Francis Bacon

“ He had no sooner succeeded than he immediately raised his voice for oppressed Ireland, with an earnestness which shows how deeply he felt for her sufferings. "Your majesty," he said, "accepted my poor field-fruits touching the union, but let me assure you that England, Scotland, and Ireland, well united, will be a trefoil worthy to be worn in your crown. She is blessed with all the dowries of nature, and with a race of generous and noble people; but the hand of man does not unite with the hand of nature. The harp of Ireland is not strung to concord. ”

“ For no soul had ever such an impression of your perfections, no alteration showed such an effect of your power, nor no heart ever felt such a joy of your triumph. For they that feel the comfortable influence of your majesty's favour, or stand in the bright beams of your presence, rejoice partly for your majesty's, but chiefly for their own happiness. Only miserable Essex, full of pain, full of sickness, full of sorrow, languishing in repentance for his offences past, hateful to himself, that he is yet alive, and importunate on death, if your favour be irrevocable ”

“ For the first of these, secrecy, it is indeed the virtue of a confessor; and assuredly the secret man heareth many confessions, for who will open himself to a blab or a babbler? But if a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery, as the more close air sucketh in the more open; and, as in confession, the revealing is not for worldly use, but for the ease of a man's heart, so secret men come to the knowledge of many things in that kind; while men rather discharge their minds than impart their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. ”

“ My lord, I thank God, my wit serveth me not to deliver any opinion to the queen, which my stomach serveth me not to maintain; one and the same conscience of duty guiding me and fortifying me. But the untruth of this fable, God and my sovereign can witness, and there I leave it; knowing no more remedy against lies than others do against libels. The root, no question of it, is, partly some light-headed envy at my accesses to her majesty; which being begun, and continued since my childhood, as long as her majesty shall think me worthy of them, I scorn those that shall think the contrary. ”

“ How much is it to be lamented that such a mind, with such a temperament, was not altogether devoted to contemplation, to the tranquil pursuit of knowledge, and the calm delights of piety.
That in his youth he should quit these pleasant paths for the troubels and trappings of public life would be a cause for wonder, if it were not remembered that man amongst men is a social being; and, however he may abstract hims-eif in his study, or climb the hill above him, he must daily mingle with their hopes and fears, their wishes and affections. ”

“ Instead of students ready at all times to acquire any sort of knowledge, he found himself "amidst men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." ”

“ He knew the joy which they "would feel, if he could clear his honour." He knew that, however grateful it may be to common minds to indulge in the vulgar pleasure of imaginary self-importance from the depression of superiority, a disinclination to condemn, even if truth call for conviction, is an attribute of every noble mind, always afflicted at the infirmities of genius. Knowing that, amongst the peers, many valued themselves upon ancient learning, he would have reminded them, that "the tree scathed with lightning, was with them of the olden time ever held sacred. ”

“ With his delicate health and intense love of knowledge, he ought in prudence to have shunned the broad way and the green, and retreated to contemplation; but it was his favourite opinion that, "in this theatre of man's life, God and angels only should be lookers-on; that contemplation and action ought ever to be united, a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest, and Jupiter, the planet of action." ”

“ If he is in error, he may, in the infancy of the science of government, be pardoned for supposing that the national character would not be elevated by making sentient man a machine, or by those processes, by which bones and sinews, life and all that adorns life, is transmuted into gold. The bell by which the labourers are summoned to these many-windowed fabrics in our manufacturing towns, sweeter to the lovers of gain than holy bell that tolls to parish church, would have sounded upon Bacon's ear with harsher import than the Norman curfew. ”

“ On the other side, heat and vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business. Young men are fitter to invent, than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business; for the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them: but in new things abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet ”

“ Perhaps some opulent member of the university, when considering how he may extend to future times the blessings which he has enjoyed in his pilgrimage, may think that, in the University of Cambridge, a Verulamian Professorship might be productive or good: but these expectations may be the illusions of a lover; and it is not given to man to love and to be wise. There are, however, pleasures of which nothing can bereave me; the consciousness that I have endeavoured to render some assistance to science and to the profession, the noble, intellectual profession of which I am a member. ”

“ When Alexander received letters out of Greece of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage or a fort, or some walled town at the most, he said, "It seemed to him, that he was advertised of the battle of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of; so certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, the divineness of souls except, will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where as some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust." ”

“ But I consent with Cæsar, that the suddenest passage is easiest, and there is nothing more awakens our resolve and readiness to die, than the quieted conscience, strengthened with opinion that we shall be well spoken of upon earth by those that are just and of the family of virtue; the opposite whereof is a fury to man, and makes even life unsweet.
Therefore, what is more heavy than evil fame deserved? Or, likewise, who can see worse days, than he that yet living doth follow at the funerals of his own reputation? ”

“ I do not doubt but that common notions which we call reason, and the knitting of them together, which we call logic, are the art of reason and studies. But they rather cast obscurity, than gain light to the contemplation of nature. All the philosophy of nature which is now received, is either the philosophy of the Grecians, or that other of the alchemists. That of the Grecians hath the foundations in words, in ostentation, in confutation, in sects, in schools, in disputations. The Grecians were, as one of themselves saith, "you Grecians, ever children." ”

“ His high birth and elegant taste unfitted Bacon for the common walks of life, and by surrounding him with artificial wants, compelled him to exertions uncongenial to his nature: but the love of truth, of his country, and an undying spirit of improvement, ever in the train of knowledge, ill suited him for the trammels in which he was expected to move. Through the whole of his life he endeavoured to burst his bonds, and escape from law and politics, from mental slavery to intellectual liberty. ”

“ This double treachery entirely alienated the affections of Bacon. He saw no longer the high-souled, chivalric Essex, open as the day, lucid as truth, giving both faults and virtues to the light, redeeming in the eyes of all men the bounty of the crown; he saw only an ungrateful man, whom the fiend ambition had possessed, and knew that the name of that fiend was "Legion."
On the 19th of February, 1601, Essex and Southampton were arraigned, and, upon the trial, one of the conspirators, allured by the hope of life, made a full disclosure of all their treasons. ”

“ I might say much of the commodities that death can sell a man; but briefly, death is a friend of ours, and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home. Whilst I am, my ambition is not to foreflow the tide; I have but so to make my interest of it, as I may account for it; I would wish nothing but what might better my days, nor desire any greater place than in the front of good opinion. ”

“ My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind itself is but an accident to knowledge; for knowledge is a double of that which is. The truth of being, and the truth of knowing, is all one: and the pleasures of the affections greater than the pleasures of the senses. And are not the pleasures of the intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections? ”

“ Here the best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many things there are which a man cannot do himself: and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients, to say, "that a friend is another himself; for that a friend is far more than himself." 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 work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him ”

“ To the queen he was under the greatest obligation: she was the friend of his father, and had been his friend from his infancy; she consulted with him in all her difficulties; she had conferred upon him a valuable reversion of £2000 a year, had promoted him to be her counsel, and, what perhaps was her greatest kindness, instead of having hastily advanced him, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obligations to Elizabeth, of whom he never spoke but with affection for her virtues, and respect for her commanding intellect. ”

“ No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic; and, certainly, to a kingdom, or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise. A civil war, indeed, is like the heat of a fever; but a foreign war is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to keep the body in health; for, in a slothful peace, both courages will effeminate, and manners corrupt; but howsoever it be for happiness, without all question for greatness, it maketh to be still for the most part in arms ”

“ For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity: so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious acts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other arms but those of love." Then see his magnificent discourse on Friendship in his polemical discourses. ”

“ No man can act thus with impunity; he has sullied the brightness of a name which ought never to have been heard without reverence, injured his own fame, and has been himself the victim upon the altar which he raised to true science; becoming a theme to "point a moral or adorn a tale," in an attempt to unite philosophy and politics, an idol, whose golden head and hands of base metal form a monster more hideous than the Dagon of the Philistines.
His consciousness of the wanderings of his mind made him run into affairs with over-acted zeal and a variety of useless subtleties ”

“ Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground: judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. ”

“ In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe, or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawingly, than hastily; because hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides unseemliness, drives a man either to a non-plus or unseemly stammering, harping upon that which should follow; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and countenance. To desire in discourse to hold all arguments, is ridiculous, wanting true judgment; for in all things no man can be exquisite. ”

“ As a philosopher, Bacon, who beheld all things from a cliff, thus viewed the intellectual globe, dilating his sight to survey the whole of science, and contracting it so that the minutest object could not escape him.
Sweet as such speculations were to such a mind: pleasing as the labour must have been in surmounting the steeps: delightful to tarry upon them, and painful to quit them, he did not suffer contemplation to absorb his mind; but, as a statesman, he was ever in action, ever advancing the welfare of his country. These opposite exertions were the necessary result of his peculiar mind ”

“ I make not love to the continuance of days, but to the goodness of them; nor wish to die, but refer myself to my hour, which the great Dispenser of all things hath appointed me; yet as I am frail, and suffered for the first fault, were it given me to choose, I should not be earnest to see the evening of my age; that extremity of itself being a disease, and a mere return into infancy; so that if perpetuity of life might be given me, I should think what the Greek poet said, "Such an age is a mortal evil." ”

“ The judge is a man of ability, drawing his learning out of his books, and not out of his brain; rather learned than ingenious; more plausible than witty; more reverend than plausible. He is a man of gravity; of a retired nature, and unconnected with politics: his virtues are inlaid, not embossed.—He is more advised than confident.—He has a right understanding of justice, depending not so much on reading other men's writings, as upon the goodness of his own natural reason and meditation.—He is of sound judgment ”

“ To praise a man's self cannot be decent, except it be in rare cases; but to praise a man's office or profession, he may do it with good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity. The cardinals of Rome, which are theologues, and friars, and schoolmen, have a phrase of notable contempt and scorn towards civil business, for they call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judicature, and other employments, sirrbirie, which is under-sheriffries, as if they were but matters for under-sheriffs and catchpoles; though many times those under-sheriffries do more good than their high speculations. ”

“ The philosophy of Pythagoras, which was full of superstition, did first plant a monstrous imagination, which afterwards was, by the school of Plato and others, watered and nourished. It was, that the world was one entire, perfect, living creature; that the ebbing and flowing of the sea was the respiration of the world, drawing in water as breath, and putting it forth again. They went on and inferred, that if the world were a living creature, it had a soul and spirit. ”