36-1015a6; De anima 412b10-11.

18 415b9-12. Translation from The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 661. See also 412b10-11: “What is soul? It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the account of a thing” (ibid., 657).

19 For the connection of form and soul with nature, see William Wallace, The Elements of Philosophy, 45-46.

20 Terence Irwin, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999), 343-344, s.v. “nature.”

237 and the leather worker have their functions and actions, but has a human being no function? Is he by nature idle, without any function?21

Aristotle rejects nutrition and sensation as the human function, since these are common to lower life forms, and settles on “some sort of life of action of the [part of the soul] that has reason.”

Hence the human good is “activity of the soul in accord with virtue.”22 Aristotle relies on an understanding of human nature to determine man’s good, but that is not to say that virtuous action comes about through nature. If this were so virtues would be achieved without human effort. But the “virtues arise in us neither by nature nor against nature. Rather we are by nature able to acquire them, and we are completed through habit.”23 Aristotle also uses nature to guide his discussion elsewhere in the Ethics: “a human being is a naturally political [animal]; “the friendship of man and woman also seems to be natural”; and pleasure is “an activity of the natural state.”24 The good man, through choice, acquires habits that fulfill his nature.

Human Nature and Virtue in Essays

Bacon lays out his most explicit treatment of human nature in “Of Nature in Men” (28).

The essay opens with two tricolons: “Nature is Often Hidden; Sometimes Overcome; Seldome

Extinguished. Force maketh Nature more violent in the Returne: Doctrine and Discourse maketh

21 1097b25-32; Irwin, 8. The brackets are in the original.

22 1098a4, 17; Irwin, 9.

23 1103a25-26; Irwin, 18.

24 1097b11, Irwin, 8; 1162a16, Irwin, 133; 1153a14, Irwin, 115.

238 Nature lesse Importune: But Custome onely doth alter and subdue Nature.”25 Nature is thus introduces as something to fight against. Bacon gives several pieces of advice for the one “that seekeeth Victory over his Nature”: don’t try for either too great or too insignificant tasks when battling your nature; use helps at first, but then make it harder; “where Nature is mighty, and therefore the Victory hard,” proceed by degrees to conquer her, if a sudden violent freeing is not possible; follow the ancients’ advice to “bend Nature as a Wand, to a Contrary extreme”; and when forming a habit, pause at times to regain strength for the attempt and to ensure the habit being formed is correct. Bacon caps this advice with the warning that one should not “trust his

Victorie over his Nature too farre,” as it will lay buried a great time, and yet revive. To illustrate this point, Bacon tells Aesop’s story of the cat who changed to a woman, “who sate very demurely . . . till a Mouse ranne before her.”26

After spending over two-thirds of the essay teaching how to gain victory over nature,

Bacon gives several observations about nature. He notes that men’s natures are best revealed when they are private, when they are experiencing a strong passion, and when they are in “a new

Case or Experiment, for there Custome leaveth him.” Some men are fortunate and their professions are suited to their natures; others, like Bacon, can apply to themselves the words of the Psalmist, “Multum Incola fuit Anima mea”: My soul was often a stranger.27 If a man must study something “agreeable to his Nature,” there is no need for a set plan to pursue that study; but if disagreeable, he must have a plan in place. Bacon closes the essay with an exhoration: “A

25 Essays, 118-19.

26 Essays, 120.

27 Kiernan notes three distinct occasions that Bacon applies this quotation to himself. Essays, 263.

239 Mans Nature runnes either to Herbes, or Weeds; Therefore let him seasably Water the One, and

Destroy the Other.”

In this essay nature is mainly presented as something that must be overcome. Apart from the final ten lines of the essays, nature is an antagonist. Nature is not a guide for men’s actions, as the ancients conceived it, but a given that must often be battled. Hence Kiernan in his glossary for the Essays defines “naturall” as “in a state of nature; unregenerate.”28 The examples

Bacon gives of nature – a tendency to be angry, a tendency to drink, and a tendency to study certain things – indicate that it is particular for each man. It is the tendencies each man has to pursue or shun certain things.

“Virtue” appears in the Essays 82 times, according to Brian Vickers.29 Since Bacon rejects the ancient understanding of nature, on which their understanding of virtue is dependent, in what sense does he use the word?

Robert K. Faulkner states that only one of the virtues treated in Aristotle’s Nicomachean

Ethics is the subject of an essay, “Of Ambition.”30 Bacon’s treatment, according to Faulkner, is

“predictably un-Aristotelian,” as “the theme is not the appropriate form of the virtue, but useful channels for the force of the passion.”31 In the first essay where he uses the word “virtue,” “Of

Adversity,” his use does seem similar to that of the ancients: “The Vertue of Prosperitie, is

28 Essays, 323.

29 Francis Bacon: The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 715.

30 Even this overstates the case. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that the ambitious man (φιλότιμος) is sometimes praised as hitting the mean and sometimes blamed as excessively desiring honor (1125b10-14). The virtue of desiring honor in the correct way has no name (1125b21).

31 Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1993), 106.

240 Temperance; The Vertue of Adversity, is Fortitude.”32 Temperance and fortitude are two of the traditional four cardinal virtues. And in his essay “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature,” he states that his virtue of “goodness” corresponds to the Greek virtue philanthropia and is the natural counterpart of the theological virtue charity. Aristotle does not treat philanthropia as a virtue, though he does say in the Ethics that “we praise friends of humanity” (τοὺς

φιλανθρώπους ἐπαινοῦμεν). 33 According to Terence Irwin, philanthropia in Aristotle is “the attitude of a kind and considerate person.” But later Greek usage changes: “philanthropia and its cognates tend to suggest some definite favor done by a superior to an inferior.” Thus in Titus 3:4

God’s gift of Christ to man is described as philanthropia: “The kindness and love (φιλανθρωπία) of God our Saviour toward man appeared.”34 This sense “became a standard virtue of kings, especially the Roman Emperor.”35 Philanthropia is a commendable trait of those in power towards those below. And it is in this sense that Bacon uses the term: “affecting the Weale of men.” While not a traditional virtue, goodness or philanthropia does have a classical pedigree.

For the most part, though, Bacon’s use of “virtue” in the essays cannot be traced to any classical or Christian understanding of the habit of virtue, as examples of his use of “virtue” show. In “Of Beauty” Bacon states that it is almost never seen

that very Beautifull Persons, are otherwise of great Vertue; As if Nature, were rather Busie not to erre, then in labour, to produce Excellency. And therefore,

32 Essays, 18.

33 1155a22, Irwin 119. Cited in Terence Irwin, “Generosity and Property in Aristotle’s Politics,” in Aristotle: Critical Assessments, v. 4, Politics, Rhetoric and Aesthetics, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (New York: Routledge, 1999), 164.

34 King James Version. The Vulgate translates “φιλανθρωπία” as “humanitas.” Bacon considers “humanity” as a possible synonym of goodness, but says “the word Humanitie (as it is used) is a little too light, to expresse it” (Essays, 39).

35 Irwin, “Generosity and Property in Aristotle’s Politics,” 164.

241 they prove Accomplished, but not of great Spirit; And Study rather Behavior, then Vertue. But this holds not alwaies; For Augustus Caesar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the Sophy of Persia, were all High and Great Spirits; And yet the most Beautifull Men of their Times.36

Here Bacon identifies virtue with men “of great spirit,” whom nature produces. His list of people who do combine virtue and beauty seems to indicate men of exceptional natural ability and ambition (accomplished generals, all) rather than of virtue as Aristotle or Seneca would understand it.37 And in “Of Great Place,” Bacon states that “Honour is, or should be, the Place of Vertue: And as in Nature, Things move violently to their Place, and calmely in their Place: So

Vertue in Ambition is violent, in Authoritie setled and calme.”38 It is hard to reconcile this with

Aristotle’s claim that the virtuous man will do the finest actions given his circumstances, just as the good shoemaker will make the best shoes from the leather he has.39 On Bacon’s account, virtue aspires to rule. This is confirmed by his description of the relationship between wealth and virtue in “Of Riches”:

I cannot call Riches better, then the Baggage of Vertue. The Roman Word is better, Impedimenta. For as the Baggage is to an Army, so is Riches to Vertue. It cannot be spared, nor left behinde, but it hindreth the March; Yea, and the care of it, sometimes, loseth or disturbeth the Victory.40

Riches are necessary for virtue, which is consistent with the view that virtue is an ability to hold a high place among men. And in “Of Fortune” virtues are responsible for attaining fortune:

36 Essays, 132.

37 Cf. Tacitus, Annals 1; , Alcibiades; Bacon, “The Civil Image of Augustus Caesar” in Faulkner, The Project of Progress, 293.

38 Essays, 36.

39 Nicomachean Ethics, 1101a1-6.

40 Essays, 109.

242 “Overt, and Apparent vertues bring forth Praise; But there be Secret and Hidden Vertues, that bring Forth Fortune. Certaine Deliveries of a Mans Selfe, which have no Name.”41 Bacon uses the term “virtue” to refer to a man’s ability to influence and rule others and even fortune.

Bacon’s understanding of virtue is in stark contrast to the ancients, especially to Seneca.

Bacon spoke highly in the Advancement of the Stoic analysis of passions, mentioning in particular Seneca’s De ira.42 But Bacon opens his own essay on anger with an attack on the

Stoics: “To seeke to extinguish Anger utterly, is but a Bravery of the Stoickes.”43 Indeed, Bacon is so far from seeking to completely extinguish anger, that he ends the essay with advice on how to arouse anger in others. Seneca, who ends his own essay on anger with advice on how to extinguish it in others, analyzes anger to eradicate it; Bacon analyzes it to use it. For Stoics, virtue is the good. It is chosen for its own sake, and it is ordered to nothing else. It alone constitutes happiness. Bacon, in contrast, regards virtues as means to achieve power or fortune.

Pierre Manent’s discussion in The City of Man regarding the modern and ancient understanding of nature helps illuminate Bacon’s position. Manent sees the importance of nature as the distinguishing mark of classical ethics. Christianity and Greco-Roman philosophy disagreed in their understanding and ranking of the virtues, but they agreed “that human life is called to find its fulfillment and happiness in the exercise of the virtues or of virtue simply.”

Both taught that all men “are equally called to live according to virtue, that is, to perfect and fulfill their nature as much as they can, despite great inequalities in their capacities, be they

41 Essays, 122-23.

42 OFB 4.150.

43 Essays, 170.

243 natural qualities or supernatural graces, to attain such an end.”44 Moral philosophy is concerned with the “permanent capacities of an unchanging human nature.”45 For both Christianity and

Classical philosophy, human nature is a given.

In contrast the moderns rejected the “criterion of nature”; they argue for “the inadequacy of the concept of Nature as well as of classical philosophy rooted in the idea of Nature.”46 On the modern reckoning, the nature of the ancients mutilates and twists individual natures; virtue and law are not the fulfillment of nature but the “pure denial or repression of nature.” From his critique of the classical philosophy and Christianity, and in particular from his observation of the strain and tension between these two modes of thought, modern man concludes that “the right to live is the foundation and the entirety of his moral being.” 47

A major focus of Manent’s study is , from whom he dates the Modern

Age.48 But his ideas are useful when considering Bacon’s ethics. Bacon, as I discussed last chapter, reworks the ancient concept of nature in the Novum organum. For Aristotle, a nature is primarily a thing’s substance or form. Bacon, while retaining the notion of nature as a cause of motion,49 moves the source of this motion from what Aristotle would consider the natural whole

(for instance, the souls of living things) to more elemental parts. Dense, rare, hot, cold, etc. are

44 Pierre Manent, The City of Man, trans. Marc A LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 18. See also p. 25: The “two moral traditions that propound to man that he fulfill his nature by seeking out lofty ends are necessarily neighbors and so to speak accomplices. Each one sees man as an arrow aimed at a target in the sky.”

45 Ibid., 28.

46 Ibid., 28, 46. Manent capitalizes “nature” when it refers to the understanding of the ancients.

47 Ibid., 35.

48 Manent’s dating is suspect, however. He says that “the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns emerges in France near the end of the seventeenth century” (ibid., 11), and places this as the beginning of the Modern Age. This dating ignores Machiavelli, Bacon, and Hobbes, among others.

49 NO 1.4, OFB 11.64.

244 the principal powers in nature and are “the first properties and tendencies of matter.”50 As

Richard F. Hassing says, Bacon teaches that “natural forms – the visible species of things, like gold, or rose, or dog – are not causes at all, as Aristotle had mistakenly taught, but effects of something prior to form.”51

Bacon seems to fit well into Manent’s description of the modern man; he rejects the fulfillment of nature as an end, and seems to agree that “the right to live is the foundation and the entirety of [man’s] moral being.”52 In Bacon’s own words, “immortalitie or continuance” is

“that whereunto mans nature doth most aspire.”53 Hence his advice to the individual in the

Essays centers on the arts of self-advancement. But Manent’s formulation must be qualified:

Bacon advocates seeking primarily not the continuance of the individual, but of the species; not the individual, but the common good.

50 OFB 11.38-40. “Neque Corporum tantum Historiam exhibemus, sed diligentiae insuper nostrae esse putauimus, etiam Virtutum ipsarum (illarum dicimus, quae tanquam Cardinales in Natura censeri possint, & in quibus Naturae primordia plane constituuntur; vtpote Materiae primis Passionibus ac desiderijs; viz. Denso, Raro Calido, Frigido, Consistenti, Fluido, Graui, Leui, alijsque haud pacis) Historiam seorsum comparare.”

51 Richard F. Hassing, “Introduction,” Final and Human Affairs, ed. Hassing (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 34.

52 Pierre Manent, The City of Man, 35.

53 OFB 4.52.

245 2. Essays and Counsels, Civil

Aquinas on the Common Good

According to Thomas Aquinas, the good is that which all things desire.54 It has the character of a final cause, that for the sake of which. And the higher it is, the more wide its range of influence: “The higher a cause is, the more its causality extends itself to many things.

For a higher cause has a higher proper effect [causatum], which is more common and is found in more things.”55 The common good is a good which extends to more than one individual. But, as

Charles De Koninck says, it is not merely the “singular good of the all the singulars.” Rather,

“the common good is better for each of the particulars that participate in it insofar as it is communicable to the other particulars.”56 Hence it should be loved not as one’s private good, but precisely as common. Indeed, to love it as one’s private good is often a perversion:

The love of the common good for the whole society . . . is a divine good . . . . To love the good of some city in order that it may be held and possessed does not make a good politician; for so also some tyrant loves the good of some city, in order to rule it: which is to love himself more than the city: for he desires this good for himself, not for the city. But to love the good of the city so that it might be preserved and defended, this is truly to love the city, which makes a politician good: so much so, that some to preserve and increase the good of the city expose themselves to dangers of death and neglect their private good.57

54 In this section I am guided by Charles De Koninck’s treatment of the common good in The Primacy of the Common Good against the Personalists, in The Writings of Charles De Koninck, v. 2, ed. Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).

55 In VI Metaph., l. 3, 1205. “Quanto aliqua causa est altior, tanto eius causalitas ad plura se extendit. Habet enim causa altior proprium causatum altius quod est communius et in pluribus inventum.” Marietta edition, 1977.

56 Charles De Koninck, The Primacy of the Common Good, 75.

57 De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 2. “Unde homini sic ad caelestia adscripto competunt quaedam virtutes gratuitae, quae sunt virtutes infusae; ad quarum debitam operationem praeexigitur amor boni communis toti societati, quod est bonum divinum, prout est beatitudinis obiectum. Amare autem bonum alicuius civitatis contingit dupliciter: uno modo ut

246

A tendency towards the common good belongs to intellectual creatures, which can know a more universal good:

Since love follows knowledge, by as much as the knowledge is more universal, so much the love following it looks more to the common good; and by as much as the knowledge is more particular, by so much the love following it looks more to the private good. Whence also in us private love arises from sense knowledge, but love of the common and absolute good follows intellectual knowledge.58

The highest common good, St. Thomas says, is God. But there are many other common goods.

Notably, political life is ordered to a common good: the wellbeing of the citizens. In his treatment on law, St. Thomas defines a law as something ordered to a common good: “It is necessary that the law properly looks to an order to common happiness.”59 This common happiness is the virtue of the citizens: “The proper effect of the law is to make those to whom it is given good . . . . For if the intention of the one making the law tends to the true good, which is the common good regulated according to divine justice, it follows that through the law men become good simply.”60 The common good of political society is the happiness and virtue of the

habeatur; alio modo ut conservetur. Amare autem bonum alicuius civitatis ut habeatur et possideatur, non facit bonum politicum; quia sic etiam aliquis tyrannus amat bonum alicuius civitatis ut ei dominetur: quod est amare seipsum magis quam civitatem; sibi enim ipsi hoc bonum concupiscit, non civitati. Sed amare bonum civitatis ut conservetur et defendatur, hoc est vere amare civitatem; quod bonum politicum facit: in tantum quod aliqui propter bonum civitatis conservandum vel ampliandum, se periculis mortis exponant et negligant privatum bonum.”

58 De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 8, ad 5. “Cum affectio sequatur cognitionem, quanto cognitio est universalior, tanto affectio eam sequens magis respicit commune bonum; et quanto cognitio est magis particularis, tanto affectio ipsam sequens magis respicit privatum bonum; unde et in nobis privata dilectio ex cognitione sensitiva exoritur, dilectio vero communis et absoluti boni ex cognitione intellectiva.”

59 ST II-II, q. 90, a. 2. “Necesse est quod lex proprie respiciat ordinem ad felicitatem communem.”

60 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1. “Sequitur quod proprius effectus legis sit bonos facere eos quibus datur, vel simpliciter vel secundum quid. Si enim intentio ferentis legem tendat in verum bonum, quod est bonum commune secudnum iustitiam divinam regulatum, sequitur quod per legem homines fiant boni simpliciter.”

247 citizens composing that society. St. Thomas also names justice in particular and peace as the common goods political society aims at.61

The Common Good in the Essays

Bacon exalts the common good over the private. In the Advancement he teaches that all men act for the sake of immortality, but the nobler seek the preservation not just of themselves, but of their city:

There is fourmed in euery thing a double Nature of Good; the one, as euery thing is, a Totall or substantiue in it selfe; the other, as it is a parte or Member of a greater Bodye; whereof the later is in degree the greater, and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conseruation of a more generall fourme… This double nature of Good & the com-paratiue thereof is much more engrauen vpon Man, if he degenerate not: vnto whom the Conseruation of duty to the publique ought to be much more precious then the Conseruation of life and being…62

In Novum organum 1.1.29, Bacon enlarges this idea. Men are more noble insofar as their ambitions extend further beyond themselves; those who seek the good of their nation are greater than those who seek the good of themselves, and those who seek the good of the whole human race are greater than those who seek the good of their nation. And in the essay “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature” (13) he describes goodness as “the affecting of the Weale of Men.”63

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “affecting” as “aiming at, showing fondness for” and

61ST II-II, q. 58, a. 5. “The acts of all virtues are able to pertain to justice, inasmuch as it orders man to the common good.” (Actus omnium virtutum possunt ad iustitiam pertinere, secundum quod ordinat hominem ad bonum commune.)

62 OFB 4.136.

63 Essays, 38-39.

248 “weal” as “welfare, well-being, happiness, prosperity.”64 Goodness, then, is aiming at the welfare of men – all men, in general. In all his major works, Bacon exalts the common good over the private good. To this extent he agrees with the classical teaching on the common good, as exemplified in St. Thomas’ teaching.

In St. Thomas, as just described, the common good which the body politic aims at is primarily virtue. Virtue, however, as discussed in the previous section, has little importance in

Bacon’s Essays, or at any rate virtue as described by the ancients, the fulfillment or perfection of human nature. What is Bacon’s view of the common good, and how is it achieved by men? In particular, what is the good of the state that his civil essays advocate? We will begin with the essay “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” (29).

“Of True Greatness” is the longest of the essays. It opens with the statement of

Themistocles in response to one who asked him to play the lute: “He could not fiddle, but yet he could make a small Towne, a great Citty.”65 This is a rare gift, Bacon says. The fiddlers, who symbolize those who use tricks and ploys to gain their king’s favor and the people’s applause, are much more common. What is the true greatness of kingdoms which Themistocles and the few others with his gifts achieved? It does not consist in mere size. Bacon notes Alexander’s small army defeated the Persian army’s “vast Sea of People” and 14,000 Romans defeated

400,000 soldiers of Tigranes. This shows that the “Principal point of Greatnesse in any State, is to have a Race of Military Men.”66

64 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1975 ed., s.v. “affecting,” “weal.” Bacon’s 1612 Essays is cited as an example of “weale.”

65 Essays, 89.

66 Essays, 91.

249 How are such men supplied? Bacon first gives economic measures. The people should not be oppressed by taxes, or be reduced to the nobility’s servants, but be able to “live in

Convenient Plenty, and no Servile Condition.” 67 The number of citizens must not be too few, but must be in decent proportion to the area ruled. Vigorous and manly crafts should be pursued by natives, and softer occupations left to foreigners as much as possible. But “for Empire and

Greatnesse, it importeth most; That a Nation doe professe Armes, as their principall Honour,

Study, and Occupation.”68 To bring this about, countries must often fight, and so their laws must permit them to fight at the least provocation. “No Body can be healthfull without Exercise, neither Naturall Body, nor Politique: And certainly, to a Kingdome or Estate, a Just and

Honourable Warre, is the true Exercise.”69 Bacon does not emphasize “just.” In fact, he allows that the just occasions “may be pretended” and that “specious” causes for quarrels are sufficient.70 He is in favor of external wars on slight pretexts.

Although in “On True Greatness” Bacon focuses almost exclusively on military power as the key to a nation’s greatness, he also advocates throughout the Essays for a strong commercial and merchant class, as Michelle Tolman Clarke and Paul Rahe have discussed.71 Merchants are important because they create wealth in the state, and without wealth states falter. In “Of

67 Essays, 93.

68 Essays, 95.

69 Essays, 97. Bacon distinguishes wars with other nations from civil war, which he compares to “the heat of a fever.”

70 Essays, 96.

71 Michelle Tolman Clarke, “Uprooting Nebuchadnezzar’s Tree: Francis Bacon’s Criticism of Machiavellian Imperialism,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2008): 370; Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, v. 2: New Modes and Orders in Early Modern Political Thought (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 110-112.

250 Seditions and Troubles,” Bacon shows the importance of wealth by discussing the effects of its lack. There are two main matters of seditions, poverty and discontentment. The poverty of nobles by itself leads to instability, but if “Broken Estate, in the better Sort, be joyned with a

Want and Necessity, in the meane People, the danger is imminent, and great. For the Rebellions of the Belly are the worst.”72 Hence the first way to prevent or remedy seditions is to remove poverty in the state. And wealth comes about primarily through commerce – “the Opening, and well Ballancing of Trade; The Cherishing of Manufactures; the Banishing of Idlenesse.”73 Trade with other nations is especially important because Bacon sees the attainment of wealth by nations as a zero-sum game:

For as much as the increase of any Estate, must be upon the Forrainer, (for whatsoever is some where gotten, is some where lost). There be but Three Things, which one Nation selleth unto another; The Commoditie as Nature yeeldeth it; The Manufacture; and the Vecture or Carriage. So that if these three wheeles goe, Wealth will flow as in a Spring tide. And it commeth many times to passe, that Materiam superabit Opus; That the Worke, and Carriage, is more worth, then the Materiall, and enricheth a State more . . . .74

Merchants allow a nation to increase its wealth at the expense of foreigners, and for this reason they are valued.

The importance of a mercantile state to Bacon is also shown by his essay “On

(41). Since ancient times, the place of usury in the state was debated. Bacon begins by noting some of the arguments against usury, including Aristotle’s claim that it is unnatural for money to breed money. In answer to these Bacon states: “I say this onely, that Usury is a Concessum

72 Essays, 45-46.

73 Essays, 47.

74 Ibid.

251 propter Duritiem Cordis” (a concession because of hardness of heart).75 Since there must be borrowing and lending, and men out of the hardness of their hearts will not lend for free, usury is necessary.

Though Bacon begins his essay describing usury as necessary, he says that it would be good to set out the advantages and disadvantages of usury. The disadvantages are that it results in fewer merchants, who are the “Vena Porta of Wealth in a State”;76 it makes merchants poorer; it causes the decay of states, “which Ebbe or flow with Merchandizing”; it concentrates wealth into the hands of a few; it drives the price of land down; it has a bad effect on all industries and new enterprises; and finally, it ruins many men’s estates. The benefits of usury are that it in some ways advances commerce, since young merchants begin by borrowing money; it saves men from selling their estates; and finally and most notably, “it is a Vanitie to conceive, that there would be Ordinary Borrowing without Profit.” And, Bacon says, “it is impossible to conceive, the Number of Inconveniences, that will ensue, if Borrowing be Cramped.”77 In the final part of the essay, Bacon discusses what laws on interest should be passed to mitigate the bad effects of usury while still permitting borrowing and its attendant benefits.

Not once in the essay does Bacon discuss justice or virtue. Almost the sole consideration he uses is the commercial health of the nation. St. Thomas’ treatment on usury provides an interesting comparison. In his treatise on justice, St. Thomas considers usury as a sin against justice. However, like Bacon, he acknowledges that human law reasonably permits usury, not as

75 Essays, 125.

76 Ibid. Merchants are also described as vena porta in Of Empire (19). Kiernan explains that the “vena porta, or gate-vein, designated the large, multi-branched vein which distributed chyle to the liver” (Essays, 215).

77 Ibid., 126.

252 something good in itself, but as a necessary evil: “Human law has permitted usury, not as thinking it is according to justice, but that the benefits of many men may not be impeded.” That does not excuse the usurer: “To receive usury for money lent is in itself unjust, because that which is not is sold, through which an inequality is clearly established, which is contrary to justice.”78 The four articles that St. Thomas devotes to usury consider in what ways usury violates justice; the practical point of its being permitted by law on account of human imperfections is only touched on by St. Thomas, in a reply to an objection. It could be argued that St. Thomas is examining usury under the aspect of a vice, while Bacon is concerned with whether the state should permit usury and how it should regulate it. This is undoubtedly true, but it only serves to emphasize the difference between these two thinkers. Bacon is, after all, writing

“moral and civil” essays, so his disregard of any aspect of usury except for its economic effect on the nation is notable. Given that Bacon sees this as his sole criterion, it is little wonder that he says that “few have spoken of Usury usefully.”79

Bacon does not think wealth is in itself the common good of the state. In “Of Riches”

(34), he calls riches “the Baggage of Vertue,” explaining that wealth has the same relationship to virtue as baggage does to an army: it is necessary, yet it hinders.80 Of course, in this essay Bacon is speaking of the wealth of individuals, not of a nation as a whole, as he does in “Of Usury” (41) and “Of True Greatness” (29). But for the state as well, riches is not an end in itself. It is for the sake of a strong nation, especially relative to other nations.

78 ST II-II, q. 78, a.1, c. and ad. 3. “Respondeo dicendum quod accipere usuram pro pecunia mutuata est secundum se iniustum: quia venditur id quond non est, per quod manifeste inaequalitas constituitur, quae iustitiae contrariatur.” “Et ideo usuras lex humana concessit, non quasi existimans eas esse secundum iustitiam, sed ne impedirentur utilitates multorum.”

79 Essays, 125.

80 Essays. 109.

253 Bacon speaks of both wealth and military power as ways to gain preeminence over other nations. Which has priority? In “Of True Greatness,” Bacon identifies military power as the heart of a state’s greatness. But wealth is necessary for military power. A condition for creating a warlike people is that the subjects “live in Convenient Plenty, and no Servile Condition.”81

Wealth is not merely ordered to military power, however. As Bacon explains in “Of Seditions”

(43), poverty leads to sedition, which weakens a kingdom. And in “Of Empire,” (19), Bacon says that if merchants “flourish not, a Kingdome may have good Limmes, but will have empty

Veines, and nourish little.”82 In “Of Vicissitude of Things” (58), Bacon divides the age of a state into youth, middle age, and old age. In youth arms flourish, in middle age learning alongside arms, and in old age, “when it waxeth Dry and Exhaust,” commerce.83 Nations, then, pursue different means of superiority over other nations, wealth or military power, depending on their age.

Wealth and military power are both ordered to achieving superiority over other nations.

In Novum organum 1.129, Bacon describes the different grades of ambition. The first grade is the desire to increase one’s power within one’s own country. The second, more noble, is to increase the power of one’s own country over against other countries. Finally, the greatest ambition is to increase the dominion of the human race over nature. In the Essays, Bacon seems to give advice to both the first and second group of ambition. This has led commentators to drastically different accounts of the work. For instance, Kiernan says that the work’s “primary emphasis is upon effective, prudential behavior of the individual intent upon ‘making it’ – a kind

81 Essays, 93.

82 Essays, 62.

83 Essays 176.

254 of political vade-mecum.”84 Similarly, Faulkner argues that the Essays present the ideal of the

“self-made man,” one who practices the “art of managing the passions,” both his own and others, for his own aggrandizement.85 In contrast, Vickers says that Bacon’s advice is “allocentric” and that the Essays “resolutely attack all forms of .”86 Vickers’ position is untenable when some of the individual essays are considered: Bacon teaches how to inflame anger in another, describes ways to arouse envy against other people, teaches the use of to “discover the mind of another,” advises us to consider carefully what we can get from our friends before making them, and warns us against falling in love. Nevertheless, Vickers is correct that many of the essays look to the good of the whole nation, for instance “Of Unity in Religion” (3), “Of

Great Place” (11), “Of Nobility” (14), “Of Atheism” (16), “Of Empire” (19), “Of the True

Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” (29), “Of Plantations” (33), “Of Usury” (41), “Of Faction”

(51), and “Of Judicature” (56). These offer advice to the man who is intent on improving the kingdom rather than just his own situation. Here the general themes are to avoid internal dissensions, increase military power, submit oneself to the common good, and expand the wealth of the nation through a strong mercantile class.

A difficulty is the apparent contradiction in giving advice to men of the two different grades of ambition, those who seek their own private good and those who seek the good of their country. But Bacon thinks that men can act both for self and for country, as “Of Wisdom for a

Man’s Self” (23) shows. The essay opens by criticizing those who act solely for their own

84 Essays, xxi.

85 Faulkner, The Project of Progress, 91, 99. See pp. 91-110 where Faulkner covers a number of specific examples in the Essays of Bacon’s advice on self-making.

86The Major Works, xxxvi.

255 interests: “An Ant is a wise Creature for it Selfe; But it is a shrewd [i.e., harmful] Thing, in an

Orchard, or Garden. And certainly, Men that are great Lovers of Themselves, waste the

Publique.”87 Much of the essay discusses the evil that is caused by those who love themselves rather than their King or their country. Bacon is scornful of many aspects of wisdom for self: it is “in many Branches thereof, a depraved Thing. It is the Wisedome of Rats, that will be sure to leave a House, somewhat before it falls.”88 Nevertheless it is clear that wisdom for one’s self is not wholly wrong. Bacon instructs the reader to “divide with reason betweene Selfe-love, and

Society: And be so true to thy Selfe, as thou be not false to Others; Specially to thy King, and

Country.”89 That is, balance self-love with love for society at large; and while advancing yourself, also help your king or country. Indeed, true self-love demands concern for something outside oneself, as Bacon instructs us at the very end of his essay:

That which is specially to be noted, is, that those, which (as Cicero saies of Pompey) are, Sui Amantes sine Rivali, are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their time sacrificed to Themselves, they become in the end themselves Sacrifices to the Inconstancy of Fortune; whose Wings they thought, by their Self-Wisedome, to have Pinnioned.90

Those who pursue only their own self-interest come to a bad end; true self-love demands, then, a love of something greater than self. Those who truly wish to advance themselves above their fellow men cannot do so without possessing something like the second grade of ambition, the desire to promote the common good of their country. But it seems that the second grade of ambition also demands the first grade, since to effectively promote the common good, one must

87 Essays, 73. Brackets are mine.

88 Ibid., 74.

89 Ibid., 73.

90 Essays, 74-75.

256 put oneself in a position to do so. Bacon teaches in “Of Great Place” (11) that “all Rising to

Great Place, is by a winding Staire” and that “by Paines Men come to greater Paines; And it is sometimes base; And by Indignities, Men come to Dignities.”91 It is necessary to overcome other men in order to place oneself in a position to rule for the common good, and such overcoming demands knowledge of the arts of self-making, in Faulkner’s phrase.

The Good Man in the Essays

In Novum organum 1.129, Bacon describes the third and highest degree of ambition. It belongs to those who attempt to “extend the power and empire of the human race itself over the universe of things.” Such an empire comes about through Bacon’s new natural philosophy. The

Essays, however, makes no mention of natural philosophy.

Bacon does consider the good of men universally in the essay “Of Goodness and

Goodness of Nature” (13). Bacon defines goodness as “the affecting of the Weale of Men.” It corresponds to the Greek virtue philanthropia and bears some resemblance to the Roman humanitas, though the latter is “a little too light, to expresse it.” This is the greates of all virtues, and “answers to the Theologicall Vertue Charitie.” 92 Bacon draws a distinction that he often uses in his works: “The desire of Power in Excesse, caused the Angels to fall; The desire of

Knowledge in Excesse, caused Man to fall; But in Charity, there is no Excesse; Neither can

91 Essays, 36, 33. Compare “Of Fortune” (40), where Bacon warns against caring for one’s country to the neglect of oneself: “Extreme Lovers of their Countrey, or Masters, were never Fortunate, neither can they be. For when a Man placeth his Thoughts without Himselfe, he goeth not his owne Way” (Essays, 123).

92 Essays, 38-39.

257 Angell, or Man, come in danger by it.”93 In the Advancement and the Novum organum this distinction is used to argue for the greatness of natural philosophy, and in particular for its practical end, the relief of man’s estate.94 In the Essays, Bacon does not make this argument.

But it is difficult to see what else he can have in mind when speaking of desiring the “weale of men.” This formulation is similar to the classical description of friendship as willing the good of another.95 But Bacon distinguishes goodness of nature from friendship, and in his treatments of these topics he departs in significant ways from the ancient’s view of friendship.

Bacon appears to speak highly of friendship in “Of Friendship” (27). After an introduction, the essay is divided into three parts, each of which discusses a benefit of friendship.

The first is the “Ease and Discharge of the Fulnesse and Swellings of the Heart” caused by the passions,96 the second is the aid to the understanding that discussing matters with a friend gives, and the third is the aid a friend gives in the actions of life. This last aid even extends beyond a person’s life: “Men have their Time, and die many times in desire of some Things, which they principally take to Heart; The Bestowing of a Child, the Finishing of a Worke, Or the like.” If one has a true friend, however, “he may rest almost secure, that the Care of those Things, will continue after Him.”97 Friendship is useful both during and after life.

93 Essays, 39.

94 OFB 11.22, OFB 4.155.

95 See, for instance, Cicero’s De amicitia 6 and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 8.2.

96 Essays, 81.

97 Essays, 86.

258 There are indications, however, that Bacon is ambivalent towards friendship; certainly he does not seem to hold it in as high regard as did the ancient schools of philosophy. All of the examples he gives of friendship are striking: Sulla and Pompey, Caesar and Brutus, Augustus and Agrippa, Tiberius and Sejanus, and Septimus Severus and Plautianus. Sulla, Bacon tells us, raised Pompey to such a height that Pompey outshone him. Brutus led the plot to kill Julius

Caesar. Sejanus, though Bacon does not mention it, was killed after Tiberius suspected him of plotting against him. Likewise, Plautianus was killed after being accused of plotting against

Severus, though again Bacon does not mention this fact. The only example of friendship that

Bacon gives which does not end in murder or usurpation is Augustus and Agrippa, but Bacon recalls the advice of Maecenas to Augustus regarding Agrippa: Augustus had raised Agrippa so high, that he must give him his daughter in marriage, or kill him. Bacon gives these examples to show that friendship is so necessary for men that great rulers “purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their owne Safety, and Greatnesse.”98 These rulers, moreover, did not give themselves in friendship because of “an abundant Goodnesse of Nature; But being Men so Wise, of such

Strength and Severitie of minde, and so Extreme Lovers of Themselves, as all these were; It proveth most plainly, that they found their owne Felicitie (though as great as ever happened to

Mortall Men) but as an Halfe Peece, except they mought have a Frend to make it Entire.” Bacon separates goodness from friendship. Further, Bacon does not present friendship as a common good. The examples of friendship he gives were of men who, being “Extreme Lovers of

Themselves,” were seeking not a common good but their own good. Friendship could be mutually beneficial (though it was not, ultimately, in any of Bacon’s examples, with the possible

98 Essays, 81.

259 exception of Augustus and Agrippa), but the good acquired by each friend was distinct from that of the other, and from the friendship itself.

But while Bacon does, perhaps, see friendship as a good, in the “Of Love” he completely condemns romantic love, which he says “doth much mischiefe: Sometimes like a Syren;

Sometimes like a Fury.” Great men, with unfortunate exceptions, avoid passionate love. Like friendship, it is distinct from goodness and even opposed to it: “There is in Mans Nature, a secret

Inclination, and Motion, towards love of others; which, if it be not spent, upon some one, or a few, doth naturally spread it selfe, towards many; and maketh men become Humane and

Charitable.”99 He mocks Epicurus: “It is a poore Saying of Epicurus: Satis magnum Alter Alteri

Theatrum sumus [We are each a great enough audience for the other]: As if Man, made for the contemplation of Heaven, . . . should doe nothing, but kneele befoere a little Idoll.”100 Epicurus, as reported by Seneca,101 was speaking of friendship rather than romantic love, but Bacon’s argument would seem to apply to friendships as well. The Epicureans held an exalted conception of friendship, and see both friendship and love as central to any good life. In

Epicurus’ poetic formulation, “Friendship dances around the world announcing to all of us that we must wake up to blessedness.” Nor was friendship a question of what one could get from the other; on the contrary, “The wise man feels no more pain when he is tortured

99 Essays, 31, 33.

100 Essays, 33.

101 Epistulae 7.

260 friend is tortured, and will die on his behalf; for if he betrays his friend> his entire life will be confounded and utterly upset because of a lack of confidence.”102

Friendship and love play a central role in Lucretius’ great work. De rerum natura opens with a dedication to Lucretius’ friend and an invocation to Venus, the goddess of love, who causes living things to beget their own kind: “Because you alone govern the nature of things, neither without you does anything come forth into the divine shores of light, nor does anything happy or lovable come to be, I desire you to be my companion in writing my verses, which I try to compose about the nature of things for our Memmius.”103 Lucretius prays that Venus may overcome Mars, and that peace may reign. Lucretius, like Bacon, indeed regards all-consuming romantic love to be foolish, and distinguishes the drive for procreation from infatuation with one person.104 But in Lucretius’ vision of history, friendship is central for the passage of men from barbarism to civility: “Then also willing neighbors began to join friendship among themselves neither to hurt nor to be injured, and they committed their children and women to each other for protection.”105 This pact of friendship, though imperfect, resulted in widespread harmony. This

102 The Vatican Collection of Epicurean Sayings 52, 56-57. Translated in Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, trans. by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 38, 39.

103 De rerum natura 1.21-26. Translations of Lucretius throughout this chapter are my own. “Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas, Nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras Exoritur neque fit laetum ndeque amabile quicquam Te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse Quos ego de rerum natura pangere conor Memmiadae nostro . . . .”

104 De rerum natura 4.1058 ff.

105 De rerum natura 5.1019-21. For this interpretation of Lucretius’ account of history, see Benjamin Farrington, “Vita Prior in Lucretius” in Hermathena 81 (May 1953): 59-62, and “Lucretius and Manilius on Friendship” in Hermathena 83 (May 1954): 10-16. “Tunc et amicitiem coeperunt iungere aventes Finitimi inter se nec laedere nec violari, Et pueros commendarunt muliebreque saeclum . . . .”

261 harmony was overthrown, however, in large part by the desire for honor and political power:

“Things were returning to the lowest dregs and disorder, when each man was seeking for himself power and the highest place.”106 Withdrawing together from politics into the Garden of

Epicurus, his followers pursued friendship, an “immortal good” by which men became like the gods and which served as a remedy for the violence of other men.107

Bacon’s idea of friendship differs in significant ways from the Epicurean conception of friendship. On his view, friendship is not an “immortal good” the pursuit of which defines the noble man, but a necessary way to achieve certain benefits in life. And far from being a protection against violent men, it often leads men into danger, as in nearly all the examples he adduces in “Of Friendship.” Friendship is not the alternative to the political life in Bacon’s view, but serves as one of the means by which men advance their public labors. One can further note that Bacon does not share the Epicurean horror of war, which is opposed to friendship and love in Lucretius’ vision; on the contrary, he advocates actively pursuing it even on pretexts in “Of

True Greatness.” Finally, the good man according to Epicurus and Lucretius aims above all at friendship, whereas for Bacon goodness is distinct and in some ways opposed to friendship, since friendship is particular but goodness aims at all.

106 De rerum natura 5.1141-42. “Res itaque ad summam faecem turbasque redibat, Imperium sibi cum ac summatum quisque petebat.”

107 John M. Rist, “Epicurus on Friendship,” Classical Philology 75, no. 2 (1980): 122. He quotes the phrase “immortal good,” which occurs in The Vatican Collection of Epicurean Sayings 78: “The noble man is most involved with wisdom and friendship, of which one is a mortal good, the other immortal” (Hellenistic Philosophy, 40).

262 Bacon says that “Goodnesse answers to the Theologicall Vertue Charitie.”108 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one definition of “answers” is “to correspond in number, shape, size, position, appearance, fitness, or other characteristics.”109 Bacon identifies goodness with charity later in the essay when he says, “Errours, indeed, in this vertue of Goodnesse, or

Charity, may be committed.”110 In the first chapter, I discussed the difference between Baconian charity and Christian charity, particularly as regards the former’s focus on material well-being.

Another difference between Baconian charity and Christian charity is the universal focus of the former, which aims at the good of all mankind through the mastery of nature. At first glance, this does not seem at odds with Christian charity as described by Reformed Christianity. As

Calvin describes it, a particular aspect of Christian charity is its universality: “The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception....”111 But Bacon and Calvin seem to have different conceptions of the universality of charity. It is one thing for charity to be universal in the sense of being indeterminate and extending to all one comes across: “Whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him.”112 It is quite another thing to attain the good of all mankind. The Good Samaritan, the model of charity presented by Jesus, had charity towards all in the sense that he was not bound by loyalties of tribe or culture. In the parable, however, he does not do good to all men, but to the one specific man he happens upon who needs his help.

108 Essays, 39.

109 Oxford English Dictionary, 1975 ed., s.v. “answer.”

110 Essays, 39.

111 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, trans. by Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1863), 11.

112 Ibid.

263 It could be objected, though, that Christian charity as interpreted by Calvin is only limited by one’s ability: “Every one should rather consider, that however great he is, he owes himself to his neighbours, and that the only limit to his beneficence is the failure of his means. The extent of these should regulate that of his charity.”113 Bacon, through initiating the empire of man over nature, extends the natural philosopher’s abilities to help his neighbors – he can now work, not for the good of the few he personally encounters, but for a multitude of men, living and to come.

Thus the Christian conception of charity is not changed, but our ability to implement it is radically expanded.

This interpretation, however, concedes much more to man’s ability than does Calvin. In his view, the relief of man’s estate comes not from man, but from God:

In seeking the convenience or tranquillity of the present life, Scripture calls us to resign ourselves, and all we have, to the disposal of the Lord, to give him up the affections of the heart, that he may tame and subdue them. . . . The course which Christian men must follow is this: first, they must not long for, or hope for, or think of any kind of prosperity apart from the blessing of God; on it they must cast themselves, and there safely and confidently recline.114

Every kind of prosperity comes from God. It is not true, as Bacon teaches, that “the Mould of a

Mans Fortune, is in his owne hands,”115 far less that men are able to establish an empire of man over nature. Rather, “the rule of piety is, that the hand of God is the ruler and arbiter of the fortunes of all, and, instead of rushing on with thoughtless violence, dispenses good and evil with perfect regularity.”116

113 Ibid., 13.

114 Ibid, 13.

115 “Of Fortune” (40), Essays, 122.

116 Calvin, Institutes, 15.

264

Bacon distinguishes goodness from the political activity he advocates in many of the other essays. Goodness, Bacon says, is a habit directed by right reason, but there is in nature sometimes a disposition towards it. There can also, though, be a “Naturall malignitie,” in those who don’t by their nature “affect the Good of Others.”117 These naturally malignant men “are the fittest Timber, to make great Politiques of.” That is, politicians are best formed from those who do not have goodness, who don’t seek the good of all men. Bacon develops this startling claim only slightly, using a metaphor from shipbuilding: Men who are naturally malignant are “Like to knee Timber, that is good for Ships, that are ordained, to be tossed: But not for Building houses, that shall stand firme.” Knee timber is glossed by Brian Vickers as “growing crooked (like the human knee), and so more resistant.”118 Thus it is good wood to build a ship with, which is buffeted. Similarly, humans who are naturally vicious, are thereby harder and more resistant to influences, and so make better politicians. This is a significant departure from St. Thomas, who teaches that politicians should have care for the common good. It also raises again the question of the audience of the Essays.

I discussed earlier the compatibility between the first and second grades of ambition. But neither of these two grades seem compatible with the third grade of ambition. The third grade of ambition consists in goodness, seeking the welfare of all men, of humanity as a whole. By contrast, the second grade of ambition seeks the good of one’s nation, primarily by military and economic dominion over other countries. To further the contrast, Bacon states that the best

117 “Of Goodness” (13), Essays, 40.

118 The Major Works, 731.

265 politicians are men who are malignant, who do not seek the good of all men. Yet some of the essays advocate for the third grade of ambition, while others for the second.

One way to reconcile these differing tendencies of the Essays is to argue that all of the

Essays, even those ostensibly dealing with politics, in fact serve Bacon’s scientific project. This position is taken by Stanley Fish, who argues that the Essays encourages, through its style and arguments, the skeptical, detached mindset necessary for a scientist. 119 Particularly, Fish argues that the essays contain numerous self-contradictions, which encourage a rejection of common and received wisdom. While Fish makes a strong case for the self-contradiction of some essays

(for instance, “Of Love” [10]), he overstates the case when he says that “the essays advocate nothing (except perhaps a certain openness and alertness of mind); they are descriptive, and a description is ethically neutral.”120 But many of the essays, rather than presenting self- contradiction, advocate unambiguously for one side of a position, for instance “Of Usury” (41).

Fish, in his analysis of this essay, points to its distaste of traditional ethics, and that is undoubtedly present. But he does not account for the strong explicit conclusion that Bacon draws, that “Usury must be permitted” in order to maintain a strong economy.121 This is but one example of Bacon’s insistence throughout the Essays for a strong mercantile state.

Richard Kennington, in contrast, acknowledges that in the Essays both “enlightenment and imperialist intentions are present in the same work.” This is because enlightenment, i.e., scientific knowledge, is not capable by itself of transcending political rivalries. Indeed, it

119 Stanley Fish, “Georgics of the Mind: The Experience of Bacon’s Essays” in Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 79-83, 94.

120 Ibid., 94.

121 Essays, 125.

266 exacerbates them by providing more destructive weapons. Both enlightenment and imperialism are needed to bring about Bacon’s vision of the empire of man over nature: “In the final phase the successful imperial power would impose humanitarianism on the world.”122 The New

Atlantis shows what that humanitarianism would look like.

3. The New Atlantis

Introduction and Literary Form

The New Atlantis was published posthumously in 1627 along with the Sylva Sylvarum. It appears to be unfinished, though according to James Spedding it was “intended for publication as it stands.”123 William Rawley, Bacon’s literary executor and chaplain, reports that Bacon intended it to be placed with the Sylva sylvarum, the third part of the Instauratio Magna.124 It is unique among Bacon’s works, for while Redargutio philosopharum is a philosophical tract that begins and ends with a fictional narrative and An Advertisement Touching a Holy War is a dialogue which, according to Laurence Lampert, “exhibits a mastery of the form,”125 the New

122 Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision,” 73.

123 SEH 3.121. The work appears unfinished because it does not tell us what happens to the narrator and the other Europeans after their observation of Bensalem, but ends abruptly after the narrator’s interview with a Father of Salomon’s House. According to Rawley, Bacon intended not only to describe Salomon’s House but “thought also in this present fable to have composed a frame of Laws, or of the best state or mould of a commonwealth.” He was sidetracked, however, by his works on Natural History (“To the Reader,” SEH 3.127). It does seem fitting, however, to end a work that describes a country which has successfully instituted the empire of man over nature, with a charge to the narrator to share what he has seen with the unenlightened Europeans. For an argument that the work is complete as it stands, see Jerry Weinberger, New Atlantis and the Great Instauration, xiii-xv.

124 SEH 3.127.

125 Laurence Lampert, Dialogue Concerning a Holy War (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2000), 2.

267 Atlantis is Bacon’s purest work of fiction, since, unlike the above works, it has a plot as well as a setting in an imaginary country which it explores.

The New Atlantis is a short work – under 40 pages in the Spedding, Ellis, and Heath edition – but since H. B. White’s influential study, Peace among the Willows (1968), commentators have given it extensive attention. Its appeal has several causes: it is a rich source for uncovering Bacon’s influences in both travel and utopian literature;126 it is Bacon’s only portrayal of a political society influenced by his new science, and hence addresses questions about the relationship of his natural philosophy to political rule;127 and the work contains a consideration of the relationship of Christianity to the Baconian state.128 My interest is primarily with the last two groups, and in particular what light the New Atlantis sheds on the relationship between the new, higher action established by Bacon’s natural philosophy and the received action of both the Classical and Christian traditions.

126 Charles C. Whitney, “Merchants of Light: Science as Colonization in the New Atlantis,” in Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts: “The Art of Discovery Grows with Discovery”, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 255-68; Paul Salzman, “Narrative Contexts for Bacon’s New Atlantis,” in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 28-47.

127 H. B. White, Peace Among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968); Jerry Weinberger, “Science and Rule in Bacon’s Utopia: An Introduction to the Reading of the New Atlantis,” American Political Science Review 70 (1976): 865-85; Jerry Weinberger, Introduction, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 1989), vii-xxxiii; Richard Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision,” 57-77; Rose-Mary Sargent, “Bacon as an Advocate for Cooperative Scientific Research,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 146-171; Michelle Tolman Clarke, “Uprooting Nebuchadnezzar’s Tree: Francis Bacon’s Criticism of Machiavellian Imperialism,” 367-378.

128 Timothy H. Patterson, “On the Role of Christianity in the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon,” Polity 19, no. 3 (1987): 419-442; Timothy H. Patterson, “The Secular Control of Scientific Power in the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon,” Polity 21, no. 3 (1989): 457-80; Jerry Weinberger, “On the Miracles in Bacon’s New Atlantis,” in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays, 106-128. These authors also treat of Bacon’s political philosophy as well, as Patterson’s titles indicate.

268 The New Atlantis opens with a description of sailors, en route from Peru to China and

Japan, who are driven off course by strong south winds. They run out of food, though they had put in a year’s provision, and lost “in the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters in the world” they are preparing for death when they see land.129 The land is Bensalem, a large island unknown to other nations due to its remote location and self-isolation. The history, customs, and scientific achievements of the island are gradually uncovered to the awe-struck sailors.

The first section of the book describes the interaction of the sailors with those charged with the care of strangers. The elaborate ceremonies and health practices involved show the humanity, culture, and scientific sophistication of the new island. After a three-day quarantine, the sailors speak with the governor of the House of Strangers, an institution that deals with any outsiders chancing upon the island. In a long speech, the governor tells the story of the conversion of the island to Christianity through miraculous means and the history of Bensalem.

The governor focuses on two events in the history of the island: the battle of Bensalem with

Atlantis, some 3,000 years ago; and the actions, some 1900 years ago, of King Solamona, who established the laws regarding Bensalem’s secrecy and isolation and, most importantly, established the institution of Salomon’s House, dedicated to uncovering the nature of things.

The second part of the New Atlantis describes some of the island’s social customs. The narrator observes the Feast of the Family, an honor given to those who have 30 descendants living at the same time. And Joabin, a Jew of Bensalem, describes the courtship and sexual customs of the Bensalemites.

129 SEH 3.129.

269 In the final part of the work, one of the Fathers of Salomon’s House visits with great fanfare the city where the narrator was residing – it was the first time in a dozen years one had visited that city130 – and discusses the institution with the narrator. First, he describes the ends of

Salomon’s House, which is “the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire.” Next he tells of their “preparations and instruments,” the various collections of objects and environments and the experiments enacted on these. Third, he describes the different offices and duties of the members of Salomon’s house. And finally, the Father tells of their “ordinances and rites,” describing the honors they bestow on inventors, the prayers they offer to God, and the interaction they have with the cities of Bensalem.131 As the Father dismisses the narrator, he gives him permission to spread the description of Salomon’s House “for the good of other nations.” He gives a large sum of money to the narrator and his companions and the story ends with these words: “For they give great largesses where they come upon all occasions.”132

Why does Bacon turn to a new literary form for his final work? According to Rawley,

Bacon placed the New Atlantis with the third part of the Instauratio Magna, which is the collection of natural histories.133 There are indeed natural histories listed in the final part of the

New Atlantis, where the Father tells the narrator about the preparations and instruments of

Salomon’s House. But this is a relatively small part of the work. Further, as Bacon describes the third part of the Instauratio Magna in the Novum organum, it is an investigation into “the nature

130 SEH 3.154.

131 SEH 3.156.

132 SEH 3.166.

133 SEH 3.127.

270 of this real world itself” (huius ipsius veri Mundi naturam), gathering information that can only be found “from things themselves” (a rebus ipsis).134 A utopian novel seems an incongruous vehicle for such an investigation. But, as Richard Kennington says, “the New Atlantis is not a utopia in the premodern sense, but a realizable regime.”135 Indeed, it is scarcely credible that

Bacon would describe an unattainable political situation. He condemned philosophers because

“they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths; and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light, because they are so high.”136

In the Novum organum, Bacon states that it is not only necessary to make histories of nature “free and unconstrained” (liberae ac solutae), but “much more of nature constricted and vexed” (multo magis Naturae constrictae & vexatae).137 Much more effort and resources must go into the latter. In the Parasceve, Bacon says that “through the work and ministry of man an entirely new appearance of bodies is seen, and as if another universe or theatre of things.”138

Hence it is the most useful part of history, since “it shows things in motion, and leads more directly to practice. It also lifts the mask and veil from natural things, which are often hidden or obscured under a variety of figures and external appearance.”139 The fictional New Atlantis shows an approach to natural philosophy focused on nature “constricted and vexed.” It shows

134 OFB 11.36.

135 Kennington, “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision,” 73.

136 Advancement of Learning, SEH 3.475.

137 OFB 11.38.

138 OFB 11.454. “At per Operam & ministerium Hominis conspicitur prorsus noua Corporum Facies, & veluti Rerum Vniuersitas altera, siue Theatrum alterum.”

139 OFB 11.462. “Inter Partes eas quas diximus Historiae, maximi vsus est Historia Artium; propterea quod ostendat Res in Motu, & magis recta ducat ad Praxin. Quinetiam tollit laruam & velum a Rebus Naturalibus, quae plerunque sub varietate Figurarum & Apparentiae externae occultantur, aut obscurantur.”

271 what is possible when a new approach to nature is taken, not by a few individuals, but by an entire nation.

Nature in the New Atlantis

The New Atlantis is in part a reworking of Plato’s story of the island Atlantis. Plato’s version is introduced in the dialogue Timaeus and described more fully in its sequel, the unfinished dialogue Critias. Critias, an interlocutor of Socrates, tells the myth of Atlantis as reported to him by his grandfather Critias, who heard it from his father Dropides, who heard it from Solon, who heard it from an Egyptian priest. The myth tells of a struggle between Atlantis, which lay across the Atlantic Ocean, and the Greeks led by Athens, some 9,000 years before the time of the dialogue reported in the Critias.

The purpose of the telling of the myth of Atlantis, according to Critias, is to transfer the fictitious City and citizens which Socrates earlier described (in an unnamed dialogue, perhaps the

Republic) into the “world of reality.” After Critias begins the story of Atlantis in the Timaeus

(he will return to it in the Critias), Timaeus gives a description of the nature of the whole universe. This universe is “a work of craft, modeled after that which is changeless and is grasped by a rational account, that is, by wisdom.”140 Hence it is intelligible. Indeed, the universe comes about because the maker “took over all that was visible – not at rest but in discordant and disorderly motion – and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order,

140 Timaeus 29a. Translated in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1235.

272 because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder.”141 The vision of nature presented by Plato in this dialogue is unified, orderly, and rational.

The beneficence of nature to man is revealed in the description of ancient Athens and

Atlantis. According to the Egyptian priest, the goddess Athena chose the site of Athens because

“the temperate climate in it throughout the seasons would bring forth men of surpassing wisdom.

And, being a lover of both war and wisdom, the goddess chose the region that was likely to bring forth men most like herself.” Hence the Athenians “came to surpass all other peoples in every excellence.”142 The land, as reported in the Critias, was fertile beyond all others.143 Atlantis is similarly described as blessed by nature. It furnished for its people “products lovely, marvelous, and of abundant bounty”: metals, timber, animals of the land and water, all different sorts of plants and herbs and fruits.144

Bacon, in the New Atlantis, derides Plato’s description of the old Atlantis as “poetical and fabulous.” His New Atlantis opens abruptly with an account of sailors blown off course by the wind. Nature is not kind to them, and neither is providence, as Jerry Weinberger points out.145

The sailors are hungry, sick, and near death. They had laid in a supply of food for twelve

141 Timaeus 30a. Plato, 1236.

142 Timaeus 24c-d. Plato, 1232.

143 Critias 110e-111e.

144 Critias 115b. Plato, 1301.

145 Jerry Weinberger, “Science and Rule in Bacon’s Utopia: An Introduction to the Reading of the New Atlantis,” American Political Science Review 70 (1976): 872-73. “Nature” in this section is not used in the technical sense described in the Novum organum, meaning the primary appetites and passions of matter, but rather the sense of the whole of things, as in the final part of the title of the Novum organum, True Directions concerning the Interpretation of Nature.

273 months, which they were sparing with,146 but they are near death because the winds – a product of nature and beyond their control – are against them. Nature is inhospitable and harsh.

The European sailors are gradually introduced to the profusion and riches of Bensalem.

Bacon does make one reference to nature’s bounty – Bensalem, according to the governor who first speaks to the European sailors, has very fertile soil and is well situated for fishing and commerce. It was this consideration that made King Solamona, some nineteen hundred years earlier, establish certain laws in order to protect Bensalem’s flourishing. For he considered “the happy and flourishing estate wherein this land then was, so as it might be a thousand ways altered to the worse, but scarce any one way to the better.”147 Nature reaches a state of sufficiency for men rarely, and this state would not last without legislation by man. The principal law Solamona passed was the institution of Salomon’s House, or the College of the Six

Day’s Work, charged with “the finding out of the true nature of all things.”148

The Father of Salomon’s House is more explicit in his description of the end of the house: “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.”149

This description reveals a more ambitious plan than the preservation of an accidental, happy state of nature. The Father emphasizes the improvements over nature that the House causes, for instance in his description of their gardens:

146 SEH 3.129.

147 SEH 3.144.

148 SEH 3.146.

149 SEH 3.156.

274 In these [gardens] we practise likewise all conclusions of grafting and inoculating, as well of wild-trees as fruit-trees, which produceth many effects. And we make (by art) in the same orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come earlier or later than their seasons; and to come up and bear more speedily than by their natural course they do. We make them also by art greater much than their nature; and their fruit greater and sweeter and of differing taste, smell, colour, and figure, from their nature.150

The Father also speaks of making “divers plants rise by mixtures of earths without seeds; and likewise to make divers new plants, differing from the vulgar; and to make one tree or plant turn into another.” Similarly, the enlightened Bensalemites “make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes, of putrefacation, whereof some are advanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures, like beasts or birds.”151 Art not only aids nature, but alters it and surpasses it.

Jerry Weinberger calls the title of the New Atlantis one of the “most obtrusive parts” of the work. There is no direct explanation in the text why it is so titled; apart from the title, there is no reference to a “New Atlantis” in the text. Weinberger points out that this title should call our attention to Plato’s account of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias.152 Bacon’s New Atlantis,

Bensalem, is superior to Plato’s Atlantis inasmuch as it does not rely on the doubtful benevolence of nature.153 It is superior in another way to the old Atlantis, which Bacon and

150 SEH 3.158. Brackets added.

151 SEH 3.158-59.

152 Weinberger, “Science and Rule,” 872.

153 Kimberly Hurd Hale in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Though (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013) argues that Bacon’s project to overcome nature is “merely an extension” of Plato’s teaching that men are not political animals, but rather “form political associations because nature does not fulfill all their needs.” She tentatively identifies Bacon’s position that “the human things are the divine things,” specifically that “the eternal laws of Nature . . . are actually open to manipulation and improvement by human beings,” with Plato’s teaching in the Critias (p. 28, 29). I agree in large part with this interpretation of Bacon’s teaching, but not with the identification of that teaching with Plato’s. One possible argument against her position is Plato’s and Bacon’s different conceptions of form. Her claim regarding the similarity in teaching between Bacon’s New Atlantis and Plato’s Timaeus and Critias is part of her broader claim that Bacon’s opposition is to the scholastics and their interpretations of Plato and Aristotle rather than to Plato and Aristotle themselves (ibid., p. 45). But why should

275 Plato agree in describing as desiring political domination and setting out on unprovoked expeditions of war. In the Novum organum, Bacon describes the second grade of ambition as desiring that one’s country have dominion over others. This is the degree of excellence the old

Atlantis aimed at, which led to its destruction. Bacon’s New Atlantis, in contrast, aims at

Bacon’s third degree of ambition – the conquest of nature by man for the good of all men.

Michèle Le Doeuff takes exception to the view that Bacon has an antagonistic stance towards nature. He argues that a close consideration of Bacon’s views toward nature separates him from thinkers such as Giordano Bruno, who taught that “men’s abilities do not reside in the capacity to work in accordance with nature and the ordinary course of things only.” Rather,

“man gives shape to other natures and other orders by the means of his , and finally becomes a self-made God of the earth.”154 Le Doeuff contrasts this view with that of Bacon, who, he says, respected nature and whose scientific progress is falsely accused of “formidable arrogance towards nature.”

It is true, as Le Doeuff points out, that Bacon insists that men cannot alter the fundamental natures, but only bring them together or separate them and thus permit them to act on each other. Thus, “nature” in the sense of “simple natures” is unable to be altered by men.

On the other hand, “natures” in the sense in which Aristotle understood them – the forms of natural things – are to be altered. Bacon states that it is through knowledge of the simple natures that “human power is able to be emancipated, and to be freed from the common course of nature,

Bacon conceal his disagreement with the scholastic interpretation of Plato, when he makes no effort whatsoever to conceal his general disagreement with the scholastics?

154 Michèle Le Doeuff, “Man and Nature in the Gardens of Science,” in Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 121.

276 and to be expanded and raised to new efficient powers, and new modes of working.”155 As

Richard F. Hassing argues, the radical teaching of Bacon is that

form [in the sense of natural wholes] has heretofore been an effect not per se but per accidens (meaning unintended) of forces henceforth subject to human control. We, or some of us, will control the previously unrecognized necessities at work in nature and human nature, and thereby control the future production of natural form and human performance. This means we can bring about new natures and new performances.156

Natural wholes and nature as a whole – “the ordinary course of things” – is to be altered. It is precisely the ordinary course of things that Bacon’s philosophy overturns, using his new understanding of “form” and “nature.” Bacon is more subtle than Bruno, but no less revolutionary.

The Good of the Citizens

Bacon presents not only a picture of nature in the New Atlantis, but also a vision of human nature. In contrast to the frequency of the word “virtue” in the Essays, it appears in the

New Atlantis only four times. Three of those uses refer to natural powers: waters, minerals, and parts of bodies have virtues. Only in one case does it describe humans: the Tirsan, during the

Feast of the Family, gives a special blessing to any sons of “eminent merit and virtue.”157

Readers swayed by the belief of authors such as David Colclough that in the New Atlantis “the ethical and the political are above all striking by their absence” may find in this fact confirmation

155 OFB 11.256. “Nec emancipari posse potentiam humanam, & liberari a Naturae cursu communi, & expandi & exaltari ad Efficientia noua, & Modos operandi nouos, nisi per reuelationem & inuentionem huiusmodi Formarum....”

156 Richard F. Hassing, Final Causality and Human Affairs, 34. Bracketed words are mine. See also pp. 41-42.

157 SEH 3.150.

277 of their views.158 But “good” or some variation thereof describing humans appears numerous times in the New Atlantis. Individual virtues are mentioned as well, such as wisdom and chastity. And as Brownen Price says, the narrator “focuses his attention on cultural matters,” for instance on “time, food, dress, ritual, ceremony, and the use of number and colour.”159 Notably,

Bacon’s description of the private citizens of New Atlantis centers on their sexual behavior, a matter well within the traditional purview of virtue. Two customs of the Bensalamites are described, the Feast of the Family and the Benselamites’ courtship.

The narrator describes seeing a Feast of the Family. It is, he says, “a most natural, pious, and reverend custom . . . , shewing that nation to be compounded of all goodness.”160 This feast is given to any man who has thirty descendants living at the same time. For two days before the feast, the father, or “Tirsan,” consults with his family regarding their future, settles disputes, aids the destitute, and corrects the erring. The King of Bensalem himself honors the father with money and praise, calling him his creditor, since the “king is debtor to no man, but for propagation of his subjects.”161 The feast concludes with prayers, and the father blesses his descendants in the name of the Trinity.

The Feast of the Family seems, as the narrator says, conducive to piety and virtue. The father is described as encouraging his descendants to live rightly and pray. The Feast, with its state-sanctioned honor of procreation, is reminiscent of the Leges Iuliae of Augustus that punished adultery and childlessness, and rewarded fruitful marriages. Augustus had lower

158 David Culclough, “Ethics and Politics in the New Atlantis,” in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, 61.

159 Brownen Price, “Introduction,” Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, 10.

160 SEH 3.147.

161 SEH 3.149.

278 standards than the king of Bensalem: only three sons were required for a Roman citizen to be honored, as opposed to thirty living descendants for the Bensalemites. And, according to

Tacitus, the laws of Augustus did not work; they made men worse, not better.162 In contrast, according to the Jew Joabin, “those families that are partakers of the blessing of that feast do flourish and prosper ever after in an extraordinary manner.”163 The narrator says that he “never heard of a solemnity wherein nature did so much preside.”164 Bensalem’s knowledge and control of human nature is greater than that of Augustus.

Joabin compares the licentiousness of Europe to the chastity of Bensalem. In Bensalem there are “many wise and excellent laws touching marriage.”165 But the Christian authors who are authorities for the Europeans do not think legislation such as Bensalem’s is practicable.

Notably, Bensalem utterly forbids whore houses and prostitution of any kind. Christian Europe was more lenient in this regard. Thomas Aquinas says, “In human government those who rule rightly tolerate some evils, so that some goods are not impeded, or even so that worse goods are not incurred, as Augustine says, in De ordine 2: ‘Take prostitutes from human affairs, you will have disturbed all things by lust.’”166 Joabin says that the Bensalemites dismiss this defense of prostitution as irrational, calling it “a preposterous wisdom.” Marriage is “ordained a remedy for unlawful concupiscence,” but when temptations to concupiscence are actively encouraged,

162 Annals 3.25-28.

163 SEH 3.152.

164 SEH 3.151.

165 SEH 3.153.

166 ST II-II , q. 10, a. 11. “Sic igitur et in regimine humano illi qui praesunt recte aliqua mala tolerant, ne aliqua bona impediantur, vel etiam ne aliqua mala peiora incurrantur, sicut Augustinus dicit, in II de ordine, aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus.”

279 clearly marriage suffers.167 The narrator after hearing his arguments confesses that “the righteousness of Bensalem was greater than the righteousness of Europe.”168 It is a righteousness that owes its existence to customs which surpass those of Augustan Rome and

Christian Europe.

The aim of both the Feast of the Family and the laws regarding marriage are ordered to procreation. It is instructive that the Father of the Family is described as good by the very fact of having children. According to Joabin, “those families that are partakers of the blessing of that feast do flourish and prosper ever after in an extraordinary manner.”169 And this is due to no virtue or character trait other than the ability to procreate. Similarly, Joabin describes the marriage laws as ordered towards fruitful generation. The description of the private lives of citizens is focused on their ability to create citizens of the state. They are guided by the laws of the state towards this end.

This susceptibility of the common people to external control is indicated in the two descriptions of them in the public arena.170 When the Europeans were led by the governor to the

Stranger’s House, all along the street “there were gathered some people on both sides standing in a row; but in so civil a fashion, as if it had been not to wonder at us but to welcome us.”171

167 SEH 3.152. See ST supplementum tertiae partis, q. 42, a. 3, ad 4: “”Ad quartum dicendum quod contra concupiscentiam potest praestari remedium dupliciter. Uno modo, ex parte ipsius concupiscentiae, ut reprimatur in sua radice. Et sic remedium praestat matrimonium per gratiam quae in eo datur.”

168 SEH 3.153.

169 SEH 3.152.

170 Charles C. Whitney, “Merchants of Light”: 256: “Within Bensalem itself, the scientific atmosphere produces a public docility reflecting an internalization of authority by the individual subjects of Bensalem.”

171 SEH 3.132-33.

280 Similarly, when the Father of Salomon’s House arrives in state the narrator views the order and discipline of the people of Bensalem: along the Father’s path, the “street was wonderfully well kept: so that there was never any army had their men stand in better battle array, than the people stood. The windows likewise were not crowded but every one stood in them as if they had been placed.”172 In the presence of the representative of Salomon’s house, they are orderly and disciplined. Bensalem has superior knowledge and manipulation of humans as well as of the natural world.173

Kimberly Hurd Hale agrees that the New Atlantis presents a picture of an extraordinarily effective control of the scientists over the people. But she argues that this control is achieved at the price of the liberty of the citizens, as, for instance, their submissive reception of the Father of

Salomon’s House shows. And scientists’ emphasis on secrecy is incompatible with a free people. Hence, she argues, Bacon is presenting “a false utopia, bordering on dystopia.”174 The

New Atlantis, according to Hale, shows not only the excellences of a scientific state, but the dangers that this state poses towards the liberty of its citizens.

It is true that Bacon was alive to the dangers of technology, as his essay “Daedalus” in De sapientia shows, but it is doubtful that he would see the control of the common people by a largely secret organization as problematic. He had a low opinion of the common people, as

172 SEH 3.155.

173 See Timothy H. Patterson, “On the Role of Christianity,” 428: “Moreover, the account given of the marital institution which Bacon was bold enough to call ‘the Adam and Eve’s pools,’ where men and women routinely look upon each other naked without shame or sin, clearly intends to suggest that scientific progress has also restored that innocence of good and evil which was corrupted or lost in the Fall.”

174 Kimberly Hurd Hale, Modern Political Thought, 99. See also pp. 97-98 and 116.

281 evidenced throughout the Essays.175 The scientific project which he initiates is indeed a work of charity by the scientists towards the masses, but it presumes their inadequacy in caring for themselves. The illiberal aspects of New Atlantis – social and political control remaining in the hands of an unelected elite and the restriction of knowledge by this elite – are in harmony with

Bacon’s views, and not a covert warning against the threat that a technological society will pose to freedom.

In Bacon’s New Atlantis, the ancient ideal of virtue as a disposition of the soul in accord with nature is replaced, for the common people, by a sufficiency of material goods and strong familial ties. Manent’s claim that the moderns rejected the ancient conception of virtue is true of

Francis Bacon. But Bacon does not reject law. On the contrary, the laws of Bensalem are more effective and more ambitious than the laws of Europe. In Bensalem, even human desire and lust are contained in strict order. The law of Bensalem is not oppressive; it does not torture and twist nature. Rather, the needs and desires of the people are served. Instead of forcing them to a view of human nature and human excellence torturous and difficult, or even impossible, to attain,

Bensalem persuades men by appealing to their appetites and desire for procreation and self- preservation.176

175 In “Of Seditions and Troubles,” Bacon says that when “Broken Estate, in the better Sort, be joyned with a Want and Necessity, in the meane People, the danger is imminent, and great. For the Rebellions of the Belly are the worst.” Further, he advises, “Let no Prince measure the Danger of [discontentments], by this; whether they be Just, or Unjust? For that were to imagine People to be too reasonable; who doe often spurne at their owne Good” (Essays, 45-46). The advice Bacon gives in this essay is to avoid poverty, not to give the citizens greater liberty. In “Of Praise” he states that if praise “be from the Common People, it is commonly False and Naught: And rather followeth Vaine Persons, then Vertuous: For the Common People understand not many Excellent Vertues” (Essays, 159). And in “Of Unity of Religion,” Bacon says that “as the temporall Sword, is to bee drawne, with great circumspection, in Cases of Religion; So it is a thing monstrous, to put it into the hands of the Common People” (Essays, 15).

176 Compare Harvey C. Mansfield on Hobbe’s political theory: “No stopping point will be reached at which men can rest in assured happiness; there is no highest good, no utmost aim, no furthest end. . . . And since the highest good is lacking, no good can be good in its place or rank. Without a highest good, no natural hierarchy of goods, and of powers to produces goods, can exist. . . . Since we cannot be assured of satisfaction from nature or God, we

282 The Common Good in the New Atlantis

In the New Atlantis, the second degree of ambition as commonly understood, namely the desire to increase the power of one’s country over other countries by military and economic means, is gone.177 There are no wars and no foreign trade. While a merchant, Joabin, does occupy a prominent place in the utopia, 1900 years prior to the Europeans’ arrival in Bensalem,

King Solamona forbade interaction with strange nations, and confined merchants to

“transportations from port to port [i.e., within Bensalem], and likewise by sailing unto some small islands that are not far from us, and are under the crown and laws of this state.” As for

“travelling from hence into parts abroad, our Lawgiver thought fit altogether to restrain it.”178

Charles Whitney points out that Bacon’s utopia “enjoys maximum power and security by exploiting trading partners that do not even so much as know of its existence,”179 that is,

Bensalem’s scientists visit other lands and learn their scientific advances without the other lands being aware of the presence of another nation’s agents. But the secret use of another nation’s knowledge does no direct harm in itself, and cannot be compared to the self-aggrandizement of a nation through mercantile exploitation and military conquest. Bensalem’s isolationism only ends

must deny that we receive any help from powers outside ourselves, and attempt to assure our own power. This is power pure and simple, taken ‘universally’” (Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power [London: The Free Press, 1989], 173). And on Locke: “Necessity as revealed in the state of nature will compel partisans to consider what is essential, their self-preservation, and to forsake their partisan opinions about the good or godly life” (Taming the Prince, 185).

177 The end of the work, when the Father invites the narrator to publish what he has seen, may hint at a new kind of imperialism founded on science.

178 SEH 3.144, 145.

179 Charles C. Whitney, “Merchants of Light,” 256.

283 in the final scene in the New Atlantis, when the Father of Salomon’s house commissions the narrator to describe Salomon’s house for the benefit of other nations.

The Europeans’ first reaction to Bensalem reveals an immediately apparent common good. The New Atlantis begins with a description of the poverty and want of the sailors; by contrast, Bensalem provides a profusion of necessities and comforts: medicine, beautiful lodgings, excellent food and drink. The sailors claim that “there was no worldly thing on earth more worthy to be known then the state of that happy land.” The Europeans go so far as to say that

it seemed to us that we had before us a picture of our salvation in heaven; for we that were awhile since in the jaws of death, were now brought into a place where we found nothing but consolations. . . . [We] said amongst ourselves, “That we were come into a land of angels, which did appear to us daily and prevent us with comforts, which we thought not of, much less expected.” 180

This salvation is wrought not by divine but by scientific benevolence.181 It is true that their first question to the governor of the Stranger’s House is about the Christianity of the land, which the governor, who describes himself as “by vocation a Christian priest,”182 is happy to note. But the providers of the material comforts they are given are referred to in religious, even salvific, terms.

Not virtue, but material well-being dominates the picture of Bensalem.183

The material profusion is mainly due to Salomon’s House, or the College of the Six Days

Works. Bacon shows in several ways that this is the most important part of Bensalem. Already mentioned is the awe accorded by the Europeans to the material superabundance of Bensalem,

180 SEH 3.136.

181 See Timothy H. Patterson, “On the Role of Christianity,” 428-29.

182 SEH 3.135.

183 See Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 114.

284 attained by Salomon’s House. According to the governor who first talked to the Europeans, it is

“the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lanthorn of this kingdom.”184 The grandest and most solemn ceremony of Bensalem described in the New

Atlantis is that celebrating the entrance of one of the Fathers of Salomon’s House. The Father was carried in a rich litter, emblazoned with a sun and a cherub, while all others walked. Before the Father walk two men holding a crosier and a pastoral staff, presumably a bishop and an archbishop, and behind him walk the “officers and principles of the Companies of the City,” that is, the trade guilds.185 The Father unites religion and commerce, both of whose leaders show subservience by walking as the Father is carried. The Father blesses the people as he passes.

The narrator marvels at their order: “Never any army had their men stand in better battle array, than the people stood. The windows likewise were not crowded but every one stood in them as if they had been placed.”186 Before the scientific benevolence of Salomon’s House they are orderly and docile.

When the narrator meets the Father in a private audience, following instructions, he kisses the hem of his tippet – an honor the Europeans previously attempted to pay the priest in charge of the Stranger’s House, but were stopped by him.187 Though the governor of the

Stranger’s House is the highest ranking government official the Europeans meet, he is inferior in dignity to the Father. The Father tells the narrator he will give him “the greatest jewel I have.

184 SEH 3.145.

185 SEH 3.155. Vickers glosses both the distinction between the crosier and pastoral staff, and the term “Companies of the City” (The Major Works, 796).

186 SEH 3.155.

187 SEH 3.156. Vickers points out this disparity in treatment in his commentary (The Major Works, 797).

285 For I will impart unto thee, for the love of God and men, a relation of the true state of Salomon’s

House.” He begins by telling him the end of the House: “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.”188 The benevolence of science increases not the empire of Bensalem, but the human empire.

Not only “the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire,” but also “the knowledge of

Causes, and secret motions of things,” is the end of Salomon’s House. Both action and contemplation are aimed at. The masses take part in neither the active nor the contemplative side of the common good, except insofar as they enjoy the effects of this dominion over nature. They are ordered and helped by the Fathers – at the Father’s discretion, as they only publish “such new profitable inventions as we think good.”189 The masses in Bensalem share only in the effects of knowledge, not in knowledge itself. The passivity of the masses is underscored by the fact that they appear in the New Atlantis chiefly in discussions regarding procreation, as described in the

Feast of the Tirsan and the ceremonies surrounding courtship. The common people are also described observing the Europeans at the beginning of the work and before the Father at the end, in both of which instances they are notable for their docility. It can be objected that Aristotle says that few people are virtuous, and so his common good of virtue is likewise shared only by the few. But as his theory of the range of human behavior, from vice to incontinence to continence to virtue, shows, all men share in the same goal of virtue and approach that goal more or less. And his politics is ordered to encouraging virtue. As Harvey C. Mansfield says,

188 SEH 3.156.

189 SEH 3.166.

286 Aristotle asserted or discovered an understanding of nature, contained in his notion of kingship, that was favorable to human ends and the human good. His purpose was to preserve the practical feasibility of behaving nobly, [and] to enlighten the ambition of those who seek to act nobly . . . .190

The incontinent man and the vicious man do not by nature have a different end than the virtuous man; they merely fail to achieve their end. By contrast, the masses in Bacon’s New Atlantis are called to a different role: the enjoyment of the empire of nature which is brought about by a different order of men. They have no direct role in the dominion of nature, only the indirect role of procreation.

The masses share in the common good in the sense that they all reap the material benefits of the Bensalemite rule over nature. But this does not seem to be a truly common good, i.e. one which, in De Koninck’s words, “is better for each of the particulars that participate in it insofar as it is communicable to the other particulars.”191 One could argue that there is a shared sense of being Bensalemites: at one point in the Feast of the Family, all acclaim together: “Happy are the people of Bensalem.”192 But even granting this, the New Atlantis shows an attenuated notion of the common good in comparison with that of Aquinas or Lucretius.

Lucretius in De rerum natura considers the gifts of both those who brought material blessings and peace to men, and compares them unfavorably with Epicurus. Ceres brought corn to mortals and Liber brought wine.193 But it was possible to live without these things; however,

“life was not able to be lived well without a pure understanding.” Therefore Epicurus “seems to

190 Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 70.

191 Charles De Koninck, The Primacy of the Common Good, 75.

192 SEH 3.149.

193 De rerum natura 5.13 ff.

287 us to be more than a god, from whom even now sweet solaces of life, having been spread abroad through great nations, delight our minds.”194 Epicurus fares even better in comparison to

Hercules, who slew many wild beasts. But it is doubtful, Lucretius says, that even if alive these beasts could harm us. But passions and cares harm all men, and Epicurus “vanquished all these and drove them from the mind by words, not weapons.” In turn, Lucretius claims, “Walking in his footsteps I follow his reasons and I teach by words.” 195 He dedicates his poetry to his friend

Memmius in the hopes that he will attain the same good as Epicurus and Lucretius. This philosophical conversation in friendship is a truly common good, since only those share in it who participate in the same activity, and the good is precisely the shared activity. It is more of a common good than is Bensalem’s material profusion, although shared by far fewer people.

The Good Man in the New Atlantis

What is the portrait of the good man presented in the New Atlantis? This work portrays the fruition of the scientific project as Bacon envisions it, and so it affords a glimpse of what the one who devotes himself to the good of humanity looks like. Further, it is the most novel-like of

194 De rerum natura 5.18-21. “At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi; Quo magis hic merito nobis deus esse videtur, Ex quo nunc etiam per magnas didita gentis Dulcia permulcent animos solacia vitae.”

195 De rerum natura 5.49-50, 55-56. “Haec igitur qui cuncta subegerit ex animoque Expulerit dictis, non armis . . . . Cuius ego ingressus vestigia dum rationes Persequor ac doceo dictis . . . .”

288 all Bacon’s works and hence the picture of men that emerges is more vivid than can be obtained from the ethical prescriptions he gives in works such as the Essays or the Advancement.

We start with the common people of Bensalem. Even they are worthy of being observed, presumably, since the narrator tells us the nation “is compounded of all goodness” and that

“there is nothing amongst mortal men more fair and admirable, than the chaste minds of this people.”196 As described above, the virtues of the people of Bensalem are primarily chastity and orderliness. Chastity is valued because it leads to large families and “population is so much affected” in Bensalem.197 The order presumably provides for the smooth functioning of the community. It is fitting that the only city that is named on the island is called Renfusa, which, as

Jerry Weinberger points out, is derived from the Greek words meaning “sheep-natured.”198 The common people are described only in general – no individual common person is mentioned. The narrator calls the Bensalemites “a Christian people, full of piety and humanity.” This is seen in their greeting of the Europeans: they are lined up, and some of them “put their arms a little abroad; which is their gesture when they bid any welcome.”199 It should be noted that their humanity is apparently limited to kind gestures.

The governor of the House of Strangers is described in some detail. His prominent characteristic is his concern and care for others. He says of himself that he “was a priest, and looked for a priest’s reward: which was our brotherly love and the good of our souls and

196 SEH 3.147, 152.

197 SEH 3.152.

198 Weinberger, New Atlantis and the Great Instauration, 47, n. 72.

199 SEH 3.134, 133.

289 bodies.”200 He has a “gracious and parent-like usage” and is of “rare humanity.” On parting from the Europeans he has “tears of tenderness” in his eyes. His smile is “gracious,” and he possesses “great courtesy.”201 In fact, all his characteristics illustrate goodness as it is described in the essay “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature”: He is “Gracious, and Curteous to strangers” and “Compassionate, towards the Afflictions of others.”202 His humanity is more effective than is that of the common people, inasmuch as he does not just welcome the strangers, but gives them, as an officer of the state, sustenance for the foreseeable future. He goes so far as to tell them to ask for anything they wish, “for ye shall find we will not make your countenance to fall by the answer ye shall receive.”203 The Europeans, in response to his beneficence, present themselves to the governor as servants along with everything they possess.

The governor tells of two other men whose goodness is worth considering. The first is

King Altabin, who, some 3,000 years before the narrator arrives in Bensalem, led the

Bensalemites into battle. Tyrambel (modern Mexico) sent a force against Greece and Coya

(modern Peru) sent one against Bensalem. None returned from the Greek expedition. The expedition from Coya, however, “met with enemies of a greater clemency.” King Altabin, “a wise man and a great warrior,” so managed his troops that he compelled the Coyans to surrender without “striking stroke.”204 His humanity was effective on account of his wisdom. The

200 SEH 3.136.

201 SEH 3.135, 139, 136, 140, 147.

202 Essays, 40.

203 SEH 3.135.

204 SEH 3.142.

290 governor, in virtue of his office, can save the starving Europeans; King Altabin saved a great multitude of hostile strangers.

The second person described by the governor is also a king, Solamona, who passed laws regarding the isolation of Bensalem and established the House of Salomon. He exemplifies

Bacon’s virtue of goodness to an exceptional degree. He had a “large heart, inscrutable for good.”205 He was “wholly bent to make his kingdom and people happy.” He “preserved all points of humanity” in his laws. He, like Altabin, possessed wisdom, as in his laws he joined

“humanity and policy together.” Among all his policies the establishment of Salomon’s House is described by the governor as preeminent: “the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lanthorn of this kingdom.”206 His goodness surpassed even that of

Altabin, in that he is instrumental in saving, not just men currently living, but succeeding generations through his scientific foundation.

Then there is Joabin, the merchant with whom the narrator “was fallen into strait

[intimate] acquaintance.”207 Their relationship is the closest thing to a friendship that appears in the New Atlantis. Joabin is curious for a number of reasons. As Tom van Malssen points out, he is the only contemporary Bensalemite who is named, but also the only Bensalemite the narrator meets whose dress is not described.208 He is a Jew, one of only a few in Bensalem. He is highly praised by the narrator for his wisdom: “the man was a wise man, and learned, and of great

205 SEH 3.144. Vickers identifies this text as a compilation of 1 Kings 4:29: “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart”; and Proverbs 25:3, translated from the Vulgate: “cor regum inscrutabile” (“the heart of kings is inscrutable”). The Major Works, 793-794.

206 SEH 3.144, 145.

207 SEH 3.151. Brackets mine.

208 Tom van Malssen, The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon: On the Unity of Knowledge (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), 216.

291 policy, and excellently seen in the laws and customs of that nation.”209 Van Malssen suggests that he is a merchant of light, one of the twelve members of Salomon’s House who travel incognito to other countries to bring back books and experiments to the House. This seems credible. Joabin is a merchant, but we are not told what he deals in. He appears to have some official position – inasmuch as he seems to be one of the first who are notified of the Father’s coming to the city, he hosts the Father when he comes, and he is the intermediary between the

Europeans and the Father – but again, we are not told what his office is and he wears no uniform.

If he is a member of Salomon’s House, then the fact that his discourse with the Europeans mainly concerns the Bensalemite’s sexual and marital customs suggests that the House has a role in guiding human nature as well as nature.

Finally, there is the key figure of the Father of Salomon’s House. His personality is curiously blank. His clothes and the equipage of his litter and the men accompanying him are described in detail. In this way Bacon shows the stature the scientist has in society. He himself is only described as “a man of middle stature and age, comely of person, and had an aspect as if he pitied men.” 210 Pity is the only ethical quality he is said to have (or, at least, to appear to have).

The Father’s pity expresses itself in his desire to benefit humanity at large through science, “the relief of man’s estate.” He is described as blessing the people during his parade:

“He held up his bare hand as he went, as blessing the people, but in silence.” When the narrator

209 SEH 3.151.

210 SEH 3.154. Compare Matthew 9:36 in the Vulgate: “Videns autem turbas misertus est eis quia erant vexati et iacentes sicut oves non habentes pastorem.” (But seeing the crowd he [i.e., Christ] pitied them because they were troubled and lying prostrate as sheep not having a shepherd.) Also the words of Christ in Mark 8:2: “Misereor super turba quia ecce iam triduo sustinent me nec habent quod manducent.” (I pity the crowd, because look they have stayed with me now three days and they have nothing to eat.)

292 is chosen by his fellow Europeans to have a private audience with the Father, he begins and ends his discourse by blessing the narrator. He gives to the narrator, “for the love of God and men,”

“the greatest jewel” he has: a description of Salomon’s House. The goal of this house is “the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire.” After his final blessing, he gives the narrator “leave to publish it for the good of other nations.”211 This is the most extensive display of benevolence yet, inasmuch as he extends the benefaction of Salomon’s house from the Bensalemites to all nations.

In Bacon’s portrayals of good men in the New Atlantis, humanity is effective when it is joined with wisdom, and particularly with scientific knowledge. The one who contemplates nature is most able to help his fellow men, and so possesses the trait of goodness in the highest degree. For previous philosophers as well, the contemplation of nature was inseparable from the good life, as, for instance, in the philosophy of Seneca and Lucretius. But their contemplation of nature had a very different relationship to action. The former advocated the study of nature for moral reasons, to become better through the contemplation of the order of the universe.212 For

Lucretius, the study of nature was necessary to free the mind from superstitions and other irrational fears. Neither Seneca nor Lucretius looked for material benefits from natural philosophy, nor did they envision any benefits from natural philosophy extending beyond the select group of those practicing philosophy together.

211 SEH 3.155, 156, 166.

212 Speaking the of the reasons why natural philosophy is profitable, Seneca says: “In the first place we shall rise above what is base; in the second we shall set the spirit free from the body, imparting to it that courage and elevation of which it stands in need.” Quaestiones naturales 3, translated by John Clark in Physical Science in the Time of Nero: Being a Translation of the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca (London: MacMillan and Co., 1910), 113. See also Epistulae 8.

293 The goodness of the Bensalemites seems to have a close relationship to Christian charity.

But the benevolence is clearly not dependent on Christianity. King Solamona established the

House of Salomon around 1900 years before the time of the narrator, that is, some 300 years before the coming of Christ. And when, as described by the Governor of the Stranger’s House,

Scriptures and a letter from the Apostle Bartholomew were miraculously brought to Bensalem, it is a Father of the House who confirms the event as miraculous. The governor is both a priest and an official of Bensalem, but his actions in the story, which prompt the Europeans to say that they saw before them “a picture of our salvation in heaven,”213 seem to pertain to his civil and not his religious function. When the Father visits, a bishop and archbishop – likely the highest-ranking religious persons in Bensalem – walk before him as he is carried. All we learn of Christianity in

Bensalem leads to the conclusion that Bensalem is dominated, not by Christian hope or charity, but by a new hope and a new charity, that of the empire of man over nature. 214

Conclusion

Though Bacon frequently uses the word “nature” in his Essays, nature is no longer a guiding principle of ethics – that is, the good of men does not consist in attaining habits that are according to nature. His ethical thought is consistent with his natural philosophy’s rejection of substantial natures as causes. “Human nature” for Bacon primarily means the tendencies humans are born with, which can be known and ordered, in oneself and others, for the sake of achieving

213 SEH 3.136.

214 For an excellent discussion of Christianity in the New Atlantis, see David C. Innes, “Bacon’s New Atlantis: the Christian Hope and the Modern Hope,” Interpretation 22, no. 1 (1994): 16. See also Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, par. 16 ff.

294 one’s desires. Similarly, “virtue” for the most part refers to innate tendencies that, directed properly, help one acquire and maintain power.

In contrast with both St. Thomas, who identified the common good of the political order as the pursuit of virtue of the citizens, and Lucretius, whose wise man withdraws from political pursuits to seek friendship in philosophical inquiry, Bacon advocates expanding the military and economic power of one’s nation. The latter is gained primarily through commerce, which demands a strong mercantile class.

These goals are absent in the New Atlantis, however, which looks neither to economic nor military power as the common good. Bacon does not turn back towards virtue as a common good, however. Rather, Bacon continues to aim at power, but a more universal power than the aggrandizement of one’s nation: the empire of man over nature through science.

What is necessary to further this goal of the empire of man over nature? It is not the work of the many, who are portrayed as the passive recipients of the benefits accruing from nature’s conquest. The brief picture of the scientist, the Father of Salomon’s House, ties together numerous strands of Bacon’s ethical thought. He shares in the highest degree of ambition described in Novum organum 1.129, that of aiming at “the enlarging of the bounds of human

Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.” Through such an aim he helps achieve the greatest good described in the Advancement, namely the preservation and amplification of his species. He thus exemplifies the goodness of nature in “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature” in the Essays. The Father is a type of many scientists who will take part in Bacon’s project of the empire of man over nature and so will share in the highest ambition and further the greatest good. Bacon himself, as conceiving and introducing this empire, exemplifies this ambition to greatest extent.

295 CONCLUSION

Bacon presents an understanding of the human good which is the motive force behind his natural philosophy: it is communitarian, centered on advancing material necessities and comforts, and seeks dominion over nature. It aims at “immortality or continuance,” not merely of the individual, but of the entire human species.

Bacon juxtaposes his moral philosophy to his natural philosophy. The starting point of both is similar. Each rejects the ancient starting point, “what is most known to us,” and investigates simple elements: ethics takes as its starting point human passions, natural philosophy the passions of matter. Each sees immortality, inasmuch as it is achievable by men, as the end, and both aim at power.

With his new concept of form, fully spelled out by him in the Novum organum, Bacon introduces a new action and contemplation. They are, as he promised in the Advancement, closely united. The object of contemplation is neither the eternally realized order of the cosmos, as Seneca holds, nor natural wholes, as Aristotle holds. Instead it is the simple natures, the first properties of matter. To this extent his natural philosophy reminds us of of Lucretius’ atoms, but the latter advocates contemplation of the nature of things in seclusion from political action for the sake of tranquility. Bacon’s natural philosophy, in contrast, aims at action as well as contemplation. The simple natures, when grasped by the new forms, the laws of their existence, can be manipulated to construct something other than the ordinary workings of the natural world.

Such a reconfiguring of the natural world will fulfill mankind’s needs and satisfy his desires.

This opens up a field of action larger than political action, the highest arena for ethical virtues

296 according to Aristotle and Seneca. For Bacon, the highest human action establishes the empire of man over nature.

With the rejection of Aristotelian form as a cause, “virtue” has been largely emptied of its old content. Bacon continues to use this word, but it takes on a new meaning. Bacon focuses in his Essays on understanding and using passions to achieve one’s ends, which seems to typically mean achieving power for the individual or the state. At the level of political action, he advocates expanding the power of one’s nation through military and economic conquest of other nations. This is a temporary goal, however, which falls away once nations achieve man’s empire over nature. In the New Atlantis, this goal is discussed, and the picture of the truly good man presented. This man is the scientist, who unifies the different strands of Bacon’s moral thought.

He aims for the immortality of individual men and the continuance and amplification of the human species over against nature. He engages in the highest contemplation – knowledge of the forms – and the highest action – the empire of man over nature. And he exemplifies in an extraordinary way Baconian charity and goodness of nature. Baconian charity, while trading on the Christian conception of charity, is distinct in significant ways from it. It aims, apparently exclusively, at material prosperity and it places some men, the scientists, in a quasi-salvific role in comparison to ordinary men.

Can we answer, then, the question we started with: does Francis Bacon have an ethics, and is it distinct from that of the ancients? His ethics is not systematic or well-developed – on his account, ethics is dependent on natural philosophy, and so it is necessarily limited by the unfinished state of natural philosophy in his time. But Bacon does turn, again and again in his works, to the question of the human good. He presents the rudiments of an ethics that is distinct

297 from the virtue-centered, nature-fulfilling ethics of the ancients. While using much of their central terminology – nature, human nature, virtue, habit, common good – he changes the meaning of these terms, sometimes subtly and sometimes openly, just as he changes the meaning of the terminology of ancient natural philosophy. And, crucially for his ethical thought, he changes the meaning of action and contemplation.

Bacon’s natural philosophy and moral philosophy are intimately connected. In establishing a new aim for natural philosophy, the mastery of nature for the relief of man’s estate, he reconstitutes the hierarchy of goods away from the ancient’s contemplation of the eternally realized order of the cosmos. And it is by redefining form and nature that he presents a new understanding of both action and contemplation. His moral philosophy grows out of his natural philosophy, whether as a preparation for it, as in the treatment of the passions in the

Essays and De sapientia, or as a consequence of its innovations, as in his new understanding of human nature, action, and contemplation.

Bacon is one of the earliest exponents of modern science, and, of all the early-modern philosophers and scientists, he offers the most thorough critique of prior philosophers. I have tried to show that he also has a rudimentary ethics, growing in tandem with his developing natural philosophy. His influence on the development of modern science is, by and large, acknowledged. Did he have any comparable influence on the development of modern ethics?

Henry Sidgwick answers the question in the negative. Bacon’s ethical philosophy “does not

298 seem to have had any material effect in determining the subsequent development of ethical thought.”215 His ethical philosophy has largely been ignored.

The value from studying Bacon’s moral philosophy, then, does not primarily lie in tracing out his influence on later moral philosophers, but in another direction. His changes in moral philosophy arose with and out of his natural philosophy: in particular, his new understanding of nature, action, and contemplation. And modern science, inspired in a significant way by his teaching, continues to shape moral philosophy. Indeed, the ethical consequences of modern science’s rejection of substantial wholes and hence natural ends are now working their way out in the public sphere. The massive increase within the last century of the technological ordering of society, combined with the weakening of the influence of

Christianity on cultural habits, has brought to the fore conflicts that are foreshadowed in Bacon’s moral thought.

The study of Bacon’s moral philosophy has a relevance that is not bound to any historical situation. It provides us an opportunity to reflect on the passions, ends, and purposes of humans; on the meaning of nature, action, and contemplation. In this respect, Bacon is in continuity, not opposition, with Aristotle and the great philosophers who preceded him.

215 Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (London: MacMillan and Co., 1888), 158. Sidgwick particularly warns that “the temptation to establish an intellectual filiation between Hobbes and Bacon is one that the sober historian must resist” (ibid.). Despite this warning, I think that investigating the influence of Bacon on his secretary’s ethical ideas would be a fruitful avenue of research. They both place significantly more emphasis on self-preservation or “continuance” than do ancient authors, and so they both turn resolutely to the quest for power, albeit in different ways. But on the whole, I think that Sidgwick’s assessment of Bacon’s influence on subsequent moral philosophers is correct.

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