BACON

1561-1626

THE calendar of the life of Francis Bacon can be set down in small compass. He was born in London in 1561, son to Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seals. He was admitted to Cambridge University at the age of thirteen, where he studied three years, after which for about two years he lived upon the Continent, chiefly in France and Italy. At the age of eight

een he was recalled to England by the sudden death of his father. Casting about him for an occupation in life, he applied for advice and aid to the Cecils, who, though distant relatives of his, and maintaining outward shows of regard, appear not only at this time, but throughout Bacon's career, to have been little friendly to their kinsman. While his predilections ran rather to a studious life than to one of affairs, young Bacon nevertheless set himself, upon the advice of his cousin, to the reading of the law. He was admitted to practice in 1582, and speedily drew upon him many eyes for

the solidity of his parts, the cogency of his logic, and the eloquence of his address. It is therefore no occasion of wonder to find him soon afterward a member of the House of Commons, where for many years he bore an important part in all debates and business. His name is specially identified with laws to prevent the enclosure of common lands and the conversion of tilled fields into pastures and parks; to restrict the royal prerogative and the encroachments of Lords upon Commons; as well as with measures looking to civil freedom, religious toleration, and to the union of Scotland with England. That he was eloquent we may know from the testimony of Ben Jonson, who reports that "the fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end." The higher rewards of public life did not come to Bacon till he was past the middle age. He was made successively solicitor-general, attorney-general, keeper of the seals, and lord chancellor, receiving the last of these appointments in 1618. Three years thereafter he was tried by the House of Lords on charges of bribery and corruption as a judge, and was convicted, deprived of his office, fined and imprisoned. King James, however, speedily ordered his release and remitted his fine, and Bacon retired to the country to pursue the more congenial life of student and philosopher. Here he died in 1626.

Witty and pointed sayings stick in the minds of men, and few lines in literature are more familiar than Pope's upon Bacon, "The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." No doubt, to very many this line has sufficed for an estimate of the great philosopher. But Pope was a satirist not always very scrupulous in the aiming of his shafts, and in recent years the harsher judgments of Bacon's personal character have been many of them revised, in keeping with that passage in his will which says, “ For my name and memory, I leave it to foreign nations, and to my own country after some time has passed over." On his trial before the House of Lords, at which he was not present, being confined with sickness, Bacon was accused of receiving bribes from litigants having suits before him. The evidence of this was slender in amount and doubtful in motive, and he strenuously denied the charge, though admitting his acceptance of fees and presents after his decisions had been rendered. This, which would now be universally condemned, was then the uniform practice. Nearly all offices, civil and ecclesiastical, were unsalaried, and, without gifts and fees, could not have been maintained. It was a system that Bacon himself saw the evils of, and plainly condemned when, after his trial, he wrote, "I was the justest judge that was in England this fifty years, but it was the justest censure that was in Parliament this two hundred years." It is worthy of note that of his very many judicial decisions not one has been reversed. At the request of King James he wrote a letter confessing to slackness, but denying corruption. Bacon died a comparatively poor man in an age when judges, bishops, and statesmen enriched themselves by unblushing venality.

The charge so often made against Bacon of ingratitude to benefactors turns chiefly on the case of the Earl of Essex, who, it is alleged, had given

him a landed estate, only to be rewarded later on by prosecution even to the death at the hands of Bacon. There is evidence that the lawyer's services to Essex were great, and for years unrequited, and that finally, having no money for payment, the earl made over to Bacon a small property which the latter was reluctant to receive, saying plainly, “ My Lord, I see I must hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? It is always with saving of faith to the king." When, at a later time, and in spite of curbings and counselings from Bacon, Essex put himself at the head of treasonable conspiracies and uprisings against Elizabeth, it became the duty of Bacon, as an officer of the Crown, to take part in the prosecution of the earl. The manner and the terms of Bacon's address in the performance of this duty show clearly how painful it was to him. A man's writings must tell of his character, and these in Bacon's case demand some mitigation of the severe censures that have so long passed current of him.

It is through the approval of the learned few that the method of philosophy which bears Bacon's name has secured common acceptance. His Novum Organum, written in Latin, was published in 1620, and upon this work his overshadowing reputation rests. In it he elaborates and establishes the inductive method of reasoning, — that is, from particular facts to general laws. Up to his time the world's thought had been dominated and restricted by the method of Aristotle, which was deductive, - that is, from cause to effect. To the Baconian method are largely due the material progress and scientific advance of modern times. The work by which Bacon is familiarly known is his "Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral," written in English. When first published, in 1597, these Essays were ten in number, but the volume was expanded from time to time until, in the edition published in the last year of the philosopher's life, there were fifty-eight. It is from this book that the following selections are taken

OF FRIENDSHIP

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.” For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation' towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure

1 aversion

in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation, such as is found to have been, falsely and feignedly, in some of the heathen, -as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana, and, truly and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church.

But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, Magna civitas, magna solitudo [A great city is a great solitude], — because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. 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.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza1 to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true, Cor ne edito "Eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable 2 (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in

1 sarsaparilla

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halves. For there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the alchemists use to attribute to their stone for man's body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature. But yet without praying in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression. And even so is it of minds.

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign' for the understanding, as the first is for the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshaleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia "that speech was like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs." Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they, indeed, are best); but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as gainst a stone, which itself cuts not. better relate himself to a statua or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother."

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In a word, a man were