Essays of Francis Bacon

“ But it is unjust to regard the "Essays" as representing Bacon's ideal of conduct. They are rather a collection of shrewd observations as to how, in fact, men do get on in life; human nature, not as it ought to be, but as it is. Sometimes, but by no means always, they consider certain kinds of behavior from a moral standpoint; oftener they are frankly pieces of worldly wisdom; again, they show Bacon's ideas of state policy ”

“ And, therefore, the natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of Nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me (as far as I can judge by the recital and fragments which remain unto us) in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; ”

“ Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house, somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. ”

“ The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; ”

“ A man's nature is best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation; in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts; and in a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him. ”

“ When Bacon expanded a subject the method that came most natural to him was that of the scientist, by analysis and contrast. Friendship resolves itself for him into three principal "fruits," "peace in the affections," "support of the judgment," and "aid and comfort in action." The puzzling degrees of dissimulation he describes, Of Simulation and Dissimulation, remind one of the excellent fooling of Touchstone on how to "quarrel in print, by the book," or the seven degrees of lies. The essay Of Adversity is merely a series of antitheses, an oracular list of pros and cons. ”

“ But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. ”

“ Contrariwise, certain Laodiceans, and lukewarm persons, think they may accommodate points of religion, by middle way, and taking part of both, and witty reconcilements; as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man. Both these extremes are to be avoided; which will be done, if the league of Christians, penned by our Savior himself, were in two cross clauses thereof, soundly and plainly expounded: He that is not with us, is against us; and again, He that is not against us, is with us; ”

“ IT WERE better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. ”

“ We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which nature adapted him, and from which no extent of occupation could entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption. ”

“ Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth deformity to an ape, to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion, makes it the more deformed. And as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt, into a number of petty observances. ”

“ SUSPICIONS amongst thoughts, are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at least well guarded: for they cloud the mind; they leese friends; and they check with business, whereby business cannot go on currently and constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and melancholy. They are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain; for they take place in the stoutest natures; ”

“ Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity or vainglory, or nature, or ”

“ With Bacon, essentially a literary man, science was to lose its moorings to letters.
At the end of three years Bacon left Cambridge, and at the age of about sixteen and a half years, was entered into the Society of the "Ancients" of Gray's Inn. Almost immediately after he had begun the study of law, an opportunity offered for him to travel and see the world. Sir Amias Paulet, who was sent to France as the Queen's ambassador, in 1576, invited Francis Bacon to go with him as a member of his household. Dr. ”

“ But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. ”

“ The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them, that have no posterity. ”

“ As to their other candidate, that weakly youth never could have been physically equal to have taken his share in youthful sports. Campbell’s Life of Bacon: “Francis was sickly and unable to join in the rough sports suited for boys of robust constitution,” if so he could not have described them so vividly and true; his poetry, such specimens as we have, is hardly-third rate, his prose on stilts, his history discredited. Preface to Bacon’s Essays, 1814: “His History of Henry VII. is in these days only consulted by a few.” p. 43Can this be said of his contemporary’s Historical plays? ”

“ So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward; ”

“ But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself. ”

“ Dangers are no more light, if they once seem light; and more dangers have deceived men than forced them; nay, it were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep. ”

“ THERE is a wisdom in this; beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation, what he finds good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health. ”

“ Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. ”

“ Diplomacy could not be pursued as a career without means, and a month after his father's death, Bacon returned to London. He was eighteen years old, and was dependent on his own exertions both for a living and for advancement in the public service. He took lodgings in Gray's Inn and resolutely applied himself to the study of the law. Later Anthony Bacon, back from some years of travel in France, Italy, and Spain, joined him, and the brothers, with little ready money between them, set up a coach, much to their frugal mother's dismay. ”

“ It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. ”

“ The small volume to which he has given the title of ‘Essays,’ the best known and the most popular of all his works, is one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest advantage, the novelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the triteness of the subject. ”

“ No man had their affection more in his power. The feare of every man that heard him, was, lest hee should make an end."
That Bacon was not naturally a good speaker, but studiously labored to acquire a pleasing address, is clear from a note in a paper of counsels and rules drawn up for the guidance of his own conduct, and called in his ready Latin—Custumae aptae ad Individuum, 'Fit Habits for the Individual,' that individual being Francis Bacon,—"To suppress at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice. ”

“ When we consider the great drama of the Elizabethan age, the bulk of it running to some fifteen hundred plays, its popularity, its reflection of contemporary life at all angles, its excellence and the high average of ability of the writers who were producing it, and Shakspere one of them, it is little short of astounding that nowhere throughout the fifty-eight essays does Bacon either quote a thought from the drama or mention a single dramatist. ”

“ In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open. ”

“ Thoughts which a writer of our own day would distil over a page, Bacon condenses into a sentence. What he writes is meant, not 'to be swallowed' in a hurry, but to be chewed and digested with deliberation. No man ever packed so much matter into smaller compass.
Dean Church says of Bacon's Essays that 'they are like chapters in Aristotle's Ethics and Rhetoric on virtues and characters; only Bacon takes Aristotle's broad marking lines as drawn, and proceeds with the subtler and more refined observations of a much longer and wider experience. ”

“ He portrays a handsome man, well worthy to have developed out of the graceful youth of the Hilliard miniature and the beautiful boy of the Italian bust.
Another portrait of Bacon, not mentioned by Spedding, is now in the National Portrait Gallery. A process print of it illustrates the article on Francis Bacon, at page 214 of Sidney Lee's Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century. The original is a second portrait of Bacon as Lord Chancellor by Paul Van Somer. As a work of art the picture seems to have more character and it is certainly more attractive than the Van Somer at Gorhambury. ”

“ The workmanship is Italian, and by the same hand, and of a high degree of artistic excellence. From the age of the boy the busts must have been made about the year 1572. The boy's bust is especially interesting, because seen beside the busts of his father and mother, it shows that Francis Bacon's likeness was to his mother. The frontispiece of Vol. XI of James Spedding's The Works of Francis Bacon is an engraving from a drawing of the bust of Bacon done in profile. ”

“ Introduction.—The fable of Orpheus, though trite and common, has never been well interpreted, and seems to hold out a picture of universal philosophy; for to this sense may be easily transferred what is said of his being a wonderful and perfectly divine person, skilled in all kinds of harmony, subduing and drawing all things after him by sweet and gentle methods and modulations. For the labors of Orpheus exceed the labors of Hercules, both in power and dignity, as the works of knowledge exceed the works of strength. ”

“ Bacon asserts, with fulsome flattery, "I have often thought, that of all the persons living that I have known, your Majesty were the best instance to make a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge is but remembrance." ”

“ The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall;140 the desire of knowledge 106in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it. ”

“ GOD Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection. I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens, for all the months in the year ”

“ The Advancement of Learning is divided into two parts; the former of which is intended to remove prejudices against the search after truth, by pointing out the causes which obstruct it; in the second, learning is divided into history, poetry, and philosophy, according to the faculties of the mind from which they emanate—memory, imagination, and reason. ”