of friendship essay by bacon

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The Trouble with Friends

On a daily basis, I teach kids. By kids, I mean teens to college-age, sometimes mid-twenties. When I started teaching, I was still a kid myself, so I was careful to refer to my students as students, but now I feel a distinct gap. Kids talk a lot about their friends. For any length of time that you allow them, they will bring up this friend and that friend and a birthday party they went to, a concert, a sleepover, a study sesh, another party, the mall, a Starbucks run, the movies, a two-week trip across Asia which they’re planning to take or have taken with friends. Kids don’t usually talk about their families. Sometimes I’m taken completely by surprise when, months into our knowing each other, a student mentions having a twin. I suppose hearing the constant chatter about friends has made me consider my own, and how hard it can be to maintain these bonds as an adult. Mostly, what I notice is attrition: I lose more friends than I make.

An obvious reason for that attrition is marriage. Friends get married and their spouses become their closest friends. My husband is now the person I spend the most time with. Face to face and over text. I tell him everything and anything, because I’m a chronic oversharer and I trust him with my thoughts, however stupid they may be. I used to be the same way with friends, but more and more I check myself. My ten-second rule: write the text but wait ten seconds before sending it; evaluate whether it’s truly vital to pass on this piece of information. When I tell friends something now, I must accept the possibility that they will tell their spouses, with whom I’m friendly but not friends. A friendship is truly strained when you don’t like the spouse. Here is my person, your friend proclaims, flag in the sand, and you must tread carefully. Sometimes this new person is so far removed from what you imagined for your friend that you wonder if you knew your friend at all.

After marriage, any walls that already existed between two friends invariably thicken. A friend who used to discuss things with you simply to work through them stops doing so, and updates you only on definitive good news, never the bad, the ugly, or the in-progress. All of that, you suspect, she saves for her partner. In other words, you’re no longer included in the problem-solving. Of course, some matters belong first to the marriage: the stuff of intimacy, finance, family. To have or not have children. To want children but not be able to have them. Increasingly, my friends leave me out of these big conversations, and vice versa, but when an outcome is certain or a plan set, we do update one another, which reminds us that we’re still, in fact, friends, but also boils the friendship down to a PowerPoint.

If I don’t have kids, I will lose more friends. This is not a hypothesis. It has already started to happen. Friends, during pregnancy, assure you that nothing will change. You contribute to the diaper fund, attend the baby shower, and, once the child arrives, you try to see them, plan for dinner at 2 p.m. , between nap times, but, somehow, something always comes up. Next time, yeah, next time, let’s hang out soon, yeah, soon—but no one proposes a new time, and months go by, years. You never see them again, you never meet the child, and that begs the question of how close you really were. You consider the possibilities. Perhaps you said or did something irrevocably wrong. To avoid ever saying anything about a child that could be misconstrued, I overcompensate. I never bring up the child or ask after it, or, if I do, I make the mistake I just made, and refer to the child as an “it.” A likely scenario is that my friends, as new parents, went down their friend list and crossed people out. Having friends without kids is harder for them to justify. What is our baby going to do at their non-baby-proofed place? And remember that time they referred to our child as an it? An it! But I could be overthinking. Doing what writers do, adding nuances to interactions that aren’t there. A simpler reality is that my former friends just don’t have time for me. Parenting is hard enough without their having to worry about my feelings.

I do greatly appreciate the rare friends who stay with me after kids. We meet, as we used to, at restaurants, bars, shows, or, when child care gets hard to schedule, we meet at their apartment, the office now a nursery, now a toddlers’ room, now a girls’ room, and, throughout dinner, the girls (twins), who are supposed to be in bed, come out, one at a time, sometimes together, to tell us that they would like to be read to, they would like to drink an entire glass of water, they would like to go to the bathroom, they would like new pajamas, they would like chicken nuggets, they would like to have their hair combed, they would like a specific teddy, they would like a hug, a better hug, they would like to see a rainbow, they would like to go to the bathroom again, they would like more water, they would like to know if it’s tomorrow. For the short duration of an evening, I greatly appreciate being part of this.

There’s a Grace Paley story that I think of when I think about how friendships end. A woman named Cassie asks her friend Faith, a writer, why she has written about their other friends but never about her: “You let them in all the time; it’s really strange, why have you left me out of everybody’s life?” Faith doesn’t have a good answer and asks to be forgiven.

Forgive you? [Cassie] laughed. . . . With her hand she turned my face to her so my eyes would look into her eyes. You are my friend, I know that, Faith, but I promise you, I won’t forgive you, she said. From now on, I’ll watch you like a hawk. I do not forgive you.

That final line, which is also the last line of Paley’s “Collected Stories,” strikes me as brutally honest and true. When I have trouble forgiving a friend, my husband says it’s because I go all in. I pour everything into a new friendship, the honeymoon period, the getting to know each other. I have an incurable habit of sending pop-up holiday cards. I’m a big fan of digressive group chats. Here are my deepest, most authentic feelings, friend. Please kindly tell me yours . But when that gesture is not reciprocated, when I sense the wall coming up, I’m so mad at myself for having revealed so much that I withdraw.

Sometimes I ask my students to write about a time when they were blindsided, or an incident that made them take stock. More often than not, they turn in stories about a friend betrayal. In one class, a student mentioned that their parents didn’t have any friends. Around the table, everyone nodded. It seemed that no one’s parents had friends, and my students couldn’t fathom this, couldn’t fathom it when I admitted (foolishly) to having fewer friends in my thirties than I’d had in my twenties. Horror. Pity. I tried to defend myself. More horror. More pity. How could this happen to a person? How could a person let it happen? No, it would not happen to them.

The wonder, and the curse, of friendship is choice. You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. For me, common qualities and habits help. Female. About my age. Sense of humor. I would not choose a friend who went out dancing all night on Ecstasy. No offense to dancing or Ecstasy, but in comparison with those things I would be a total bore. I would not choose a friend who had a second home somewhere like the Hamptons or Lake Como or Austria. Of course, it is superficially nice to be invited to garden parties or SoHo lofts, but I don’t want to be the lone Asian woman in that garden wearing a cotton dress and sensible shoes, my only topics of conversation being work, the grind, and not that new art gallery down the street. In other words, the supposed freedom of friend selection goes only so far, and, given how deeply my choices are informed by my background, family, and upbringing, I wonder if they are choices at all.

I’m the only child of immigrants who are not only children but whose siblings and parents stayed in China. I have no cousins here. No aunts, uncles, or grandparents. As a kid, I was distressingly lonely, and, like my students, my younger self placed grave significance on having not just friends but the ability to make them. To befriend was to assimilate and to speak English. To have a friend was to have an ally. I still fear the time when I am alone. Statistics predict that I will outlive my husband, and then what? I get through my last decade texting my friends? Having kids is a solution. I could spend the last decade texting them, or their kids, and getting wrapped up in all that. But I don’t see myself having kids.

I live in a building where the parents are friends because their kids are friends. Hard to say if they would have been friends without the kids, and that makes me wonder if friendship is genuine if the choice to stay connected and on good terms is not entirely a solo one. My husband and I have friends in our building because our dogs are friends. We have a group chat, named after our dogs, with this other couple, and we pet-sit for one another. Our friendship is so rooted in our dogs that, when we ate out together for the first time, dogless, more than a year after we’d started looking after each other’s fur babies, we all felt that it was kind of weird. But then we did it again, and it wasn’t so weird. I used to think that our friendship with this couple was one of convenience, but I don’t think that anymore. Sometimes you have close friends because they are close by and have compatible dogs.

If a friendship is meant to be a give-and-take, an ideal friend should, in theory, give as much as she takes. But this, then, opens the door for the frustratingly fair friend. She weighs every gesture and transaction, splits every bill down to the cent. She remembers every favor, every imbalance of favors. She looks up the price of your birthday gift to her, in order to give you an item of commensurate value. In Chinese, chi kui means “to eat a loss.” This friend will never chi kui , yet is shrewd enough never to seem like she’s taking advantage. Technically, the fair friend is not in the wrong, and if I’m noticing her behavior, then I, too, am guilty of keeping score.

But do I accept the friend who takes more than she gives? The taking is not always tangible. There’s the friend who keeps forgetting her wallet, and then the friend who expects you to be there for her at whatever cost. Inconvenient as it may be for you to step out of class, mute the Zoom screen, get off the subway, this friend is having a crisis and she would like your opinion, even though it’s not an opinion she’ll take; she would still like you to hear and validate her crisis. I’ve never known a crisis friend to have just one crisis, and, before you know it, you’ve read and replied to thousands of texts about her problems, which are all interrelated and endemic, and soon, mired in another emergency that you’re coaching her through, she throws up her hands and announces, “I’ve had it. No one in the world cares about me. I can’t rely on anyone anymore, except myself.” She sighs with profound feeling. You blink, balk. You think, What the fuck have I been doing? What the fuckity fuck has every conversation we’ve ever had been for? Then you realize that what your friend wanted from you is a mother, and, when you couldn’t measure up, you, too, became part of the cold, unfeeling world.

Inverting the dynamic completely is the friend who wants to be your mother. She demands to be relied on, to be your “go-to.” She remembers your birthday, your pets’ birthdays, your wedding anniversary, when you moved to the city, when you plan to go upstate—“about that time, isn’t it?” She knows you. Or thinks she does. She’s the first to like your photos, your tweets, the first to give you the name of a C.P.A., a dentist, a real-estate agent, a doctor (her C.P.A., her dentist, her real-estate agent, her doctor), and for a very long time this feels supportive, until it feels intrusive and like surveillance and not nurturing at all but a show of control. When you seek out your mothering friend in your low moments, you feed her ego. She wants to help, but above all she wants credit for helping you, and she relishes the flex. Whenever you ask after her well-being, she pronounces herself emphatically “great.” You try to poke around more, you sense that she isn’t as well as she claims, and, without fail, she adds, “No, really, I’m great, super, but how about you? You seem stressed. Anything I can do?” How to handle such a question? Do you say, “Yes, please deliver the chicken soup” (which she would gladly do), or do you feel bad for always being the broken one?

I already have a mother, with whom I have a complex, routinely difficult, and uniquely volatile bond that would take over this essay and any story I ever write, should I let it. I don’t need another mother. So I learn to interact with these friends less. I offer up less of my life. I’m great, too, super, never better. I recognize that to question the motives behind a friend’s support is both paranoid and ungrateful. But I worry that if my vulnerability fuels her vanity, then an inherent rivalry exists between us—one that I want no part in—over who is the better friend. I am certainly not the better friend. I can’t remember everyone’s important dates and be there for everything and like every comment within thirty seconds of its existence, and I definitely don’t want to be my friend’s mother. So, if I’m not the better friend, then I’m the worse friend. I’m the one who takes more than I can give.

All this to say that friends grow apart. Commonalities change. Common habits diverge. Qualities that you didn’t much like in a friend amplify, and your own traits, priorities, shift. A friendship is not stagnant, and growing together is usually not the norm. It’s nice to have writer friends, but then all you talk about is writing and how insane you have to be to do it. Nice to have friends with other jobs, but then all you hear about is their work, which you might not understand or care about. Work colleagues can never be true friends, and neither can one’s students. A fake friend is easy to spot, and even easier is the friend or acquaintance who, after a long period of no contact, emerges from literally nowhere with the message Hey! Just saw you published a book! Here’s a picture of that book in a bookstore. Let’s grab coffee and catch up .

Platitudes: A true friend is someone you can be your true self with. A true friend calls you out on your bullshit. A true friend sticks with you through thick and thin. But is any of that really possible or fair? How well do I tolerate being called out on my bullshit, and how comfortable am I now at calling other people out on theirs? Can a true friend stay with you forever, or, a better question, can a friend stay true to you forever? Is Cassie a true friend to Faith?

What my students say: Friendship is a gift, a sacrifice. Friendship is all about timing and who you are at that moment and what you need. My students are always living for the moment, and they have strong opinions about what it means to be a good, true friend. When I was in college, my friend circle was wide and healthy. Thanks to clubs, class, lab, and Harvard’s housing system—“the blocking group,” wherein, at the end of freshman year, you choose up to seven people you are close to, your “block-mates,” and are then sorted into a house with them and live with them for the next three years. To entangle matters even more, your blocking group can link with another group to sort into the same house, and those in the latter group become your “link-mates.” Should you not have a group and have to sort on your own, you’re called a “floater.” These terms were fun to use at the time but are now glaring reminders of how successful my alma mater is at institutionalized friendship. Institutionalized to then build a strong alumni network, which donates large sums back to the nest where the camaraderie began. By the end of senior year, my blocking group, a collection of misfits, had toppled. There was so much politics in my lab, given the constant pressure to publish, and my friends in clubs were already moving on to bigger, better things, like med school, law school, or jobs in the real world. I don’t think my experience was unique. You have friends for the period that you have them for, and that period ends.

I know that a friendship has cooled when I find myself asking, Would we be friends if we met today? I used to think “cooled” meant “over.” In the words of that pop icon my students are obsessed with, we are never, ever getting back together. But “cooled” does not necessarily mean “severed.” Though friends are not family and are not obligated to stay with me, they have accompanied me for part of the journey, and for that I owe them, I owe us, the chance, at some future point, to fortify the bond again.

According to the sociology of group dynamics, a triad is more stable than a dyad because one member can act as a mediator. An example is a doctor, a patient, and a cultural liaison. But I have never found a triad of friends to work as well as, say, a tetrad, and especially a tetrad made up of two couples. In a triad, two people are always closer and risk icing out the third. The exclusion is not usually intentional, but the ousted person always feels that it is, somehow. And what if no one wants to mediate, or the person who mediates also likes power, likes games? I’ve had triads of friends begin, then fail, and, when the final calamity hits, I think of the dumping of water into a nuclear reactor and then of Yeats’s “widening gyre”: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” My preference for tetrads makes sense only because of my husband. He has been, for me, an ally, a cheerleader, and my first reader, and we have, thus far, a happy marriage. Along the way, we’ve made couple friends as a couple, and I’ve discovered that the tetrad works only when every possible combination of two members does.

There are only a few couples with whom this holds true for us, and there is only one tetrad that we have tested through long periods together and international travel. I evoke my closest childhood friend here, a girl I’ve known since fifth grade. Let’s call her Diana. We have not always been so close. In middle school, she moved away, then my family moved to the city she had moved to, but although we went to the same high school, our social circles rarely overlapped. Still, from middle school on, Diana and I were part of a triad. I was extremely close with the third girl, as we were both immigrant children, from China, and lived in similarly shabby apartment complexes across the street from each other in the rural Midwestern town where the three of us met. The third girl and I often iced out Diana. Together, we were mean. A few years out of college, that girl and I had a huge fight by text on my birthday. (Lesson learned: when friends decide to burn it all down, they don’t care if it’s your birthday because they’ve stopped caring about you.) A litany of grievances was aired and contested, and no one was generous enough to get on the phone. We haven’t spoken since.

By chance, Diana went to college and grad school in the same city as I did. As the triad imploded—she tried to mediate, negotiations failed—I vented to her about it, and, eventually, I stopped venting and she and I became close. She met my husband when he was still my boyfriend. I saw her through her breakup with her high-school sweetheart, a boy who was also a friend of mine, with whom I have since fallen out of touch. By the end of grad school, Diana had found a new boyfriend, who would later become her husband, in a wedding that was delayed three years by the pandemic. Her husband and I get along. My husband and Diana get along. Our husbands have inside jokes with each other, and we buy them matching backpacks to wear when we go on trips. I think the fact that Diana and I are both married has actually made our friendship stronger. That we make a point of travelling together, as a tetrad, at least once a year has taught me that a long friendship has to be maintained. So does family, but, unlike family, a friendship can be deprioritized. My mother will always be my mother, and I will always have space for her, but that’s not how it works with friends. I can choose to take my heart away.

Diana and I and our husbands have now travelled to Europe a few times. No fights, no drama, except the comedic kind. In Paris, Diana was tricked, by her husband and mine, into knocking back a wineglass that had a dead fly in it. In London, at the Harry Potter Warner Bros. Studios, in the Great Hall decked out for the Yule Ball (Diana is a Harry Potter fanatic), her husband—still her boyfriend then—was set to propose, but we couldn’t figure out how to open the “snitch” ring box and we couldn’t get the ring out. In Europe, trains have four seats facing one another. When Diana and her husband and my husband have fallen asleep, and I’m the only one awake guarding our stuff and checking the stops, I think, Why is it always me who stays awake? I also think, I never want this to change.

I chose the name Diana for my friend in tribute to Diana Barry, the best friend of the “Anne of Green Gables” books, by Lucy Maud Montgomery—a series that had an enormous impact on me. They were the first novels I read from beginning to end in English, and I distinctly remember having to look up the term “kindred spirits.” Anne is an orphan who then finds great friends and thrives. A lot of children’s books have this trajectory. See also: Harry Potter.

A final anecdote: the building that I live in houses both faculty and students. Often, I smell weed in the stairwells. Every weekend of the school year, students, never dressed for the weather, are just leaving to go out as my husband and I are coming back in. Sometimes I can’t even move through the lobby, because, when there’s a party in the building, every student is trying to sign in three others. Faculty and students share the common spaces, the laundry room, the elevators. It is very awkward to bump into familiar students while you are removing your underwear from the dryer or while they are removing theirs. A terrible arrangement, I tell people. Mixing students and teachers. But here is something that happened the other day while I was writing this essay. From the lobby, I entered the elevator with my dog. A pair of summer students came in, too, with their suitcases and totes, and my dog and I were pushed into a corner. I was annoyed that summer students were already moving in, less than two weeks after the regular ones had left. I imagined more weed, more parties, full washers and dryers, rank trash drips in the hallways for workers to clean up. Then the two students started talking about their afternoon plans. Today, they were going to go to Central Park, sit on a blanket, make friendship bracelets, and braid each other’s hair. They were earnest. I heard no sarcasm. An interloper to this casual, wholesome moment, I was reminded that, though most friendships are temporary, they are very beautiful in bloom. The friends left the elevator laughing, tote bag to tote bag. All my annoyance went away. ♦

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Big game, small world

Is globalization intensifying, or ebbing? Neither? Both? The political scientist Daniel Drezner spotlights two recent pieces in the Financial Times and Vox that appear to argue opposite cases but which, Drezner argues, cohere around the notion that the global economy has somehow overcome a seemingly unending series of geopolitical shocks — for now. “Great power governments and violent non-state actors have done their darnedest to push the world towards economic segmentation, and it just ain’t happening ,” Drezner writes.

“In many ways the current period might resemble the global political economy of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century,” he continues. “Even as countries were raising tariffs, improvements in technology and infrastructure swamped those effects, causing globalization to continue to grow.” Drezner acknowledges one possible cloud on the horizon, however: “Of course, that era ended with the First World War.”

Joke’s on you

When a graphic artist in 1987 depicted Augusto Pinochet as Louis XIV on the cover of a magazine, the Chilean dictator responded by confiscating every copy of the publication, and jailing the magazine’s editors for extremism: Such is the power humor can have over dictators, “Authoritarians succeed when their extremism and exceptionalism… is normalized,” the scholar of fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote in her newsletter, Lucid. “ Humor that calls this out can be deeply validating .”

Autocrats and their opponents all use humor — in differing ways, and to differing ends. The former seek to humiliate critics and allies alike, in an effort to showcase their strength. The latter group try to use jokes and satire to undermine the seemingly all-powerful dictator. One trend she notes: “As strongmen consolidate their power, they become more insecure and thus less tolerant of criticism, even if that criticism is made in jest.”

A friend in deed

Technology and the internet are changing society in ways we are only beginning to grasp. Take, for example, friendship. Pre-internet, people were largely limited to maintaining friendships in their immediate geography, and a relative lack of mobility meant those connections were fairly stable. Those factors are gradually eroding, and the impacts are not being felt equally: Those with higher levels of education are more likely to report having close friends than those with less education.

That doesn’t, however, mean that friendship is in inexorable decline. “The new social landscape requires a more purposeful and attentive approach to developing and sustaining social relationships,” Kelsey Eyre Hammond writes in American Storylines, reviewing a new book about the changing nature of friendship. One conclusion: “If [friendships] seem more difficult to manage and maintain it’s because they are .”

Of Friendship

The principal fruit of friendship:.

The 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.The diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, so, a true friend helps to unload emotional burden. A person may take ‘sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of Sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain’ but there is no dose to open the heart except a true friend. A true friend can be utilized to impart griefs,joys,hopes,suspicions,counsels, and whatsoever lies upon heart to suppress it.

Augustus elevated Agrippa high up in the royal hierarchy despite the latter’s mean birth (not from a noble family). Agrippa’s clout in the royal court had soared ominously. He was enjoying enviable privilege and power. When Augustus consulted the royal counselor Maecenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, the counselor proffered an awkward advice. He suggested to Augustus to give his daughter in marriage to Agrippa. There was no way anyone else could win her hand with Agrappa around. If this was not agreeable to the emperor, he would have to eliminate Agrippa. There was no third option.

The First Fruit of Friendship:

The communication of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; first, it redoubles his joys and second, it cuts his griefs in halves. Because, there is no doubt when a person imparts his joys to his friends, he joys more than others. However, when he imparts his griefs, they become less. It is a fact that, bodies become healthier upon natural actions such as joy and happiness. Whereas, they are weakened and become dull on sad and violent impressions, same is the case with the mind.

The Second Fruit of Friendship:

The last fruit of friendship:.

‘ A Friend is another himself; for that a friend is far more than himself ’.

A man owns a single body that is confined to a single place, but where there is friend, ‘ all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy.For he may exercise them by his friend’. A man cannot speak to his child except as a father. On the other hand , his friend can fulfill his job in a better way. A man has many proper relations that he doesnot want to put off. So, a friend can be helpul in handling his public and personal relations.

More From Francis Bacon

Of Friendship Essay | Summary by Francis Bacon

Table of Contents

Introduction

The essay Of Friendship by Francis Bacon celebrated the intimacy between friends which is subjected to both prosperity and adversity without succumbing to the clouds of doubt and jealousy. The essay was written on the request of his friend Toby Matthew.

Human need for company

Human beings require other human beings and anyone who avoids such interaction is not doing justice to his natural state. Bacon does not criticize people who feel shy in a crowd and head for therefore seek isolation in the wild.

However, the consequences of such isolation can be like a double-edged sword, desirable or detrimental. Bacon points to philosophers like Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana, who postulated theories unique to their age and contemporaries.

Their works are of immense philosophical wealth. Even several spiritual men find great benefit and progress through prolonged abstention from public life. Therefore, voluntary retreat from society can have positive consequences too.

Bacon attempts to differentiate between kinship and general crowd. For him, there is a big difference between strangers of society and known friends.  A person can feel lonely in a crowd too . People may become transient glimpses which are lost if a person does not interact with them.

If a person does not feel passionate or interested in a conversation then it becomes an exercise in futile monologues and is similar in meaning to the undecipherable notes of musical instruments like cymbals.

Bacon uses a Latin adage which means that a big city is filled with great solitude. In a large city, people are separated and encamped in distinct areas that are difficult to bring closer together.

These long distances cause separation between friends and relatives. Therefore, for cultivating friendship a small city or town is more conducive . In smaller townspeople live closer by and mingle a lot more regularly. Thus, these small cities have strong and united communities.

According to Bacon, a friendship demands the involvement of passions and feelings. They form the foundation of any friendship. Emotions are the threads that bind the hearts together.

A cure for ailing hearts

Bacon points to the ailments of the heart that it suffers if it stops or is suffocated. A healthy heart required vigour and the same is provided by an intimate and friendly conversation with one’s pals.

The bonhomie is the cure for depression and various diseases of the heart. Friendship is the panacea for heartaches.  A true friend acts a secondary valve for the heart to pump life into a sick person.

Patients take medicines like sarza for the liver, steel for the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain etc, but for the issues of the heart, the love and affection of a friend is the best cure.

Friendship can be bought

The elite of society like kings and leaders are really adept at making friends. They understand the value of friendly ties with worthy people. The rich and the powerful often try to buy friendships of noble and influential people through gifts, badges of reverence and their wealth.

Friendship requires a quantum of parity if not equality. Therefore, the massive chasm between the king and his subjects cannot be bridged that easily.

Even if the princes admire certain ordinary individuals they find it difficult to befriend them. The only solution is to elevate such individuals so that they come nearer to the monarch in terms of power and influence.

Bacon tells us that the Romans had a special name for such individuals, ‘ participes curarum ’ meaning people who share one’s fears, doubts and worries.

This sharing of one’s burdens is a true quality of friendship and a strong tie of camaraderie. These favoured individuals gain the confidence of the elite and offer advice to them.

The empowered elite has used their political wits and acumen to enlist such friends at par with the ranks of nobility and governance.

History teaches the toughest lessons

Now, Bacon comments on some historical examples. He says that Roman ruler Sylla gave Pompey the moniker of ‘the Great’.  However, consumed by arrogance Sylla’s friend Pompey reprimanded and rebuked him in public when they had some disagreement.

His blind trust in Brutus caused Caesar’s final downfall . Ceaser, fearing a calamity owing to his wife Calpurnia’s bloodied nightmare, had decided to dissolve the Senate.

Brutus, however, convinced him to delay his decision. He had such powerful hold over Ceaser that Antonius would call him an enchantress ( venefica ) with evil machinations.

When Augustus decided to marry his daughter Julia, his counsellor Maecenas suggested marrying her to Agrippa.  According to Maecenas Agrippa was the best man for her and in the emperor decided otherwise, Agrippa had to be killed.

Bacon gives the example of friendship between Tiberius and Sejanus. Tiberius was charmed by Sejanus they became inseparable companions. This brought great stature and honour to Sejanus.

Bacon then praised the friendship between Septimus Severus and Plautianus. Septimus’s son and Plautianus’ daughter were married against Plautianus’s wishes.

Even when irate Plautianus condemned Septimus’ son, their friendship did not weaken. On the contrary, Septimus praised his friend beyond reason and logic. He even wished Plautianus a longer and more fulfilling life than his own.

A valuable blueprint

Every decision they made was strategic and careful and not impulsive or emotional. However, it was their longing for friendship that made them gush in praise of their friends.

Even with all the power in the world, luxuries of life, doting families, they were dependent on the whims of their friends. In the end, these favoured individuals became their nemesis and cause for their demise.

He says that in their last years both of them became reclusive and isolated themselves from others. They grew suspicious of everyone and were afraid of divulging any information that could bring their empires to a collapse.

Bacon points at the parable given by Pythagoras i.e. ‘ Cor ne edito ’, meaning ‘eat not the heart’ . Pythagoras had his suspicions of who can be called as true friends.

Two sides of a coin

Becoming intimate and excessively dependent on a friend can be a double-edged sword . It can help unburden the baggage of the heart and weight of worries. But on the flipside, it can all be just an illusion of comfort.

Realistically no such friend exists who can reduce one’s own grief and pain. Palliation and reduction of pain through such miracle friends are all but fool’s gold. He goes on again reaffirm the ability of true friendship to comfort one’s ailing heart but at a risk of hurt .

Personal bonds can have an embalming impact that enhances one’s quality of life, strengthens mental prowess and. They provide cover in the midst of a storm. Friendship is like the glorious sunlight after that turbulent storm has passed over the horizon.

Bacon proffers a caveat that friends will not guarantee great advice all the time.

He quotes Themistocles who thought speech can be appreciated only if heard . It was similar to the rich textiles of Arras that needed to be seen to be appreciated and admired for their beauty and craftsmanship.

In the same vein, human thoughts when shared can unlock cluttered minds . Packs of folded tapestry lie underappreciated and overlooked until it is unravelled.

Self vs others

Bacon sage advice from well-meaning friends often leads to desirable consequences. Sometimes intuition, instincts, and emotions can tint and obfuscate one’s own judgment.

Our inherent biases can create complexities that can be eased by wise friends. Bacon points at Heraclitus who considered such invaluable advice as ‘ dry and pure light ’ enlightening and comforting.

Notwithstanding that one should be aware of one’s own limitations of value judgment. It is very rare that men are adequately self-critical and inherent weakness should not cause us to reject the sound advice of able and well-intentioned men.

Such advice can have two purposes. Firstly, personal i.e. out of the goodness of one’s heart and  secondly, conduct  for the preservation of self-interest i.e. for business. Such criticism acts as a check on one’s pride and a cure for vanity.

History is replete with examples of powerful men who committed the biggest of blunders and damaged their name and position only for a want of some good advice from good friends.

Bacon quotes St. James who warned people against the blindness induced by self-deception regarding one’s own faults and limitations.

Similarly, a gambler thinks he sees better than the onlookers or a gun can be fired as efficiently from a rest as from the arm. These musings reflect an arrogant and conceited mind which can lead to dire consequences for the individual.

Any good business advisor always weighs the pros and cons and extends the best counsel without hesitation. A man can ask different advice from different friends and it is better than always gunning by one’s own instincts.

Bacon says that every counsellor is limited by his own ability to analyze and study the matter , even if he intends well. Therefore, there always exists a risk that the outcome of such advice is undesirable.

Bacon gives the analogy of a well-meaning but incompetent doctor who gives the wrong medicine to the patient without enquiring about his medical history.  Instead of getting a cure, this could lead to more damage and even death.

To conclude

Multiple counsellors might lead to multiple and often conflicting paths be.  The two main advantages of friendship are emotional support and good advice .

Bacon enlists the third benefit too. He explains it in terms of the pomegranate fruit. He says that a good friend has many parts for different occasions just like the many kernels inside the pomegranate.

Bacon feels that a loyal and self-sacrificing friend is a friend not just for life but even in death . A true friend will honour is departed friend’s wishes and take care of his responsibilities like taking care of his family, finish all the unfinished things like repayment of debts etc.

Another advantage is of the delegation of authority . At any given point of time, a friend can fill in for any person. Be it running a business or defending the house or safekeeping secrets, a loyal friend is a true blessing.

Bacon feels that when someone is trying to convince others of his value and qualities, he tends to be consumed with haughtiness and thus is easily ridiculed by them. On the other hand, sometimes people become too self-aware and shy and find it difficult to praise themselves.

They feel awkward in asking for a favour or even something they deserve or merit. These problems can be obviated through the agency of a loyal friend who has more social utility and functions that people normally assume.

Thus, friends bring a lot easy in such difficult situations and help break barriers of communication . Bacon ends the essay condemning an unsociable man without friends as an aloof being not fit to belong to society.

Can you answer What did Francis Bacon discover as a prose writer?

Related Posts:

Of Friendship By Francis Bacon Critical Analysis | Of Friendship Essay

Table of Contents

Introduction

            Of Friendship is the masterpiece essay nicely written by Francis Bacon who is popularly known as an eminent essayist, thinker, scholar, and philosopher in English literature. He belongs to the Elizabethan age. This essay was first published in 1612 was very brief. The present version published in  1625, is practically a new composition much longer than the original version. The essay was actually written at the request of Bacon’s intimate friend “Toby Matthew”.

About Francis Bacon

            Francis Bacon was one of the most remarkable men of Literature and is popularly known as the Father of English Literature Essays. Being an essayist, he wrote a galaxy of essays on different issues. His some world famous essays are – Of Studies, Of Love, Of Hatred, of Death, Of Truth, Of Philosophy, Of Ambition, Of Beauty, and Of Custom and Education.

Analysis Of “Of Friendship”

            Francis Bacon begins Of Friendship with an anthropological statement from Aristotle,

 “Whatsoever is delighted in Solitude,    is either a wild beast or a god.”

            Bacon posits that human nature demands company and social contact. Human beings and anyone who avoids such interactions is not doing justice to his natural state. Bacon does not criticize people who feel shy in a crowd and head for therefore seek isolation in the wild. Such people find great value in peace and it aids their mental processes to contemplate profound issues. Bacon points to philosophers like Epimenides the Canadian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana, who postulated theories unique to their age and contemporaries.

            Bacon attempts to differentiate between kinship and the general crowd. For him, there is a big difference between strangers of society and known friends.

“A Person can feel lonely in a crowd too.”

            Bacon uses a Latin adage which means that a big city is filled with great solitude. In a large city, people are separated and encamped in distinct areas that are difficult to bring closer together.

            These long distances cause separation between friends and relatives. Therefore, for cultivating friendship a small city or town is more conducive. In smaller towns, people live closer by and mingle a lot more regularly. Thus, these small cities have strong and united communities.

            According to Bacon, friendship demands the involvement of passions and feelings. They form the foundation of any friendship. Emotions are the threads that bind the hearts together.

A Cure For Ailing Heats

            Bacon points to the ailments of the heart that it suffers if it stops or in suffocate. A healthy heart required vigor and the same is provided by an intimate and friendly conversation with one’s pals. Patients take medicines for the liver spleen, lungs, brain, etc, but for the issues of hearts, the love and affection of a friend is the best cure.

Friendship Can be Bought

            The elite of society like kings and leaders are really adept at making friends. They understand the value of friendly ties with worthy people. The rich and the powerful often try to buy friendships with noble and influential people through gifts, badges of reverence, and their wealth, but such friends lack emotional attachment with their patron or benefactors.

History Teaches the Toughest

            Now Bacon comments on some of his theoretical examples. He says the Roman ruler Sylla gave Pompey the moniker of Great. However, Pompey divided Sylla as the setting sun while calling himself the rising sun of Roman Power.

            Similarly, Decimus Brutus gained Julius Ceasar’s friendship and became his most trusted advisor. His blind trust in Brutus caused Caesar’s final downfall.

            Bacon also gives the example of Agrippa and Augustus, Tiberius and Sejanus, Septimus Servers, and Plautianus.

            In this essay, Bacon addresses

Three fruits of Friendship

The first fruits of friendship.

                        The Communication of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects, first, it redoubles his joy and second, it cuts his grief in halves. Because there is no doubt when a person imparts his joy to his friends, he joys more than others. However, when he imparts his grief, they become less. It is a fact that bodies become healthier upon natural actions such as joy and happiness.

The Second Fruit of Friendship

                        As the first fruit is for affection, the second fruit is for the understanding of things from different perspectives. Moreover, a friend is undoubtedly, a witty counselor. Sharing one’s problems with a friend is far more fruitful than a day’s meditation. A friend’s counsel always works when a person himself is not clear with his thoughts.

The Last and Third Fruit of Friendship

            The first two fruits help for peace in the affections and support of the judgment. The last fruit is like a pomegranate, full of many kernels. It helps in several ways and has manifold fruits in itself. There are many things that a man cannot do himself, and then a friend is an appropriate alternative.

            Thus, Of Friends bring a lot of ease in such difficult situations and helps break barriers of communication. Francis Bacon ends the essay by condemning an unsociable man without friends as an aloof being not fit to belong to society.

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Of Friendship by Francis Bacon: Summary, Line by Line Explanation

This blog post offers a thorough explanation of the essay “Of Friendship” by Francis Bacon. You will find a summary, line-by-line explanation, and the main theme of the essay, all explained in simple language.

Table of Contents

Of Friendship Summary

Francis Bacon’s “ Of Friendship ” discusses the three fruits of friendship. Bacon argues that humans inherently need companionship. Those who avoid it are more like beasts than like humans. Kings and monarchs highly value friendship. They often elevate a subordinate nearly to their status to form a bond, sometimes at the cost of their power.

The first fruit of friendship is the emotional support friendship provides. Friendship is fruitful because it offers companionship for the ailing heart. It can relieve the emotional burdens of a troubled mind, similar to how a remedy can treat a physical disease.

The next advantage is that friendship plays a critical role in problem-solving. A conversation with a true friend can remove confusion and bring clarity of thought.

A friend guides on both moral and business-related matters. However, everyone is not trustworthy. Bacon indirectly cautions readers to choose their companion carefully.

The last benefit is the holistic support a friend can offer. A friend can complete tasks that another leaves unfinished. He can also aid in accomplishing tasks that to tackle alone.

Line by Line Explanation

A discourse on solitude.

Francis Bacon begins the essay with a quote from Aristotle’s Politics (Book I, Chapter 2), “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god” (Bacon 138).

Aristotle masterfully combines truth and untruth in one statement.

A person’s natural and secret dislike for society reflects a beast-like trait. We often observe many animals prefer isolation over groups.

However, some animals prefer to live in groups. Therefore, the comparison accurately is limited to those specific animals that avoid groups and live alone.

Contrastingly, Aristotle’s statement is untrue because living in solitude does not elevate one to the status of a god. It is true when one seeks isolation, not for the pleasure of solitude but for spiritual enlightenment.

It is a fact that not every solitude seeker seeks truth. Bacon justifies this by referencing pretentious truth-seekers such as Epimenides, Numa, Empedocles, and Apollonius.

Epimenides, the Cretan, was a Greek poet in the 7th or 6th century BC. He is “said to have fallen asleep in a cave and slept there for fifty-seven years without waking” (Pitcher 138n4).

Numa, the second king of Rome, “claimed that the goddess Egeria had taught him legislation in a grove near Rome” (Pitcher 138n5).

Empedocles, a Greek philosopher of the 5th century B. C., disappears suddenly to prove to others that he is a god. In reality, he throws himself into the flames of Mount Etna in Sicily (Pitcher 138n6).

Apollonius of Tyana was a magician of the first century, and some believed he rose from the dead.

These stories about historical people show they did neither truly understand solitude nor wanted to be truly enlightened.

Unlike them, the ancient hermits and holy fathers adopted solitude for profound philosophical discourse or enlightenment. Discussing solitude further, Bacon differentiates between physical proximity and emotional isolation.

One can feel isolated even amidst a crowd. The faces may appear as “a gallery of pictures” (138), and conversations could resemble the sound of a “tinkling cymbal” (138) in the absence of companionship.

Bacon remarks that physical presence or conversation, without an emotional bond, does not lessen loneliness. Bacon cites a quote from Erasmus’s Adages to explain his point, “Magna civitas, magna solitudo” (138). It means “A great city is a great solitude” (Pitcher 138n10).

One can feel lonely in a big city where people live closely together. However, friends in cities often live in distance compared to friends in a village or town. Finding companionship among a sea of unknown faces can be challenging. The bigger the city, the more intense the loneliness can become.

Based on the discussion, Bacon argues that true solitude is not the mere absence of people but the absence of meaningful connections. One can be lonely even in a city, but it does not make one god.

Why Does Man Need Company?

The inherent feeling of loneliness and the need for companionship drive individuals to seek friendship.

From an evolutionary perspective, staying close to others served as a defense mechanism against external threats. Thus, we have inherited this desire genetically.

Life can be unbearable, and the world may seem empty like a desert without friends. Nevertheless, if someone stays alone, they are more like a beast than a human.

The First Fruit of Friendship

Friendship offers some benefits. Bacon discusses three of them in his essay.

First, friendship is “the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart” (139). It implies that a friend can offer relief for emotions like sadness, anger, and anxiety.

Bacon refers to a surgeon to differentiate between physical and mental health. A surgeon uses various substances for medical conditions like liver surgery.

For example, he uses sarsaparilla (Pitcher 139n12) to open the liver, steel or iron (Pitcher 139n13) to open the spleen, purified sulfur (Pitcher 139n14) for the lungs, and castoreum (Pitcher 139n15) for the brain.

Contradictorily, medicine or doctor is of no use for an ailing heart. Only a true friend can relieve one’s emotional burdens.

One needs a trustworthy friend with whom one can share grief, joys, fears, hopes, and everything that lies in the heart.

Unlike a surgeon who restores the body, a friend heals the heart with emotional empathy and understanding.

Addison also shares a similar view in his essay “ Friendship ”. He comments that a person freely shares all his feelings and thoughts about people and things and “exposes his whole soul” to his friend in a conversation between two close friends (Addison).

Friendships of Notable Figures

Kings and monarchs recognized the importance of friendship. So, they valued friendship. Forming friendships with an ordinary man was challenging because of their status.

Therefore, they raised a subordinate to their level who was almost an equal to them. Sometimes, they shared their heart with their company at the risk of their safety and power.

In Roman, these people were called “participes curarum” (139) or partners in their care. The favorites cared for and counseled the royal subjects in their time of need. As a result, their relationship intensified.

It is notable that not only did the weak and emotional princes, but the wise and headstrong rulers also sought companionship. They called their subordinates friend and allowed others to address them in the same way.

Their relationship was similar to that between two men in private relationship. It demonstrates that they valued personal connections just like anyone else.

However, such friendships often turned out unfruitful to them. Unlike other essays, “ Of Love ”, “ Of Truth ”, “ Of Marriage and Single Life ” and “ Of Studies ”, this essay does not follow brevity. Bacon gives sufficient examples to elaborate the consequence of choosing a wrong friend.

For instance, Sulla honored General Pompey by entitling him “the Great” (139). Pompey claimed to be stronger than Sulla, which enraged Sulla. Pompey insulted the Roman dictator by saying that men adored the sun rising more than the sun setting.

The second example is about Julius Caesar and Decimus Brutus. Caesar loved Decimus Brutus so much that he had willed to make Brutus his heir after his nephew. However, Brutus betrayed Caesarand killed him.

Caesar ignored warnings from his wife, Calpurnia, about his impending death. Instead, he listened to Brutus when he advised Caesar not to dismiss the senate till she saw another dream.

Brutus’s influence over Caesar was so strong that Antonius labeled him a “venefica,” or witch in a letter (140).

Similarly, Augustus placed poor Agrippa on a pedestal. He made Agrippa so powerful that it was impossible to take his power back.

When considering his daughter Julia’s marriage, Maecenas advised Augustus to either make Agrippa his son-in-law or kill him. It exemplifies the irreversible nature of such close bonds.

Tiberius expressed his trust in Sejanus in a letter, “Haec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi” (140). It means, “Out of regard for our friendship, I have not concealed these things” (Pitcher 140n25).

Septimus Severus forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus to strengthen their bond. Septimus often supported Plautianus, even when Plautianus mistreated Septimus’s son.

Septimus wrote to the Senate in a letter, “I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me” (140).

Bacon differentiates the behavior of the historical figures with Trajan or Marcus Aurelius, who were known for their goodness. If these rulers were like them, one might think they acted out of pure goodness. Instead, a desperate need for companionship drove their actions, a need that even their power and family could not satisfy.

They all had wives, sons, and nephews, yet none of their family could fill the void they felt within themselves.

Concerning the consequences of choosing a wrong company, Addison also advises in his essay “Friendship” in the following words,

“If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him; for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble” (Addison).

Both authors emphasized the importance of wise selection in friendship.

It brings us to the question: Is sharing one’s heart with others wrong? Certainly not, but one must differentiate between good and bad friends.

Philippe de Commines, a French historian, observed that his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, never shared his secrets with anyone, especially the dark ones. As Duke Charles became older, his nature of keeping secrets began to affect his mental health.

Likewise, his second master, Lewis the Eleventh, was also reluctant to share his worries, and it too caused him distress.

In this context, Bacon cites a saying of Pythagoras, “Cor ne edito” (141). It means “Eat not the heart” (141). People who do not have friends to share their thoughts with are harming themselves internally.

Enhancement of Happiness and Mitigation of Grief

Sharing increases joy during happiness and reduces sorrow in grief. When one shares his joys with his friend, he feels happier than his friend. During distress, one feels less burdened.

Joseph Addison echoes the same view in his essay “Friendship”: “Tully was the first who observed, that friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and dividing of our grief” (Addison)

Addison notes Marcus Tullius Cicero first observed that friendship enhances happiness and lessens suffering.

Sharing with a friend positively affects the mind, doing opposite functions, but always works. It is similar to how alchemists believed their stone could have different effects, but always help the body.

Being together strengthens and nourishes natural actions while it also softens harsh impacts. We can also notice another example in nature.

Trees grow closely together in a forest. Their intertwined roots help younger or weaker trees grow by giving them protection and nutrients. They also make themselves resilient against adverse weather. Their collective strength makes the impact of harsh weather less severe on any single tree.

Similarly, in friendships, people help each other deal with life’s challenges. During hard times, the support one receives from the other reduces the stress and makes it manageable.

Second Fruit of Friendship                               

The second benefit is a friend calms emotions and clarifies thoughts of the other during difficult times.

Articulating thoughts before a friend makes it easy to understand. A Friend removes all the confusion like the sun removes darkness. Therefore, an hour of discussion with a friend makes one wiser than contemplating by oneself the whole day.

Themistocles told the king of Persia that speaking unfolds thoughts like a tapestry. It reveals the detailed images inside, whereas keeping thoughts inside is like leaving the tapestry folded up with its designs hidden.

Even without taking advice from a friend, one can understand oneself by expressing thoughts. It also sharpens thinking, similar to how a stone sharpens a blade without cutting itself.

Therefore, it is better to convey one’s thoughts with even an inanimate object like a statue or painting than to keep them all to oneself.

Bacon stresses the importance of receiving good advice. He cites a statement of Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “Dry light is ever the best” (142). Heraclitus compares advice from a friend with the dry light of the sun.

Guidance from a friend is more suitable and unbiased than decisions made by personal judgment. Advice of a friend is far better than self-suggestion.

Self-flattering image and habitual thinking patterns rarely allow one to think of oneself critically. They influence one’s decisions.

Therefore, the best way to counteract self-flattery is honest advice of a friend. A genuine friend critically judges and points out the flaws of the other, similar to what Krishna did to Arjuna.

Personal and Professional Advice

A friend can offer counsel in two aspects: manner and business. The former is personal and the latter is professional.

‘Manner’ refers to personal behavior, the moral and ethical aspects of one’s character. While assessing one’s manners, the counsel of a friend is the best approach.

Criticizing oneself can sometimes be harsh. Reading moral books can also be ineffective as they may be irrelevant. One’s problems do not always fit another’s different experience. So, the best way to keep one’s character intact is to listen to a friend’s honest warnings.

People of high positions often make big mistakes for the lack of good guidance. Their actions can cause harm to both their reputation and wealth.

St. James says they resemble people who look in a mirror and forget what they look like. In such a situation, a friend’s crucial advice can point out their mistake which they might ignore.

Professional Support

Some people have a misconception that they can handle challenges alone. For instance, one thinks one can see as much as two can. A gamester can see more than an observer.

An angry man believes he is as wise as he has said over the twenty-four letters. On Bacon’s day, people regarded the alphabet “‘i’ and ‘j’ like ‘u’ and ‘v’ as the same letter.” (Pitcher 143n52). One might also think one can shoot with a musket from the arm as accurately as from a rest.

Such beliefs of being self-sufficient often lead to the downfall of a business. So, getting good advice is what solves professional problems.

Be Cautious When Seeking Help

One must choose the right person for guidance cautiously. There are mainly two risks involved.

First, one might not get honest guidance unless the counselor is one’s close friend. The pieces of advice are mostly bent to serve the adviser’s goals.

Second, a mentor might share advice with a good intention but turn out to be harmful. It is similar to that of a physician who knows the cure for the disease but does not understand the patient’s overall body.

Though the physician might fix one problem, it leads to another issue. Without the proper diagnosis of the body, he may harm the patient more than doing good, or in the worst-case scenario, he might kill the patient.

Therefore, a friend who is familiar with one’s situation and knows one’s strengths and weaknesses is the ideal counselor for both personal and professional issues. Others are not worthy because of their selfish interests.

Montaigne opines regarding this in “ On Friendship ” that when friendships are made and kept for reasons like “pleasure, profit, public or private interest”, they are not noble (Montaigne).

Therefore, sometimes asking none for help is better than getting advice from different people about different professional problems.

Third Fruit of Friendship

The third benefit of friendship is that it is like a pomegranate. One can not possibly finish all tasks on their own in a lifetime. Like a pomegranate that has various kernels, a friend offers diverse roles in a person’s life.

Sometimes, people have wishes to fulfill before passing away, such as witnessing their child’s success or completing a project. Unfortunately, many leave this world with many unfulfilled dreams behind.

In such instances, a friend can take on such responsibility and ensure the fulfillment of wishes. It is akin to granting a second chance at life.

Moreover, one can manage work only to a certain extent because of the confinement to one location. However, one can work simultaneously on multiple works with a friend’s assistance.

Thus, the saying “a friend is another himself” may not fully encapsulate the value of friendship.

There are instances where one might not comfortably express thoughts or do specific actions by oneself, but a friend can do these things on behalf of the other.

Discussing one’s achievements can sound boastful, and seeking help may be difficult for some. Yet, when a friend praises another’s accomplishments or requests help on another’s behalf, it sounds sincere.

Each of these roles demands a distinct approach to communication.

A man has various roles, such as being a parent, a spouse, or a rival. He must talk to each of them in specific ways. In friendship, both individuals can talk to suit any situation without concerning for particular role.

Thus, friendship indeed offers a multitude of benefits in life.

I'm a PhD research scholar & MPhil degree holder from DU, Assam and also a budding blogger. I have cracked CBSE NET (July 2018), NE-SLET (July 2018), and UGC-NTA-NET (June 2019).

14 Comments

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Of Friendship – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation

Of friendship.

by Francis Bacon

Complete explanation of the essay alongside the original text

IT HAD been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.

Explanation

Francis Bacon starts his essay with a grand statement modeled after the views of Aristotle. Finding pleasure in solicitude is contrary to human character and mind. He expresses his belief in rather strong words. Anyone, who shuns fellow human beings and retreats to isolation, is degraded to the level of a wild beast. The other possibility is that he is 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 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.

Bacon, however, is not totally dismissive of people who assiduously shy away from the crowd, and head for the wilderness. Bacon realizes that remaining silent and cut off from others helps the mind to engage in deep contemplative thinking. Through such deep insightful dissection of mind, a person rediscovers himself. The truth and wisdom that dawn on the meditator’s mind through such prolonged isolation, can be profoundly rewarding for the hermit. The consequence can be both questionable or desirable. In case of Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana, the theories they propounded were somewhat non-confirmist for the commoners, but were of great philosophical value. Spiritual men who retreat from public eye in and around places of worship have been instrumental in delivering sermons of immense spiritual benefit to mankind. So, voluntary abstention from society is not always a bad idea, after all.

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.

One must learn to differentiate between a crowd and kinship; between society and friendship. One can be lonely inside a multitude too. Faces of people may turn out to be fleeting pictures, if the persons are not engaged with. A conversation devoid of passion or feelings may be akin to the sounds of a tinkling cymbal – a barren monologue which hardly causes a ripple.

The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; 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.

The Latin adage says, ‘Magna civitas, magna solitudo’. It means there is great solitude in a large city. This is so because people live in areas separated from one another by long distances. It makes it impractical to traverse such long distances to meet friends and relations. The large size of the city is, therefore, an impediment on the way of people cultivating friendship with one another. In a small city or town, people tend to live at a shorter distance from each other. So they befriend each other and live like a well-knit community.

A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.

A friendship must have feelings and passions as its main strands. It should be a bond between the hearts where one shares the emotions of his friend in full measure.

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 sarza 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.

We all know how debilitating and fatal heart ailments can be. Pleasant and intimate conversation with a friend brings back vigour to the heart. It elevates the mood, banishes depression and helps the heart patient to recover. There is no panacea for heart diseases which can match the curative value of the presence of good friends by the sick person’s bedside. Through lively chat and friendly banters, they unburden the heart of the sick person and make him feel good again. However, there are medicines or devices to correct a malfunction of internal organs like sarza for the liver, steel for the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain etc.

It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness.

Bacon then gives the examples of the monarchs and kings, and the elite who go to unusual lengths to befriend good and worthy people. The rich and the powerful with the reins of government in their hands seek out the crème of the society to give the pleasures of friendship. To bring in the good people, the kings and monarchs give them generous rewards through wealth and bestowal of honour. Such efforts to cultivate friendship can be fraught at times as the hand-picked friends may turn hostile causing harm to their benefactors.

For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience.

A gulf difference always exists between the ruling elite and the subjects. The distance is so large that it cannot be bridged through normal means. At times, the princes develop liking for some individuals. To bring them nearer, the rulers raise their status and give them administrative powers. The intention is to win their friendship. However, such generosity and eagerness to elevate individuals to keep them in good humour may sometimes bring unanticipated harm. This becomes the possibility when the person chosen is intrinsically wicked in his intent.

The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace, or conversation.

The individuals entering the coterie of the sovereign are termed as ‘favourites’ or ‘privadoes’ in modern languages. These individuals merely add grace and give company like a friend.

But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot.

But the true sense of the name is apparent in what the Romans called these individuals – ‘participes curarum’ meaning ‘sharer of cares’. They are the ones who share the anxiety and worries of the monarch and not just give company. These hand-picked favoured few are called ‘participes curarum’. It means ‘sharer of cares’, or those who share the anxiety and worries of the monarch. They are the close confidantes who offer their counsel to the rulers. It is this sharing of responsibilities/worries that builds the bond of friendship.

And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.

Such practice of co-opting some favoured individuals from among the subjects was followed not only by weak or emotional rulers, but also by very capable and hard-nosed ones having formidable strength and political acumen. The kings address these members of the coterie very graciously as ‘friends’, and they ask other members of the royalty and bureaucracy to address them so.

Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s overmatch. For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising, than the sun setting.

Pompey was designated as ‘Pompey, the Great’ by Sylla, the ruler of Rome. Sylla raised his friend Pompey to such great heights by naming him “Pompey the Great”, that Pompey praised and boasted about being superior to Sylla. So much so that on one occasion when Sylla resented Pompey’s decision, Pompey publicly reminded Sylla that more men adored the sun rising, than the sun setting hinting that he had more clout and power than Sylla.

With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest as he set him down in his testament, for heir in remainder, after his nephew. And this was the man that had power with him, to draw him forth to his death. For when Caesar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia; this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate, till his wife had dreamt a better dream. And it seemeth his favor was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him venefica, witch; as if he had enchanted Caesar.

Brutus had, slowly made his way to Ceaser’s heart. He was Ceaser’s closest confidant and advisor. As a reward of the enduring companionship provided by Brutus, Ceaser in his will had made Brutus his heir after his nephew. Brutus had cast a spell over Ceaser, an influence the latter never suspected as wicked. This was to become Ceaser’s nemesis later. Ceaser had all but dismissed the senate because some ill omen portended a calamity. His wife’s deadly dream about an impending danger strengthened Ceaser’s desire to do away with the senate. Brutus stepped in at the last moment to prevail upon Ceaser to hold back his decision of discharging the senate until Culpurina (Ceaser’s wife) dreamt something better. So great was Brutus’s sway on Ceaser that in one of Antonius’ letter, mentioned by Cicero in his speech, Antonius has disparagingly called Brutus ‘venefica’– a witch, who had ‘enchanted’ Ceaser for evil designs.

Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height, as when he consulted with Maecenas, about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life; there was no third way, he had made him so great.

Augustus elevated Agrippa high up in the royal hierarchy despite the latter’s mean birth (not from a noble family). Agrippa’s clout in the royal court had soared ominously. He was enjoying enviable privilege and power. When Agustus consulted the royal counselor Maecenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, the counselor proffered an awkward advice. He suggested to Augustus to give his daughter in marriage to Agrippa. There was no way anyone else could win her hand with Agrappa around. If this was not agreeable to the emperor, he would have to eliminate Agrippa. There was no third option.

With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had ascended to that height, as they two were termed, and reckoned, as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith, Haec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi; and the whole senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship, between them two.

The friendship between Tiberius and Sejanus is another example of the perils of water-tight friendship. Sejanus charmed Tiberius and became his most intimate companion. As a result, Sejanus began to enjoy unprecedented privileges and stature. People perceived them as an inseparable pair. In a letter to Sejanus Tiberus had declared boldly that he had not hidden from anyone the details of their enduring friendship. The senate sensed the mood and dedicated an altar to their friendship as if their companionship was as sublime as a goddess.

The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus; and would often maintain Plautianus, in doing affronts to his son; and did write also in a letter to the senate, by these words: I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me.

A similar or even closer friendship had developed between Septimus Severus and Plautianus. Septimus had forced his son into marriage with the daughter of Plautianus. The bonding between the two was so strong that he found no difficulty to countenance Platianus’ hurtful barbs aimed at his son. The latitude given to Platinus defied reason. Septimus’s eulogizing of his friend had reached ridiculous levels. In one of his letters to the senate, he had raved over his love for Plautianus saying he wished his friend to outlive him in this world.

Now if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they mought have a friend, to make it entire; and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

All the characters described above were not novices. They were not soft-hearted and noble-minded like Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius. In fact, these eminent members of Rome’s royalty were hard-nosed pragmatists. They took no major decision relating to governance without enough care, caution and confabulation.

Yet, why did all of them fawn over their friends in such bizarre manner? This is explained by the fact that these powerful persons craved for friendship in their quest for worldly happiness.

Bacon reiterates his contention by saying that all these eminent men had access to all pleasures of life, had families, wealth and power. They failed to draw a line in their relation with their chums. Later, the same adored friends brought them defeat, disaster and even death.

Some background note to explain the essay [not its part]

Francis Bacon proceeds to give other examples where friendships have turned sour due to ambition, greed, mutual suspicion and love for power. Julius Caesar and Decimus Brutus were great friends. Caesar’s meteoric rise to power, influence and popularity made Brutus uneasy. He feared that Caesar, if not checked, could neutralize the power of the Senate and become a dictator endangering Rome. To curb the over-ambitious Cesar, Brutus plotted against him. In this act, he had the support of a few Senators and Gaius Cassius Longius. Finally, Brutus had Caesar stabbed to death from the back in 44 BC. That great danger was on the way for Cesar was seen in a dream by his wife Calpurnia. She had warned her husband about the danger from the Senate. Brutus had profound influence over Caesar. He had successfully prevailed upon Caesar not to undermine the Senate until his wife saw a happier dream. Antonious, a confidante of Calpurnia, loathed Brutus. He had described him as a vile person who had swayed Cesar to his side. Despite all these warnings, Cesar had trusted Brutus. He walked to the death trap laid inside the Senate chamber by Brutus and other conspirators. Bacon cites the example of the friendship between Augustus and Agrippa. The latter, apparently, was not of noble birth. Augustus befriended him and went to great lengths to elevate his status. When Augustus consulted the royal counselor Maecenas, the latter gave him two choices. Either he gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Agrippa or get him killed. So powerful Agrippa had become. He posed a real danger to Augustus. Thus, we see how people belonging to the real strata of society do not remain loyal to their benefactors despite all the favours bestowed on them. Bacon gives another example of intimate friendship degrading to hostility and revenge. He mentions the bond between Tiberius Caesar and Sejanus. Tiberius Caesar was very indulgent with Sejanus. Sejanus gradually accumulated power by taking advantage of his proximity to Tiberius. Sejanus also killed or neutralized potential political opponents, including the emperor’s son Drusus Julius Caesar When Tiberius withdrew to Capri in 26 BC, Sejanus assumed full control of the entire government as de facto ruler of the empire. Sejanus suddenly fell from power in 31BC, the year he became Consul. Rumours flew thick and fast that he was conspiring against Tiberius. Sejanus was arrested and executed, along with his followers. Thus a very enduring friendship ended in disaster due to mistrust. It has to be contrasted with the fact that Tiberius had, at one stage, asked the Senate to dedicate an altar to his friendship with Sejanus. Lastly, Bacon cites the case of the friendship between Septimius Severus and Plautianus. To cement their friendship, Severus conferred many honours on Plautianus which included a consular insigina, a seat in the Senate. He also made him a Consul. During his consulship, Plautianus’ image was minted on coins. He assisted Severus in doing the royal duties. In the process, he became very rich. His clout rose exponentially. Severus declared him to be his second in command. In 202BC, Plautianus gave his daughter Publia Fulvia Plautilla in marriage to Caracalla, the son of Severus. The influence of Plautianus soared soon after. As a result, the Roman Empress Julia Domna and Caracalla both began to feel insecure. The marriage between Caracalla and Publia Fulvia Plautilla was beset with problems between the two. In fact, Caracalla hated both his wife and his father-in-law. He threatened to kill both of them after becoming the emperor. When Plautianus discovered this, he began to think of ways to hatch a conspiracy to dethrone Severus’ family. To Plautianus’ ill luck, his treacherous plot was discovered. The imperial family of Servus summoned him to the palace and had him executed. Further acts of retribution followed his son after his death. Thus curtains came down on a friendship which had flowered so much only to wither away and turn to ashes.

It is not to be forgotten, what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair, and a little perish his understanding. Surely Comineus mought have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Lewis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor.

Comineus, a writer and diplomat who served under Duke Charles Hardy and later Louis XI of France has said in his writings that his former master, Duke Charles Hardy, would never share any secrets with anyone. He was particularly careful about not divulging any secret he considered critical to him and to his rule. But, age caught up with him. Gradually, his mental faculty deteriorated. A similar judgement can be made about the latter master, Louis XI, who was also a man of reclusive and suspicious nature. He too spent his last years in complete isolation. Bacon sights these examples to emphasize the importance of having a friend with whom one can share the joys and burdens of one’s heart.

The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true; Cor ne edito; Eat not the heart.

Pythagoras advanced this idea ‘Cor ne edito’. It means ‘Eat not the heart’.

Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends, to open themselves unto, are carnnibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (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 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 it is of minds.

Pythogoras had some harsh way of describing the hazards of keen friendship. He felt that a person may locate a worthy friend before whom he could unburden his worries. But, by doing this, he would be inadvertently decapitating (cannibalizing) his own heart. Such surrender of one’s self before even the closest friend might lead to undesirable consequences causing harm.

Bacon goes on to conclude that nurturing intimacy excessively might prove to be a double-edged sword. In the plus side, it could enhance joy and reduce the grief encountered in day-to-day life. On the minus side, such happiness may be illusory. It is a fact that there is no man who has shared all his grief with his friend and realistically reduced his grief. Similarly, there is no man who has shared all the joys with a friend and experienced more joy. Like the alchemists miracle remedies which palliate pain despite warning of adverse effects, friendship might soothe suffering despite the risk of possible harm. In the same vein, a close look at Nature will show that a union of two elements results in better and more pleasant results. Human friendship has undoubtedly got some curative and embalming effects notwithstanding the risk of it turning foul.

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.

Strengthening of personal affection and bonding apart, the other benefit is therapeutic (healing). It sharpens mental functions too. Friendship tempers down the ill effects of the storms of life, and brings sunshine and cheer to one’s life. It enables one to think clearly.

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 marshalleth 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.

This does not mean that you will always get good advise from friends, but what it means is that the thoughts get jumbled up in the mind and there is not always the clarity in understanding them. However, when you communicate these thoughts to a friend by putting them in words, you get the clarity and understanding and become wiser simply by putting these thoughts in an orderly manner to make the right judgement. This is more beneficial then doing an entire 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 against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Arras was a place famous for its hand-woven textiles. These tapastries were rich ad beautiful. Themistocles once said that speech must be heard to be appreciated. This was akin to the tapestries from Arras that could be admired only when opened up and hung for people to feast their eyes on. Similarly, thoughts, when not opened up for propagation, remain locked in the mind of the thinker. This is like the rolled-up tapestry that lies in packs. People walk past them unaware of their great hidden beauty. This second fruit of friendship – good judgment and better understanding — is not restricted to opening up of your minds only to a few intelligent friends, although it is best when you do so. Even if the friend might not be intelligent enough, it nevertheless is beneficial to expound the thoughts before him. By doing this, one can understand them, and possibly throw more light on them. This could sharpen his intelligence. It is like the way we sharpen a tool by rubbing it against a rough stone. Obviously, Bacon compares the thinker with the tool and the not-so-intelligent listener as the rough stone. In short, it means a man better say his thoughts to a statue than to bury them in the mind and suffer suffocation.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation; which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer, than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment; which is ever infused, and drenched, in his affections and customs.

Bacon proceeds to praise the advice that comes from well-meaning, un-biased, wise friends. Such advice seldom leads to undesirable consequences. If a person is guided by his own instincts, intuition and emotions, the judgment might be coloured, biased and one-sided. This might lead to difficulties. So, one must not be guided by one’s own understanding of the situation, and seek advice from wise friends. Heraclitus termed such independent advice from another person as ‘Dry light’. The drier it is, the more useful it can be.

So as there is as much difference between the counsel, that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend, and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man’s self, as the liberty of a friend. Just as there is a big difference between the advice of a true friend and a man’s own judgement, so is there a difference between a well meaning advice of a true friend and that of a flatterer. But the man himself is the biggest flatterer of self, and the best remedy for this flattery is the freedom of a friend to give unbiased advice.

Just the way one’s own judgment has to be sidelined in favour of an independent-minded advisor’s words, a sycophant’s counsel need to be treated with much less seriousness than one’s own decision in any matter. Bacon reminds the reader that a person’s own reading of himself could be minimally critical as it is human tendency not find fault with oneself. Because of such inherent weakness to feel good about himself ignoring the many flaws of character and brain, a person must guard against the tendency to go by his own assessment and cast aside the wise counsel of other capable men.

Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health, is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man’s self to a strict account, is a medicine, sometime too piercing and corrosive.

Advice from a well-meaning wise friend can be for two principal reasons. It might be about a person’s manners and conduct and the second might be about his business. A friend’s criticism helps to keep the mind free of many undesirable thoughts and influences. Keeping a check on one’s own self may sometimes prove to be difficult.

Reading good books of morality, is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others, is sometimes improper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold, what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them; to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor.

It is generally seen that people do not take much interest in reading good books on morality and good conduct. Learning by observing others’ mistakes may not be possible for some. But the best thing remedy that works and that one should take is the castigation of our good friends. It is strange to see how people, especially those who are powerful and wealthy, make blunders and damage their fame and fortune due to lack of well-meaning, balanced and neutral advice from good friends. The more powerful the person is, the higher will be his propensity to commit such mistakes. St. James had cautioned his followers about such self deception when one becomes blind to one’s own failings and weaknesses.

As for business, a man may think, if he win, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger, is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all.

People often lose sight of the hard realities and their own infirmities after a few rounds of success. They argue that two eyes see no better than one eye, implying that they are able to reach the correct decision themselves and do not need other’s advice. In the same vein, they can say a gambler takes a better call than others watching the game. He can also claim that a musket can be fired from the arm as efficiently as from a rest. These thoughts are born out of boastfulness and ignorance. In the long run, such mindset can be highly damaging.

But when all is done, the help of good counsel, is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business, of one man, and in another business, of another man; it is well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all); but he runneth two dangers: one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends, which he hath, that giveth it. But when all is done, it is the good advice form a good counsel that sets the business straight again. One may think of taking advice in bits and pieces from different counsels. Although this is better than taking no advice at all, it is still not recommended as it has its own risks. Especially teo dangers; one, the advice may not be faithful, for faithful advice is a rare thing which only true friends give. So the advice may be manipulated in order to suit the person giving the advice.

All good and competent advisors weigh the risks involved in a business correctly. They proffer their advice to the businessman with no fear or hesitation. A businessman can choose to seek advice from one friend over one issue, and from another friend over another issue. This is better than asking no advice at all, and choosing to go by one’s own intuition. But by choosing more than one advisor, a businessman may run into some risk. The advisor, realizing that there are other advisors like him, might be a little perfunctory in giving his advice. The other risk may be the possibility of getting biased and ill-intentioned advice. Unless the advisor is extremely good, loyal, principled, and wise, the advice, disguised as genuine, may turn out to be crooked.

The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind; and so cure the disease, and kill the patient.

Bacon now talks of another danger from advice from others. The counselor may have genuine intention to help the person in trouble, but may not have been able to study the matter properly. In such a case, he could give a drastic and upsetting advice with all the good intentions. Sadly, the result for the recipient may be harmful and even ruinous. This situation is similar to the one that results when an incompetent doctor, unaware of the patient’s medical history, prescribes the wrong medicines to the patient. The patient’s problems are aggravated leading to his death.

But a friend that is wholly acquainted with a man’s estate, will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

So, Bacon concludes, a person must confide in a single counselor, who knows the ins and outs of his business. This is because he would be well-placed to give correct advice using his good understanding of the business. Seeking advice from multiple sources might be misleading rather than rewarding.

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit; which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid, and bearing a part, in all actions and occasions.

So far, we have learnt about two main benefits resulting from friendship. One relates to emotions, the other to understanding and judgement. In his concluding statement, Bacon talks about the third benefit which he likens to the pomegranate fruit that has so many kernels inside it. Friendship means helping and taking part in all actions and occasions of a friend.

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.

The best way to explain the many uses of friendship is to see how many things there are in one’s life that one cannot do or confront alone. In ancient times, it was customary to call a friend as a replica of one’s self. In reality, a friend is more than himself. Men in their lifetime have many things to accomplish, many desires to fulfil which are close to their heart, like devoting to a child, or any other goals.

If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him. So that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend.

When a man is blessed with a genuine, loyal and un-selfish friend, the latter will take care of his responsibilities after his death. He may care for his family, run his business, pay off his debts or do all those things left un-finished after the death of the man. Thus, a man’s life span gets prolonged. Then, comes the benefit accruing from delegation of authority. A person can’t be present in multiple places at any given point of time. In such a case, he may delegate the work in other places which his friend can visit and get things done. There are many things in life a person can’t do alone- be it in farming, trading, educating children, fighting off enemies etc. A good friend, like a trusted deputy, comes to the aid of his friend and smoothens his life.

How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful, in a friend’s mouth, which are blushing in a man’s own. So again, a man’s person hath many proper relations, which he cannot put off.

When trying to present his own merits before others, a person tends to become needlessly boastful, inviting derision from others. Alternatively, he may be too shy to present his own qualities with the praise they deserve. Similarly, while asking for a favour from others, he may feel very awkward. All these functions are best discharged by a loyal and capable friend. Thus, many functions in the society that are mandatory can be got done through a friend.

A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless; I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

A friend may be a good mediator or a go-between. When a message is to be communicated to an adolescent son or a peeved wife, or a stern enemy, a friend can do the job with aplomb and with great ease. Thus, the benefits of friendship are endless. A friendless, cut-off person is unfit to live in the society.

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• Of Anger – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation
• Of Death – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation
• Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation
• Of Travel – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation
• Of Revenge – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation
• Of Adversity – Francis Bacon – Complete Explanation

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Francis Bacon on Friendship

By maria popova.

A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fulness 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 sarza 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.

He then explores the second fruit of friendship:

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 marshalleth 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.

To this he adds a chief benefit of a friend — the capacity to neutralize our astounding gift for rationalization through wise counsel:

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation; which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer, than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment; which is ever infused, and drenched, in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel, that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend, and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man’s self, as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health, is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man’s self to a strict account, is a medicine, sometime too piercing and corrosive. Reading good books of morality, is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others, is sometimes improper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold, what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them; to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor. As for business, a man may think, if he win, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger, is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel, is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business, of one man, and in another business, of another man; it is well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all); but he runneth two dangers: one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends, which he hath, that giveth it. The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind; and so cure the disease, and kill the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted with a man’s estate, will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

Complete Essays is a timeless treasure in its entirety, covering such human essentials as love, anger, justice, revenge, ambition, and more.

Complement with C.S. Lewis on true friendship , Emerson on its two essential criteria , and Aristotle on the art of human bonds .

— Published January 15, 2013 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/15/francis-bacon-on-friendship/ —

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Of Friendship: Analysis

Alternate question: Critical analysis of Bacon’s Of Friendship

As a pragmatic and as an empirical thinker Bacon followed two fundamental Renaissance principles -Sepantia or search for knowledge and Eloquentia , the art of rhetoric . This explains, to some extent, the impassioned presentation of his ideas and views and the aphoristic style of his writing. But the essay Of Friendship is stylistically somewhat different in that it contains passionate and flattering statements along with profuse analogies and examples in support of his arguments perhaps because this essay was occasioned by the request of his friend Toby Matthew.

Bacon begins the essay by invoking the classical authority of Aristotle on basic human nature. First, he refers to Aristotle’s view in Politics: Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.  According to Aristotle, a man by nature and behaviour may be degraded to such an extent that he may be called unfit for society. Again, he may be so self-sufficient that he may not need society.  In the first case, he resembles a wild beast and in the second, he resembles gods. Here it should be pointed out that Bacon is not ruling out the value of solitude; in fact, he is reserving solitude for higher kind of life, which is possible for a few great men like Epimenides, Numa, Empedocles, Apollonius and some Christian saints. Here too Bacon is following Aristotelian view on solitude as expressed in Ethics, where Aristotle prefers a contemplative life to an active life:

It is the highest kind of life, it can be enjoyed uninterruptedly for the greatest length of time…

Bacon’s logic is that those who live in society should enjoy the bliss of friendship for more than one reason. First of all, friendship is necessary for maintaining good mental health by controlling and regulating the passions of the mind. In other words, Bacon here speaks of the therapeutic use of friendship though which one can lighten the heart by revealing the pent-up feelings and emotions: sorrows, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, advice and the like.

Then in order to justify the value of friendship, Bacon points out the practice of friendship on the highest social level. He informs us that the kings and princes, in order to make friends, would raise some persons who would be fit for friendship. Then Bacon tries to glorify friendship by translating the Roman term for friendship, Participes curarum , which means ‘sharers of their cares’. He gives instances of raising of men as friends from the Roman history: Sylla and Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar and Antonius, Augustus and Agrippa, Tiberius Caesar and Sejanus, Septimius Severus and Plautianus. Bacon also refers to what Comineus wrote of Duke Charles the Hardy’s deterioration of his mental faculty just because of his reserve and loneliness and extends his judgement to the case of Comineus’ second master, Louis XI. The point which Bacon strongly wants to assert is that friendship functions for a man in a double yet paradoxically contrary manner: “…it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs”.

The second fruit of friendship, according to Bacon, is beneficial for the clarity of understanding. If a man has got a faithful friend, he can be consulted to clarify the confusions of the mind. He calls the counsel of a friend, citing Heraclitus, “drier and purer ” than that a man gives himself out of self -love, which clouds his judgement. Bacon then counsel of this sort into two kinds: “the one concerning manners and the other concerning business.” A friend’s constructive criticism of the other friend’s behaviour helps him more than a book of morality. In the matter of conducting practical business, Bacon thinks, a true friend’s advice can also be helpful in undertaking a venture or averting a danger.

Finally, Bacon speaks of the last fruit of friendship, which is manifold in the sense that there are so many things in life, which can be fulfilled only with the help of a friend. In fact, at a rare moment Bacon gets emotional and quotes classical maxim that “a friend is another self”. His point is that a man may have many a desire, which may not be realised in his life-time, but if he has got a true friend, his unfulfilled desire will be taken care of by his friend. Not only this, a friend, unlike the near and dear ones and enemies, can talk to him on equal terms whenever situation demands. Keeping all these things, Bacon concludes that if a man does not have a friend, he may well leave this world. That is to say, he is not fit for the human society to live in.

The Essays of Francis Bacon/XXVII Of Friendship

XXVII. 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. [ 1 ] For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation [ 2 ] 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 [ 3 ] it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: [ 4 ] such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides [ 5 ] the Candian, Numa [ 6 ] the Roman, Empedocles [ 7 ] the Sicilian, and Apollonius ​ of Tyana; [ 8 ] 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. [ 9 ] The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; [ 10 ] because in a great town friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere [ 11 ] 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. [ 12 ]

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness 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 sarza [ 13 ] to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur [ 14 ] for the lungs, castoreum [ 15 ] 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.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be as it were companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes; [ 16 ] as if it were matter of grace, or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; [ 17 ] for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate ​ princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, [ 18 ] when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's over-match. For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting. [ 19 ] With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus [ 20 ] had obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew. And this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death. For when Cæsar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia; [ 21 ] this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream. [ 22 ] And it seemeth his favour was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited ​ verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, [ 23 ] calleth him venefica, witch; as if he had enchanted Cæsar. [ 24 ] Augustus raised Agrippa [ 25 ] (though of mean birth) to that height, as [ 26 ] when he consulted with Mæcenas [ 27 ] about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life: there was no third way, he had made him so great. [ 28 ] With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus had ascended to that height, as they two were termed and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith, hæc pro amicitiâ nostrâ non occultavi; [ 29 ] and the whole senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. The like or more was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus; and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son; and did write also in a letter to the senate, by these words: I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live [ 30 ] me. Now if ​ these princes had been as a Trajan [ 31 ] or a Marcus Aurelius, [ 32 ] a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they mought [ 33 ] have a friend to make it entire; and yet, which [ 34 ] is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus [ 35 ] observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy; [ 36 ] namely, that he would communicate [ 37 ] his secrets with none; and least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on and ​ saith that towards his latter time that closeness did impair and a little perish [ 38 ] his understanding. Surely Comineus mought have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master Lewis the Eleventh, [ 39 ] whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable [ 40 ] of Pythagoras [ 41 ] is dark, but true; Cor ne edito: Eat not the heart. [ 42 ] 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 (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 halfs. 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 be grieveth the less. So that it is in truth of operation upon a man's mind, of like virtue as the alchymists 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 [ 43 ] in aid of alchymists, 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 it is of [ 44 ] 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 tempest; 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 marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words: finally, he waxeth [ 45 ] wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles [ 46 ] to the king of Persia, That speech was ​ like cloth of Arras, [ 47 ] opened and put abroad; whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs. [ 48 ] Neither is the second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained [ 49 ] 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 against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better [ 50 ] relate himself to a statua [ 51 ] or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. [ 52 ]

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point which lieth more open and falleth within vulgar [ 53 ] observation; which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. [ 54 ] ​ And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment; which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self, as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine, sometime, too piercing and corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them; to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favour. [ 55 ] As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or that ​ a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; [ 56 ] or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond [ 57 ] and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is well, (that is to say, better perhaps than if he asked none at all;) but he runneth two dangers: one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it. The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe, (though with good meaning,) and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind; and so cure the disease and kill the patient. But a friend ​ that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate [ 58 ] will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship, (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment,) followeth the last fruit; which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. 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 [ 59 ] 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. So that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less ​ extol them; [ 60 ] a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many proper [ 61 ] relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless; I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part: if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. [ 62 ] ​

• ↑ "But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state." The Politics of Aristotle. Translated into English by B. Jowett. Vol. I. i. 2.
• ↑ Aversation towards. Aversion to.
• ↑ Except. Unless. "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." John iii. 3.
• ↑ Conversation. Mode or course of life. "Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom." James iii. 13.
• ↑ Epimenides, a Cretan poet and prophet, who lived in the 7th century B.C. He was said to have fallen into a sleep that lasted fifty-seven years, and to have lived two hundred and ninety-nine years.
• ↑ Numa Pompilius, second King of Rome, 715–672 B.C. The origin of many Roman institutions is referred to Numa, such as the flamens, vestal virgins, pontifices, etc. He was supposed to have been instructed in the art of legislation by the nymph Egeria.
• ↑ Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, Sicily, and lived 490–430 B.C. He was a Greek philosopher, poet, and statesman. He was said to have declared himself to be immortal, and to be able to cure all evils.
• ↑ Apollonius was born at Tyana, Cappadocia, and lived from about 4 B.C. to about 97 A.D. He was a Pythagorean philosopher and reputed magician and wonder-worker. Divine honors were paid to Apollonius in the 3d century and his bust was placed by Alexander Severus in his lararium with those of Abraham, Orpheus, and Christ.
• ↑ "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." I. Corinthians xiii. 1.
• ↑ A great city is a great solitude. Erasmi Adagia.
• ↑ Mere. Absolute, utter, whole. "It is Othello's pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into triumph." Shakspere. Othello. ii. 2.
• ↑ Humanity. Human nature; man in the abstract. "Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor Turk, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably." Shakspere. Hamlet. iii. 2.
• ↑ Sarza. Sarsaparilla.
• ↑ Flower of sulphur. A yellow powder formed by condensing the vapor of sulphur.
• ↑ Castoreum. A secretion of the beaver formerly of high repute in medicine.
• ↑ Privado. Spanish word, a private or intimate friend.
• ↑ Sharers of cares, partners in sorrows.
• ↑ Lucius Cornelius Sulla, surnamed Felix, lived from about 138 to 78 B.C. , a celebrated Roman general and dictator.
• ↑ Plutarch. Life of Pompey.
• ↑ Decimus Junius Brutus, surnamed Albinus, Roman general, one of the assassins of Caesar, executed 43 B.C. He was betrayed and put to death by Antony.
• ↑ Calpurnia, daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, and third wife of Caesar.
• ↑ Plutarch. Life of Caesar.
• ↑ Cicero's Philippics are fourteen orations against Antony, delivered in 44–43. The original Philippics are Demosthenes's nine orations against Philip of Macedon.
• ↑ M. Tullii Ciceronis in M. Antonium Oratio Philippica Tertia Decima. XI. 25.
• ↑ Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, 63–12 B.C. , Roman commander and the leading statesman of the reign of Augustus. His third wife was Julia, daughter of Augustus and widow of Marcellus.
• ↑ As. That.
• ↑ Caius Cilnius Maecenas, died 8 B.C. , Roman statesman and patron of letters. With Agrippa, he was the chief adviser of Augustus down to 16 B.C. , when he became estranged from his master and retired to private life. He was the friend and patron of Horace and Vergil.
• ↑ Dion Cassius. Liber LVI. 6.
• ↑ Because of our friendship, I have not concealed these things. P. Cornelii Taciti Annalium Liber IV. 40.
• ↑ Overlive. To survive; to outlive. "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel." Joshua xxiv. 31. The quotation is from Dion Cassius Cocceianus (Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiae Romanae Liber LXXV. 15) .
• ↑ Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, surnamed Dacicus and Parthicus, born about 53, died 117 A.D. , Roman emperor from 98 to 117 A.D.
• ↑ Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, originally Marcus Annus Verus, commonly known as Marcus Aurelius, 121–180 A.D. , Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D. He wrote, in Greek, a very celebrated book, entitled, The Meditations of Marcus Antoninus.

"So sound he slept, that nought mought him awake." Spenser. The Faery Queene. Book I. Canto i. Stanza 42.

" Which a miracle ther befel anoon."

Chaucer. The Knightes Tale. Line 1817.

• ↑ Philippe de Comines, or Commines, or Comynes, born about 1445, died in 1519, a French statesman and historian.
• ↑ Charles the Bold (French, le Téméraire ), 1433–1477, Duke of Burgundy.
• ↑ Communicate. To inform a person of; to tell. Now construed with 'to' instead of 'with.'

"You are an innocent, A soul as white as Heaven; let not my sins Perish your noble youth." Beaumont and Fletcher. The Maid's Tragedy. iv. 1.

• ↑ Louis XI. 1423–1483, King of France from 1461 to 1483. The historical setting of Sir Walter Scott's great novel, Quentin Durward , based largely on the Mémoires of Philippe de Comines, is the time of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold.
• ↑ Parable means proverb here.
• ↑ Pythagoras, born about 582 B.C. , died about 500 B.C. , Greek philosopher and mathematician.
• ↑ A Discourse Touching the Training of Children. 17. Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays. Vol. I. Edited by W. W. Goodwin. With Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"and you shall find A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness, Where he for grace is kneel'd to."

Shakspere. Antony and Cleopatra. v. 2.

• ↑ Of means here with regard to, concerning.
• ↑ Wax. To grow; to become. "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." Matthew xxiv. 12.
• ↑ Themistocles, born in the latter part of the 6th century B.C. , died about 460 B.C. , perhaps as late as 447 B.C. , Athenian statesman and commander.
• ↑ Cloth of Arras. Tapestry, from Arras, the capital of the department of Pas-de-Calais, in the north of France. The expression 'cloth of Arras' was probably used originally to distinguish tapestry from Arras from other kinds.
• ↑ Plutarch. Life of Themistocles. "Themistocles said of speech: That it was like Arras, that spread abroad shews fair images, but contracted is but like packs. " Bacon. Apophthegmes New and Old. 199.
• ↑ Restrained. Restricted, limited.
• ↑ Were better. Old English idiom, with be and the dative, him were better , that is, 'it would be better for him.' The correct modern form of the idiom is had better , with the verb 'have' meaning 'hold' or 'regard,' like the Latin habere .

"And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's statua , Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell."

Shakspere. Julius Caesar. iii. 2.

• ↑ Smother. The state of being stifled; suppression.

"Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar ."

Shakspere. Hamlet. i. 3.

• ↑ Read, for this same thought, in the Wisdom of the Ancients, The Flight of Icarus; also, Scylla and Charybdis; or the Middle Way. Also, Apophthegmes New and Old. 268 (188).
• ↑ "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." James i. 23, 24.
• ↑ The English Grammar of Ben Jonson limits the English alphabet to "four and twenty letters," omitting J and U. This means that in his time and Bacon's J had not yet been differentiated from I, nor U from V, although U was coming in. U and J are modern letters.

"'T is fond to wail inevitable strokes, As 't is to laugh at 'em."

Shakspere. Coriolanus. iv. 1.

• ↑ Estate. State or condition.
• ↑ For that. Because.
• ↑ "It is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself." Quoted in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Vol. I. Ch. xxii. , from Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, Divine Art of Meditation.

"And so, with great imagination, Proper to madmen, led his powers to death, And, winking, leap'd into destruction."

Shakspere. II. King Henry IV. i. 3.

• ↑ In the last year of Bacon's life, at the special request of his friend, Sir Tobie Matthew, he rewrote entirely the essay on Friendship , to commemorate their lifelong intimacy. Sir Tobie Matthew, 1577–1655, courtier, diplomatist, and writer, was the son of Tobie, or Tobias, Matthew, Archbishop of York. Bacon and Matthew, who was the junior by sixteen years, became friends when Matthew entered Parliament, in 1601, and their affection knew no break through every variation of both their fortunes. Bacon held a high opinion of Matthew's literary judgment, and submitted his writings to him for criticism from time to time, among other pieces his book, De Sapientia Veterum , with an accompanying letter, dated Feb. 17, 1610. In 1618, Matthew, who had lived in Italy, and had there become a Roman Catholic, published in London an Italian translation of the Essays , entitled, Saggi Morali del Signore Francesco Bacono, Cavaliero inglese, gran cancelliero d'Inghelterra, con un' altro suo Trattato della Sapienza degli Antichi. A dedicatory letter to Cosimo dei Medici II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, eulogizes Sir Francis Bacon, praising him not only for the qualities of his intellect, but also for those of the heart and will, and moral understanding: "being a man most sweet in his conversation and ways, grave in his judgment, invariable in his fortunes, splendid in his expenses; a friend unalterable to his friends; an enemy to no man; a most hearty and indefatigable servant to the King, and a most earnest lover of the Public,—having all the thoughts of that large heart of his set upon adorning the age in which he lives, and benefiting as far as possible the whole human race." When Bacon was impeached, Matthew was of the few who remained faithful to him. He wrote a letter to his old friend, in his disgrace and downfall, which Bacon compared to 'old gold.' The episode is the most pleasing personal one in Bacon's life, and should be remembered to his credit in any judgment of the baseness of his conduct towards Essex.

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Essays of Francis Bacon The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans

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, Whatsoever 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 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; 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 fulness 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 sarza 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.

It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace, or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s overmatch. For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising, than the sun setting. With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest as he set him down in his testament, for heir in remainder, after his nephew. And this was the man that had power with him, to draw him forth to his death. For when Caesar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia; this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate, till his wife had dreamt a better dream. And it seemeth his favor was so great, as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him venefica, witch; as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height, as when he consulted with Maecenas, about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life; there was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had ascended to that height, as they two were termed, and reckoned, as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith, Haec pro amicitia nostra non occultavi; and the whole senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship, between them two. The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus; and would often maintain Plautianus, in doing affronts to his son; and did write also in a letter to the senate, by these words: I love the man so well, as I wish he may over-live me. Now if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they mought have a friend, to make it entire; and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten, what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair, and a little perish his understanding. Surely Comineus mought have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Lewis the Eleventh, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. 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 carnnibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (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 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 it is 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 marshalleth 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 against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation; which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. And certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer, than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment; which is ever infused, and drenched, in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel, that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend, and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man’s self, as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health, is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man’s self to a strict account, is a medicine, sometime too piercing and corrosive. Reading good books of morality, is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others, is sometimes improper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold, what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them; to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favor. As for business, a man may think, if he win, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger, is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel, is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business, of one man, and in another business, of another man; it is well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all); but he runneth two dangers: one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends, which he hath, that giveth it. The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy; even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind; and so cure the disease, and kill the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted with a man’s estate, will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit; which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid, and bearing a part, in all actions and occasions. 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. So that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful, in a friend’s mouth, which are blushing in a man’s own. So again, a man’s person hath many proper relations, which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless; I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

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BACON’S  ESSAYS AND WISDOM  OF  THE ANCIENTS

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY A. SPIERS PREFACE BY B. MONTAGU, AND NOTES BY DIFFERENT WRITERS

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1884 , By Little, Brown, and Company . The University Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In preparing the present volume for the press, use has been freely made of several publications which have recently appeared in England. The Biographical Notice of the author is taken from an edition of the Essays, by A. Spiers, Ph. D. To this has been added the Preface to Pickering’s edition of the Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients, by Basil Montagu, Esq. Parker’s edition, by Thomas Markby, M. A., has furnished the arrangement of the Table prefixed to the Essays, and also “the references to the most important quotations.” The Notes, including the translations of the Latin, are chiefly copied from Bohn’s edition, prepared by Joseph Devey, M. A. We have given the modern translation of the Wisdom of the Ancients contained in Bohn’s edition, in preference to that “done by Sir Arthur Gorges,” although the last mentioned has a claim upon regard, as having been made by a contemporary of Lord Bacon, and published in his lifetime. Its language is in the style of English current in the author’s age, and for this reason may resemble more nearly what the philosopher himself would have used, had he composed the work in his own tongue instead of Latin.

APPENDIX TO ESSAYS.

THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS; A SERIES OF MYTHOLOGICAL FABLES.

In the early part of the year 1597, Lord Bacon’s first publication appeared. It is a small 12mo. volume, entitled “Essayes, Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion.” It is dedicated

“ To M. Anthony Bacon, his deare Brother . “Louing and beloued Brother, I doe nowe like some that have an Orcharde ill Neighbored, that gather their Fruit before it is ripe, to preuent stealing. These Fragments of my Conceites were going to print, To labour the staie of them had bin troublesome, and subiect to interpretation; to let them passe had beene to aduenture the wrong they mought receiue by vntrue Coppies, or by some Garnishment, which it mought please any that should set them forth to bestow vpon them. Therefore I helde it best as they passed long agoe from my Pen, without any further disgrace, then the weaknesse of the Author. And as I did euer hold, there mought be as great a vanitie in retiring and withdrawing mens conceites (except they bee of some nature) from the World, as in obtruding them: So in these particulars I haue played myself the Inquisitor, and find nothing to my vnderstanding in them contrarie or infectious to the state of Religion, or Manners, but rather (as I suppose) medecinable. Only I disliked now to put them out, because they will be like the late new Halfepence, xii which, though the Siluer were good, yet the Peeces were small. But since they would not stay with their Master, but would needes trauaile abroade, I haue preferred them to you that are next my selfe, Dedicating them, such as they are, to our Loue, in the depth whereof (I assure you) I sometimes wish your Infirmities translated vppon my selfe, that her Maiestie mought haue the Seruice of so actiue and able a Mind, and I mought be with excuse confined to these Contemplations and Studies for which I am fittest, so commend I you to the Preseruation of the Diuine Maiestie: From my Chamber at Graies Inne, this 30 of Januarie, 1597. Your entire Louing Brother, Fran. Bacon .”

The Essays, which are ten in number, abound with condensed thought and practical wisdom, neatly, pressly, and weightily stated, and, like all his early works, are simple, without imagery. They are written in his favorite style of aphorisms, although each essay is apparently a continued work, and without that love of antithesis and false glitter to which truth and justness of thought are frequently sacrificed by the writers of maxims.

A second edition, with a translation of the Meditationes Sacræ , was published in the next year; and another edition enlarged in 1612, when he was solicitor-general, containing thirty-eight essays; and one still more enlarged in 1625, containing fifty-eight essays, the year before his death.

The Essays in the subsequent editions are much augmented, according to his own words: “I always alter when I add, so that nothing is finished till all is finished,” and they are adorned by happy and familiar illustration, as in the essay of Wisdom for a Man’s Self, which concludes, in the edition of 1625, with the xiii following extract, not to be found in the previous edition: “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. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says 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 wisdom, to have pinioned.”

So in the essay upon Adversity, on which he had deeply reflected before the edition of 1625, when it first appeared, he says: “The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the great benediction, and the clearer revelation of God’s favor. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David’s harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. 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 xiv pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly, virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”

The Essays were immediately translated into French and Italian, and into Latin, by some of his friends, amongst whom were Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield, and his constant, affectionate friend, Ben Jonson.

His own estimate of the value of this work is thus stated in his letter to the Bishop of Winchester: “As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that manner purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that these kind of writings would, with less pains and assiduity, perhaps yield more lustre and reputation to my name than the others I have in hand.”

Although it was not likely that such lustre and reputation would dazzle him, the admirer of Phocion, who, when applauded, turned to one of his friends, and asked, “What have I said amiss?” although popular judgment was not likely to mislead him who concludes his observations upon the objections to learning and the advantages of knowledge by saying: “Nevertheless, I do not pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me, by any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgment either of Æsop’s cock, that preferred the barleycorn before the gem; or of Midas, that being chosen judge between Apollo, president of the Muses, and Pan, god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or of Paris, that judged for beauty and love against wisdom and power. For these things continue as they have been; but so will that also xv continue whereupon learning hath ever relied and which faileth not, Justificata est sapientia a filiis suis :” yet he seems to have undervalued this little work, which for two centuries has been favorably received by every lover of knowledge and of beauty, and is now so well appreciated that a celebrated professor of our own times truly says: “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. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours; and yet after the twentieth perusal one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon’s writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties.”

During his life six or more editions, which seem to have been pirated, were published; and after his death, two spurious essays, “Of Death,” and “Of a King,” the only authentic posthumous essay being the Fragment of an Essay on Fame, which was published by his friend and chaplain, Dr. Rawley.

This edition is a transcript of the edition of 1625, with the posthumous essays. In the life of Bacon 1 there is a minute account of the different editions of the Essays and of their contents.

They may shortly be stated as follows:—

First edition, 1597, genuine.

There are two copies of this edition in the university library at Cambridge; and there is Archbishop Sancroft’s copy in Emanuel Library; there is a copy in the Bodleian, and I have a copy.

Second edition, 1598, genuine.

Third edition, 1606, pirated.

Fourth edition, entitled “The Essaies of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, the Kings Solliciter Generall. Imprinted at London by Iohn Beale, 1612,” genuine. It was the intention of Sir Francis to have dedicated this edition to Henry, Prince of Wales; but he was prevented by the death of the prince on the 6th of November in that year. This appears by the following letter:—

To the Most High and Excellent Prince, Henry, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester. It may please your Highness: Having divided my life into the contemplative and active part, I am desirous to give his Majesty and your Highness of the fruits of both, simple though they be. To write just treatises, requireth leisure in the writer and leisure in the reader, and therefore are not so fit, neither in regard of your Highness’s princely affairs nor in regard of my continual service; which is the cause that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca’s Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but Essays; that is, dispersed meditations though conveyed in the form of epistles. These labors of mine, I know, cannot be worthy of your Highness, for what can be worthy of you? But my hope is, they may be as grains of salt, that will rather give you an appetite than offend you with satiety. And although they handle those things wherein xvii both men’s lives and their persons are most conversant; yet what I have attained I know not; but I have endeavored to make them not vulgar, but of a nature whereof a man shall find much in experience and little in books; so as they are neither repetitions nor fancies. But, however, I shall most humbly desire your Highness to accept them in gracious part, and to conceive, that if I cannot rest but must show my dutiful and devoted affection to your Highness in these things which proceed from myself, I shall be much more ready to do it in performance of any of your princely commandments. And so wishing your Highness all princely felicity, I rest your Highness’s most humble servant, 1612. Fr. Bacon .

It was dedicated as follows:—

To my loving Brother, Sir John Constable, Knt. My last Essaies I dedicated to my deare brother Master Anthony Bacon, who is with God. Looking amongst my Papers this vacation, I found others of the same nature: which, if I myselfe shall not suffer to be lost, it seemeth the World will not; by the often printing of the former. Missing my Brother, I found you next; in respect of bond both of neare Alliance, and of straight Friendship and Societie, and particularly of communication in Studies. Wherein I must acknowledge my selfe beholding to you. For as my Businesse found rest in my Contemplations, so my Contemplations ever found rest in your loving Conference and Judgment. So wishing you all good, I remaine your louing Brother and Friend, Fra. Bacon .

Fifth edition, 1612, pirated. Sixth edition, 1613, pirated. Seventh edition, 1624, pirated. Eighth edition, 1624, pirated. Ninth edition, entitled, “The Essayes or Covnsels, Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Vervlam, xviii Viscovnt St. Alban. Newly enlarged. London, Printed by Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret and Richard Whitaker, and are to be sold at the Signe of the King’s Head in Paul’s Churchyard.” 1625, genuine.

This edition is a small quarto of 340 pages; it clearly was published by Lord Bacon; and in the next year, 1626, Lord Bacon died. The Dedication is as follows, to the Duke of Buckingham:—

To the Right Honorable my very good Lo. the Duke of Buckingham his Grace, Lo. High Admirall of England. Excellent Lo. :—Salomon saies, A good Name is as a precious Oyntment; and I assure myselfe, such wil your Grace’s Name bee, with Posteritie. For your Fortune and Merit both, haue beene eminent. And you haue planted things that are like to last. I doe now publish my Essayes; which, of all my other Workes, have beene most currant: for that, as it seemes, they come home to Mens Businesse and Bosomes. I haue enlarged them both in number and weight, so that they are indeed a new Work. I thought it therefore agreeable to my Affection, and Obligation to your Grace, to prefix your Name before them, both in English and in Latine. For I doe conceiue, that the Latine Volume of them (being in the vniuersal language) may last as long as Bookes last. My Instauration I dedicated to the King: my Historie of Henry the Seventh (which I haue now also translated into Latine), and my Portions of Naturall History, to the Prince: and these I dedicate to your Grace: being of the best Fruits, that by the good encrease which God gives to my pen and labours, I could yeeld. God leade your Grace by the Hand. Your Graces most obliged and faithfull Seruant. Fr. St. Alban.

Of this edition, Lord Bacon sent a copy to the Marquis Fiat, with the following letter: 2 —

“ Monsieur l’Ambassadeur mon Filz : Voyant que vostre Excellence faict et traite Mariages, non seulement entre les Princes d’Angleterre et de France, mais aussi entre les langues (puis que faictes traduire mon Liure de l’Advancement des Sciences en Francois) i’ai bien voulu vous envoyer mon Liure dernierement imprimé que i’avois pourveu pour vous, mais i’estois en doubte, de le vous envoyer, pour ce qu’il estoit escrit en Anglois. Mais a’ cest’heure pour la raison susdicte ie le vous envoye. C’est un Recompilement de mes Essays Morales et Civiles; mais tellement enlargiés et enrichiés, tant de nombre que de poix, que c’est de fait un ouvre nouveau. Ie vous baise les mains, et reste vostre tres affectionée Ami, et tres humble Serviteur. THE SAME IN ENGLISH. My Lord Ambassador, my Son : Seeing that your Excellency makes and treats of Marriages, not only betwixt the Princes of France and England, but also betwixt their languages (for you have caused my book of the Advancement of Learning to be translated into French), I was much inclined to make you a present of the last book which I published, and which I had in readiness for you. I was sometimes in doubt whether I ought to have sent it to you, because it was written in the English tongue. But now, for that very reason, I send it to you. It is a recompilement of my Essays Moral and Civil; but in such manner enlarged and enriched both in number and weight, that it is in effect a new work. I kiss your hands, and remain your most affectionate friend and most humble servant, &c.

Of the translation of the Essays into Latin, Bacon speaks in the following letter:—

“ To Mr. Tobie Mathew : It is true my labors are now most set to have those works which I had formerly published, as that of Advancement of Learning, that of Henry VII., that of the Essays, being retractate and made more perfect, well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens which forsake me not. For these modern languages will, at one time or other, play the bankrupt with books; and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity. For the Essay of Friendship, while I took your speech of it for a cursory request, I took my promise for a compliment. But since you call for it, I shall perform it.”

In his letter to Father Fulgentio, giving some account of his writings, he says:—

“The Novum Organum should immediately follow; but my moral and political writings step in between as being more finished. These are, the History of King Henry VII., and the small book, which, in your language, you have called Saggi Morali , but I give it a graver title, that of Sermones Fideles , or Interiora Rerum , and these Essays will not only be enlarged in number, but still more in substance.”

The nature of the Latin edition, and of the Essays in general, is thus stated by Archbishop Tenison:—

“The Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral, though a by-work also, do yet make up a book of greater weight by far than the Apothegms; and coming home to men’s business and bosoms, his lordship entertained this persuasion concerning them, that the Latin volume might last as long as books should last. His lordship wrote them in the English tongue, and enlarged them as occasion served, and at last added to them the Colors of Good and Evil, which are likewise found in his book De Augmentis . The Latin translation of them was xxi a work performed by divers hands: by those of Dr. Hacket (late Bishop of Lichfield), Mr. Benjamin Jonson (the learned and judicious poet,) and some others, whose names I once heard from Dr. Rawley, but I cannot now recall them. To this Latin edition he gave the title of Sermones Fideles , after the manner of the Jews, who called the words Adagies, or Observations of the Wise, Faithful Sayings; that is, credible propositions worthy of firm assent and ready acceptance. And (as I think), he alluded more particularly, in this title, to a passage in Ecclesiastes , where the preacher saith, that he sought to find out Verba Delectabilia (as Tremellius rendereth the Hebrew), pleasant words; (that is, perhaps, his Book of Canticles;) and Verba Fidelia (as the same Tremellius), Faithful Sayings; meaning, it may be, his collection of Proverbs. In the next verse, he calls them Words of the Wise, and so many goads and nails given ab eodem pastore , from the same shepherd [of the flock of Israel”].

In the year 1638, Rawley published, in folio, a volume containing, amongst other works, Sermones Fideles, ab ipso Honoratissimo Auctore, præterquam in paucis, Latinitate donati . In his address to the reader, he says:—

Accedunt, quas priùs Delibationes Civiles et Morales inscripserat; Quas etiam in Linguas plurimas Modernas translatas esse novit; sed eas posteà, et Numero, et Pondere, auxit; In tantum, ut veluti Opus Novum videri possint; Quas mutato Titulo , Sermones Fideles, sive Interiora Rerum, inscribi placuit . The title-page and dedication are annexed: Sermones Fideles sive Interiora Rerum. Per Franciscum Baconum Baronem de Vervlamio, Vice-Comitem Sancti Albani. Londini Excusum typis Edwardi Griffin. Prostant ad Insignia Regia in Cœmeterio D. Pauli, apud Richardum Whitakerum , 1638. xxii Illustri et Excellenti Domino Georgio Duci Buckinghamiæ , Summo Angliæ Admirallio. Honoratissime Domine , Salomon inquit, Nomen bonum est instar Vnguenti fragrantis et pretiosi ; Neque dubito, quin tale futurum sit Nomen tuum apud Posteros. Etenim et Fortuna, et Merita tua, præcelluerunt. Et videris ea plantasse, quæ sint duratura. In lucem jam edere mihi visum est Delibationes meas , quæ ex omnibus meis Operibus fuerunt acceptissimæ: Quia forsitan videntur, præ cæteris, Hominum Negotia stringere, et in sinus fluere. Eas autem auxi, et Numero, et Pondere; In tantum, ut planè Opus Novum sint. Consentaneum igitur duxi, Affectui, et Obligationi meæ, erga Illustrissimam Dominationem tuam, ut Nomen tuum illis præfigam, tam in Editione Anglicâ , quam Latinâ . Etenim, in bonâ spe sum, Volumen earum in Latinam ( Linguam scilicet universalem), versum, posse durare, quamdiù Libri et Literæ durent. Instaurationem meam Regi dicavi: Historiam Regni Henrici Septimi (quam etiam in Latinum verti et Portiones meas Naturalis Historiæ , Principi ): Has autem Delibationes Illustrissimæ Dominationi tuæ dico, Cùm sint, ex Fructibus optimis, quos Gratia divinâ Calami mei laboribus indulgente, exhibere potui. Deus illustrissimam Dominationem tuam manu ducat. Illustrissimæ Dominationis tuæ Servus Devinctissimus et Fidelis. Fr. S. Alban.

In the year 1618, the Essays, together with the Wisdom of the Ancients, was translated into Italian, and dedicated to Cosmo de Medici , by Tobie Mathew; and in the following year the Essays were translated into French by Sir Arthur Gorges, and printed in London.

WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS.

In the year 1609, as a relaxation from abstruse speculations, he published in Latin his interesting little work, De Sapientia Veterum .

This tract seems, in former times, to have been much valued. The fables, abounding with a union of deep thought and poetic beauty, are thirty-one in number, of which a part of The Sirens, or Pleasures, may be selected as a specimen.

In this fable he explains the common but erroneous supposition that knowledge and the conformity of the will, knowing and acting, are convertible terms. Of this error, he, in his essay of Custom and Education, admonishes his readers, by saying: “Men’s thoughts are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions, but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed; Æsop’s Damsel, transformed from a cat to a woman, sat very demurely at the board-end till a mouse ran before her.” In the fable of the Sirens he exhibits the same truth, saying: “The habitation of the Sirens was in certain pleasant islands, from whence, as soon as out of their watchtower they discovered any ships approaching, with their sweet tunes they would first entice and stay them, and, having them in their power, would destroy them; and, so great were the mischiefs they did, that these isles of the Sirens, even as far off as man can ken them, appeared all over white with the bones of unburied carcasses; by which it is signified that albeit the examples of afflictions be mani xxiv fest and eminent, yet they do not sufficiently deter us from the wicked enticements of pleasure.”

The following is the account of the different editions of this work: The first was published in 1609. In February 27, 1610, Lord Bacon wrote to Mr. Mathew, upon sending his book De Sapientia Veterum :—

“ Mr. Mathew : I do very heartily thank you for your letter of the 24th of August, from Salamanca; and in recompense therefore I send you a little work of mine that hath begun to pass the world. They tell me my Latin is turned into silver, and become current: had you been here, you should have been my inquisitor before it came forth; but, I think, the greatest inquisitor in Spain will allow it. But one thing you must pardon me if I make no haste to believe, that the world should be grown to such an ecstasy as to reject truth in philosophy, because the author dissenteth in religion; no more than they do by Aristotle or Averroes. My great work goeth forward; and after my manner, I alter even when I add; so that nothing is finished till all be finished. This I have written in the midst of a term and parliament; thinking no time so possessed, but that I should talk of these matters with so good and dear a friend. And so with my wonted wishes I leave you to God’s goodness. “From Gray’s Inn, Feb. 27, 1610.”

And in his letter to Father Fulgentio, giving some account of his writings, he says: “My Essays will not only be enlarged in number, but still more in substance. Along with them goes the little piece De Sapientia Veterum .”

In the Advancement of Learning he says:—

“There remaineth yet another use of poesy parabolical, opposite to that which we last mentioned; for that tendeth xxv to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered, and this other to retire and obscure it; that is, when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, or philosophy are involved in fables or parables. Of this in divine poesy we see the use is authorized. In heathen poesy we see the exposition of fables doth fall out sometimes with great felicity; as in the fable that the giants being overthrown in their war against the gods, the earth, their mother, in revenge thereof brought forth Fame,— Illam Terra parens, irâ irritata Deorum, Extremam, ut perhibent, Cœo Enceladoque sororem Progenuit, expounded, that when princes and monarchs have suppressed actual and open rebels, then the malignity of the people, which is the mother of rebellion, doth bring forth libels and slanders, and taxations of the State, which is of the same kind with rebellion, but more feminine. So in the fable, that the rest of the gods having conspired to bind Jupiter, Pallas called Briareus, with his hundred hands, to his aid; expounded, that monarchies need not fear any curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as long as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who will be sure to come in on their side. So in the fable, that Achilles was brought up under Chiron, the centaur, who was part a man and part a beast, expounded ingeniously, but corruptly by Machiavel, that it belongeth to the education and discipline of princes to know as well how to play the part of the lion in violence, and the fox in guile, as of the man in virtue and justice. Nevertheless, in many the like encounters, I do rather think that the fable was first, and the exposition then devised, than that the moral was first, and thereupon the fable framed. For I find it was an ancient vanity in Chrysippus, that troubled himself with great contention to fasten the assertions of the stoics upon the fictions of the ancient poets; but yet that all the fables and fictions of the poets were but pleasure, and not figure, I xxvi interpose no opinion. Surely, of those poets which are now extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding he was made a kind of Scripture by the latter schools of the Grecians), yet I should without any difficulty pronounce that his fables had no such inwardness in his own meaning; but what they might have upon a more original tradition, is not easy to affirm; for he was not the inventor of many of them.”

In the treatise De Augmentis the same sentiments will be found, with a slight alteration in the expressions. He says:—

“There is another use of parabolical poesy opposite to the former, which tendeth to the folding up of those things, the dignity whereof deserves to be retired and distinguished, as with a drawn curtain; that is, when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy are veiled and invested with fables and parables. But whether there be any mystical sense couched under the ancient fables of the poets, may admit some doubt; and, indeed, for our part, we incline to this opinion, as to think that there was an infused mystery in many of the ancient fables of the poets. Neither doth it move us that these matters are left commonly to school-boys and grammarians, and so are embased, that we should therefore make a slight judgment upon them, but contrariwise, because it is clear that the writings which recite those fables, of all the writings of men, next to sacred writ, are the most ancient; and that the fables themselves are far more ancient than they (being they are alleged by those writers, not as excogitated by them, but as credited and recepted before) seem to be, like a thin rarefied air, which, from the traditions of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the Grecians.”

Of this tract, Archbishop Tenison, in his Baconiana , says:—

“In the seventh place, I may reckon his book De Sapientia Veterum , written by him in Latin, and set forth a second time with enlargement; and translated into English by Sir Arthur Gorges; a book in which the sages of former times are rendered more wise than it may be they were, by so dexterous an interpreter of their fables. It is this book which Mr. Sandys means, in those words which he hath put before his notes on the Metamorphosis of Ovid. ‘Of modern writers, I have received the greatest light from Geraldus, Pontanus, Ficinus, Vives, Comes, Scaliger, Sabinus, Pierius, and the crown of the latter, the Viscount of St. Albans.’ “It is true, the design of this book was instruction in natural and civil matters, either couched by the ancients under those fictions, or rather made to seem to be so by his lordship’s wit, in the opening and applying of them. But because the first ground of it is poetical story, therefore, let it have this place till a fitter be found for it.”

The author of Bacon’s Life, in the Biographia Britannica , says:—

“That he might relieve himself a little from the severity of these studies, and, as it were, amuse himself with erecting a magnificent pavilion, while his great palace of philosophy was building, he composed and sent abroad, in 1610, his celebrated treatise of the Wisdom of the Ancients, in which he showed that none had studied them more closely, was better acquainted with their beauties, or had pierced deeper into their meaning. There have been very few books published, either in this or any other nation, which either deserved or met with more general applause than this, and scarce any that are like to retain it longer, for in this performance Sir Francis Bacon gave a singular proof of his capacity to please all parties in literature, as in his political conduct he stood fair with all the parties in the nation. The admirers of antiquity were charmed with this discourse, which seems expressly calculated to justify their xxviii admiration; and, on the other hand, their opposites were no less pleased with a piece from which they thought they could demonstrate that the sagacity of a modern genius had found out much better meanings for the ancients than ever were meant by them.”

And Mallet, in his Life of Bacon, says:—

“In 1610 he published another treatise, entitled, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. This work bears the same stamp of an original and inventive genius with his other performances. Resolving not to tread in the steps of those who had gone before him, men, according to his own expression, not learned beyond certain commonplaces, he strikes out a new tract for himself, and enters into the most secret recesses of this wild and shadowy region, so as to appear new on a known and beaten subject. Upon the whole, if we cannot bring ourselves readily to believe that there is all the physical, moral, and political meaning veiled under those fables of antiquity, which he has discovered in them, we must own that it required no common penetration to be mistaken with so great an appearance of probability on his side. Though it still remains doubtful whether the ancients were so knowing as he attempts to show they were, the variety and depth of his own knowledge are, in that very attempt, unquestionable.”

In the year 1619 this tract was translated by Sir Arthur Gorges. Prefixed to the work are two letters; the one to the Earl of Salisbury, the other to the University of Cambridge, which Gorges omits, and dedicates his translation to the high and illustrious princess the Lady Elizabeth of Great Britain, Duchess of Baviare, Countess Palatine of Rheine, and chief electress of the empire.

This translation, it should be noted, was published xxix during the life of Lord Bacon by a great admirer of his works.

The editions of this work with which I am acquainted are:—

NOTICE OF FRANCIS BACON.

Francis Bacon , the subject of the following memoir, was the youngest son of highly remarkable parents. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was an eminent lawyer, and for twenty years Keeper of the Seals and Privy Counsellor to Queen Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas was styled by Camden sacris conciliis alterum columen ; he was the author of some unpublished discourses on law and politics, and of a commentary on the minor prophets. He discharged the duties of his high office with exemplary propriety and wisdom; he preserved through life the integrity of a good man, and the moderation and simplicity of a great one. He had inscribed over the entrance of his hall, at Gorhambury, the motto, mediocria firma ; and when the Queen, in a progress, paid him a visit there, she remarked to him that his house was too small for him. “Madam,” answered the Lord Keeper, “my house is well, but it is you 2 that have made me too great for my house.” This anecdote has been preserved by his son, 3 who, had he as carefully retained the lesson of practical wisdom it contained, might have avoided the misfortunes and sorrows of his checkered life.

Bacon’s mother, Anne Cooke, was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward the Sixth; like the young ladies of her time, like Lady Jane Grey, like Queen Elizabeth, she received an excellent classical education; her sister, Lady Burleigh, was pronounced by Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s preceptor, to be, with the exception of Lady Jane Grey, the best Greek scholar among the young women of England. 4 Anne Cooke, the future Lady Bacon, corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and translated from the Latin this divine’s Apologia ; a task which she performed so well that it is said the good prelate could not discover an inaccuracy or suggest an alteration. She also translated from the Italian a volume of sermons on fate and freewill, written by Bernardo Ochino, an Italian reformer. Francis Bacon, the youngest of five sons, 3 inherited the classical learning and taste of both his parents.

He was born at York House, in the Strand, London, on the 22d of January, 1560-61. His health, when he was a boy, was delicate; a circumstance which may perhaps account for his early love of sedentary pursuits, and probably the early gravity of his demeanor. Queen Elizabeth, he tells us, took particular delight in “trying him with questions,” when he was quite a child, and was so much pleased with the sense and manliness of his answers that she used jocularly to call him “her young Lord Keeper of the Seals.” Bacon himself relates that while he was a boy, the Queen once asked him his age; the precocious courtier readily replied that he “was just two years younger than her happy reign.” He is said, also, when very young, to have stolen away from his playfellows in order to investigate the cause of a singular echo in St. James’s Fields, which attracted his attention.

Until the age of thirteen he remained under the tuition of his accomplished mother, aided by a private tutor only; under their care he attained the elements of the classics, that education preliminary to the studies of the University. At thirteen he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his father had been educated. Here he studied diligently the great models of antiquity, mathematics, and philosophy, worshipped, however, but indevoutly at the shrine of Aristotle, whom, according to Raw 4 ley, his chaplain and biographer, he already derided “for the unfruitfulness of the way,—being only strong for disputation, but barren of the production of works for the life of man.” He remained three years at this seat of learning, without, however, taking a degree at his departure.

When he was but sixteen years old he began his travels, the indispensable end of every finished education in England. He repaired to Paris, where he resided some time under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English minister at the court of France.

Here he invented an ingenious method of writing in cipher; an art which he probably cultivated with a view to a diplomatic career.

He visited several of the provinces of France and of the towns of Italy. Italy was then the country in which human knowledge in all its branches was most successfully cultivated. It is related by Signor Cancellieri that Bacon, when at Rome, presented himself as a candidate to the Academy of the Lincei , and was not admitted. 5 He remained on the continent for three years, until his father’s death, in 1580. The melancholy event, which bereft him of his parent, at the age of nineteen, was fatal to his prospects. His father had intended to purchase an estate for his youngest son, as he had done for his other sons; but he dying before this intention was 5 realized, the money was equally divided between all the children; so that Francis inherited but one fifth of that fortune intended for him alone. He was the only one of the sons that was left unprovided for. He had now “to study to live,” instead of “living to study.” He wished, to use his own language, “to become a true pioneer in that mine of truth which lies so deep.” He applied to the government for a provision which his father’s interest would easily have secured him, and by which he might dispense with a profession. The Queen must have looked with favor upon the son of a minister, who had served her faithfully for twenty long years, and upon a young man whom, when he was a child, she had caressed, she had distinguished by the appellation of her “young Lord Keeper.” But Francis Bacon was abandoned, and perhaps opposed by the colleague and nearest friend of his father, the brother-in-law of his mother, his maternal uncle, Lord Burleigh, then Prime Minister, who feared for his son the rivalry of his all-talented nephew. It is a trick common to envy and detraction, to convert a man’s very qualities into their concomitant defects; and because Bacon was a great thinker, he was represented as unfit for the active duties of business, as “a man rather of show than of depth,” as “a speculative man, indulging himself in philosophical reveries, and calculated more to perplex than to promote public business.” 6 Thus was the future ornament 6 of his country and of mankind sacrificed to Robert, afterwards Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, of whose history fame has learned but little, save the execution of Essex and Mary Queen of Scots, the name, and this petty act of mean jealousy of his father! In the disposal of patronage and place, acts and even motives of this species are not so unfrequent as the world would appear to imagine. In all ages, it is to be feared, many and great, as in Shakspeare’s time, are,

It is, however, but justice to the morals of Lord Burleigh, to add that he was insensible to literary merit; he thought a hundred pounds too great a reward to be given to Spenser for what he termed “an old song,” for so he denominated the Faery Queen .

Bacon then selected the law as his profession; and in 1580 he was entered of Gray’s Inn; 7 he resisted the temptations of his companions and friends, (for his company was much courted), and diligently pursued the study he had chosen; but he did not at this time entirely lose sight of his philosophical speculations, for he then published his Temporis partus maximus , or The Greatest Birth of Time . This work, notwithstanding its pompous title, was unnoticed or rather fell stillborn from the press; the 7 sole trace of it is found in one of his letters to Father Fulgentio.

In 1586, he was called to the bar; his practice there appears to have been limited, although not without success; for the Queen and the Court are said to have gone to hear him when he was engaged in any celebrated cause. He was, at this period of his life, frequently admitted to the Queen’s presence and conversation. He was appointed her Majesty’s Counsel Extraordinary, 8 but he had no salary and small fees.

In 1592, his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, procured for him the reversion of the registrarship of the Star Chamber, worth sixteen hundred pounds (forty thousand francs) a year; but the office did not become vacant till twenty years after, so that, as Bacon justly observes, “it might mend his prospects, but did not fill his barns.”

A parliament was summoned in 1593, and Bacon was returned to the House of Commons, for the County of Middlesex; he distinguished himself here as a speaker. “The fear of every man who heard him,” says his contemporary, Ben Jonson, “was lest he should make an end.” He made, however, on one occasion a speech which much displeased the Queen and Court. Elizabeth directed the Lord 8 Keeper to intimate to him that he must expect neither favor nor promotion; the repentant courtier replied in writing, that “her Majesty’s favor was dearer to him than his life.” 9

In the following year the situation of Solicitor-General 10 became vacant. Bacon ardently aspired to it. He applied successively to Lord Burleigh, his uncle, to Lord Puckering, his father’s successor, to the Earl of Essex, their rival, and finally to the Queen herself, accompanying his letters, as was the custom of the times, with a present, a jewel. 11 But once more he saw mediocrity preferred, and himself rejected. A Serjeant Fleming was appointed her Majesty’s Solicitor-General. Bacon, overwhelmed by this disappointment, wished to retire from public life, and to reside abroad. “I hoped,” said he in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, “her Majesty would not be offended that, not able to endure the sun, I fled into the shade.”

The Earl of Essex, whose mind, says Mr. Macaulay, “naturally disposed to admiration of all that 9 is great and beautiful, was fascinated by the genius and the accomplishments of Bacon,” 12 had exerted every effort in Bacon’s behalf; to use his own language, he “spent all his power, might, authority, and amity;” he now sought to indemnify him, and, with royal munificence, presented him with an estate of the value of nearly two thousand pounds, a sum worth perhaps four or five times the amount in the money of our days. If anything could enhance the benefaction, it was the delicacy with which it was conferred, or, as Bacon himself expresses it, “with so kind and noble circumstances as the manner was worth more than the matter.”

Bacon published his Essays in 1597; he considered them but as the “recreations of his other studies.” The idea of them was probably first suggested by Montaigne’s Essais , but there is little resemblance between the two works beyond the titles. The first edition contained but ten Essays, which were shorter than they now are. The work was reprinted in 1598, with little or no variation; again in 1606; and in 1612 there was a fourth edition, etc. However, he afterwards, he says, “enlarged it both in number and weight;” but it did not assume its present form until the ninth edition, in 1625, that is, twenty-eight years after its first publication, and one year before the death of the author. It appeared under the new title of The Essaies or Covnsels Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Vervlam, 10 Viscovnt St. Alban. Newly enlarged. This is not followed by the Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, seene and allowed . The Essays were soon translated into Italian with the title of Saggi Morali del Signore Francesco Bacono, Cavagliero Inglese, Gran Cancelliero d’ Inghilterra . This translation was dedicated to Cosmo de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany; and was reprinted in London in 1618. Of the three Essays added after Bacon’s decease, two of them, Of a King and Of Death , are not genuine; the Fragment of an Essay on Fame alone is Bacon’s.

In this same year (1597) he again took his seat in Parliament. He soon made ample amends for his opposition speech in the previous session; but this time he gained the favor of the Court without forfeiting his popularity in the House of Commons.

He now thought of strengthening his interest, or increasing his fortune, by a matrimonial connection; and he sought the hand of a rich widow, Lady Hatton, his second cousin; but here he was again doomed to disappointment; a preference was given to his old rival, the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, notwithstanding the “seven objections to him—his six children and himself.” But although Bacon was perhaps unaware of it, the rejection of his suit was one of the happiest events of his life; for the eccentric manners and violent temper of the lady rendered her a torment to all around her, and 11 probably most of all to her husband. In reality, as has been wittily observed, the lady was doubly kind to him; “she rejected him, and she accepted his enemy.”

Another mortification awaited him at this period. A relentless creditor, a usurer, had him arrested for a debt of three hundred pounds, and he was conveyed to a spunging-house, where he was confined for a few days, until arrangements could be made to satisfy the claim or the claimant.

We now arrive at a painfully sad point in the life of Bacon; a dark foul spot, which should be hidden forever, did not history, like the magistrate of Egypt that interrogated the dead, demand that the truth, the whole truth, should be told.

We have seen that between Bacon and the Earl of Essex, all was disinterested affection on the part of the latter; the Earl employed his good offices for him, exerted heart and soul to insure his success as Solicitor-General, and, on Bacon’s failure, conferred on him a princely favor, a gift of no ordinary value.

When Essex’s fortunes declined, and the Earl fell into disgrace, Bacon endeavored to mediate between the Queen and her favorite. The case became hopeless. Essex left his command in Ireland without leave, was ordered in confinement, and after a long imprisonment and trial before the Privy Council, he was liberated. Irritated by the refusal of a favor he solicited, he was betrayed into reflections on the 12 Queen’s age and person, which were never to be forgiven, and he engaged in a conspiracy to seize on the Queen, and to settle a new plan of government. On the failure of this attempt, he was arrested, committed to the Tower, and brought to trial for high treason before the House of Peers. During his long captivity, who does not expect to see Bacon, his friend, a frequent visitor in his cell? Before the two tribunals, can we fail to meet Bacon, his counsel, at his side? We trace Bacon at Court, where, he assures us, after Elizabeth’s death, that he endeavored to appease and reconcile the Queen; but the place was too distant from the prison: for he never visited there his fallen friend.

At the first trial, Bacon did indeed make his appearance, but as “her Majesty’s Counsel extraordinary,” not for the defence, but for the prosecution of the prisoner. But he may be expected at least to have treated him leniently? He admits he did not, on account, as he tells us, of the “superior duty he owed to the Queen’s fame and honor in a public proceeding.” But hitherto, the Earl’s liberty alone had been endangered; now, his life is at stake. Do not the manifold favors, the munificent benefactions all arise in the generous mind of Bacon? Does he not waive all thought of interest and promotion and worldly honor to devote himself wholly to the sacred task of saving his patron, benefactor, and friend? Her Majesty’s Counsel extraordinary appeared in the place of the Solicitor-General, to reply 13 to Essex’s defence; he compared the accused first to Cain, then to Pisistratus. The Earl made a pathetic appeal to his judges; Bacon showed he had not answered his objections, and compared him to the Duke of Guise, the most odious comparison he could have instituted. Essex was condemned; the Queen wavered in her resolution to execute him; his friend’s intercession might perhaps have been able to save Essex from an ignominious death. Did Bacon, in his turn, “spend all his power, might, and amity?” The Queen’s Counsel extraordinary might have offended his sovereign by his importunity, and have been forgotten in the impending vacancy of the office of Solicitor-General! Essex died on the scaffold. But the execution rendered the Queen unpopular, and she was received with mournful silence when she appeared in public. She ordered a pamphlet to be written to justify the execution; she made choice of Bacon as the writer; the courtier did not decline the task, but published A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert, late Earle of Essex and his Complices, against her Maiestie and her Kingdoms . This faithless friend, to use the language of Macaulay, “exerted his professional talents to shed the Earl’s blood, and his literary talents to blacken the Earl’s memory.”

The memory of Essex suffered but little from the attack of the pamphlet; the base pamphleteer’s memory is blackened forever, and to his fair name of “the 14 wisest, brightest,” has been appended the “meanest of mankind.” But let us cast a pall over this act, this moral murder, perpetrated by the now degraded orator, degraded philosopher, the now most degraded of men.

Elizabeth died in 1601; and before the arrival of James, in England, Bacon wrote him a pedantic letter, probably to gratify the taste of the pedant king; but he did not forget in it, “his late dear sovereign Mistress—a princess happy in all things, but most happy—in such a successor.”

Bacon solicited the honor of knighthood, a distinction much lavished at this period. At the King’s coronation, he knelt down in company with above three hundred gentlemen; but “he rose Sir Francis.” He sought the hand of a rich alderman’s daughter, Miss Barnham, who consented to become Lady Bacon.

The Earl of Southampton, Shakspeare’s generous patron and friend, who had been convicted of high treason in the late reign, now received the King’s pardon. This called to all men’s minds the fate of the unhappy Earl of Essex, and of his odiously ungrateful accuser; the latter unadvisedly published the Sir Francis Bacon, his Apologie in certaine imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex ; a defence which, in the estimation of one of his biographers, Lord Campbell, has injured him more with posterity than all the attacks of his enemies.

In the new Parliament, he represented the borough 15 of Ipswich; he spoke frequently, and obtained the good graces of the King by the support he gave to James’s favorite plan of a union of England and Scotland; a measure by no means palatable to the King’s new subjects.

The object of all his hopes, the price, perhaps, of his conduct to Essex, seemed in 1606 to be within his reach; but he was once more to be disappointed. His old enemy, Sir Edward Coke, prevented the vacancy. The following year, however, after long and humiliating solicitation, he attained the office to which he had so long aspired, and was appointed Solicitor-General to the Crown.

Official advancement was now the object nearest his heart, and he longed to be Attorney-General. 13

In 1613, by a master stroke of policy, he created a vacancy for himself as Attorney-General, and managed at the same time to disserve his old enemy, Coke, by getting him preferred in rank, but at the expense of considerable pecuniary loss.

After his new appointment, he was reëlected to his seat in the House of Commons; he had gained 16 so much popularity there, that the House admitted him, although it resolved to exclude future Attorneys-General; a resolution rescinded by later Parliaments.

The Attorney-General, as may be supposed, did not lack zeal in his master’s service and for his master’s prerogative. One case, in particular, was atrocious. An aged clergyman, named Peacham, was prosecuted for high treason for a sermon which he had neither preached nor published; the unfortunate old man was apprehended, put to the torture in presence of the Attorney-General, and as the latter himself tells us, was examined “before torture, between torture, and after torture,” although Bacon must have been fully aware that the laws of England did not sanction torture to extort confession. Bacon tampered with the judges, and obtained a conviction; but the government durst not carry the sentence into execution. Peacham languished in prison till the ensuing year, when Providence rescued him from the hands of human justice.

In 1616, Bacon was offered the formal promise of the Chancellorship, or an actual appointment as Privy Councillor; he was too prudent not to prefer an appointment to a promise, and he was accordingly nominated to the functions of member of the Privy Council. His present leisure enabled him to prosecute vigorously his Novum Organum , but he turned aside to occupy himself with a proposition for the amendment of the laws of England, on which 17 Lord Campbell, assuredly the most competent of judges, passes a high encomium.

At length, in 1617, Sir Francis Bacon attained the end of the ambition of his life, he became Lord Keeper of the Seals, with the functions, though not the title, of Lord High Chancellor of England. His promotion to this dignity gave general satisfaction; his own university, Cambridge, congratulated him; Oxford imitated the example; the world expected a perfect judge, formed from his own model in his Essay of Judicature. He took his seat in the Court of Chancery with the utmost pomp and parade.

The Lord Keeper now endeavored to “feed fat the ancient grudge” he bore Coke. He deprived him of the office of Chief Justice, and erased his name from the list of privy councillors. Coke imagined a plan of raising his falling fortunes; he projected a marriage between his daughter by his second wife, a very rich heiress, and Sir John Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, the King’s favorite. Bacon was alarmed, wrote to the King, and used expressions of disparagement towards the favorite, his new patron, to whom he was indebted for the Seals he held. The King and his minion were equally indignant; and they did not conceal from him their resentment. On the return of the court, Bacon hastened to the residence of Buckingham; being denied admittance, he waited two whole days in the ante-chamber with the Great Seal of England in his hand. When at length he obtained access, 18 the Lord Keeper threw himself and the Great Seal on the ground, kissed the favorite’s feet, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven! It must after this have been difficult indeed for him to rise again in the world’s esteem or his own.

Bacon was made to purchase at a dear price his reinstatement in the good graces of Buckingham. The favorite constantly wrote to the judge in behalf of one of the parties, and in the end, says Lord Campbell, intimated that he was to dictate the decree. Nor did Bacon once remonstrate against this unwarrantable interference on the part of the man to whom he had himself recommended “by no means to interpose himself, either by word or letter in any cause depending on any court of justice.” The Lord Keeper received soon after, in 1618, the reward of his “many faithful services” by the higher title of Lord High Chancellor of England, and by the peerage with the name of Baron of Verulam.

The new Minister of Justice lent himself with his wonted complaisance to a most outrageous act of injustice, which Macaulay stigmatizes as a “dastardly murder,” that of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, under a sentence pronounced sixteen years before; Sir Walter having been in the interval invested with the high command of Admiral of the fleet. Such an act it was the imperative duty of the first magistrate of the realm not to promote, but to resist to the full extent of his power; and the Chancellor alone could issue the warrant for the execution!

In 1620, he published what is usually considered his greatest work, his Novum Organum (New Instrument or Method), which forms the second part of the Instauratio Magna (Great Restoration of the Sciences). This work had occupied Bacon’s leisure for nearly thirty years. Such was the care he bestowed on it, that Rawley, his chaplain and biographer, states that he had seen about twelve autograph copies of it, corrected and improved until it assumed the shape in which it appeared. Previous to the publication of the Novum Organum , says the illustrious Sir John Herschel, “natural philosophy, in any legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could hardly be said to exist.” 14

It cannot be expected that a work destined completely to change the state of science, we had almost said of nature, should not be assailed by that prejudice which is ever ready to raise its loud but unmeaning voice against whatever is new, how great or good soever it may be. Bacon’s doctrine was accused of being calculated to produce “dangerous revolutions,” to “subvert governments and the authority of religion.” Some called on the present age and posterity to rise high in their resentment against “the Bacon-faced generation,” for so were the experimentalists termed. The old cry of irreligion, nay, even of atheism, was raised against the man who had said: “I would rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that 20 this universal frame is without a mind.” 15 But Bacon had to encounter the prejudices even of the learned. Cuffe, the Earl of Essex’s secretary, a man celebrated for his attainments, said of the Instauratio Magna , “a fool could not have written such a book, and a wise man would not.” King James said, it was “like the peace of God, that surpasseth all understanding.” And even Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, said to Aubrey: “Bacon is no great philosopher; he writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor.” Rawley, his secretary and his biographer, laments, some years after his friend’s death, that “his fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence: A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house.” Bacon was for some time without honor “in his own country and in his own house.” But truth on this, as on all other occasions, triumphs in the end. Bacon’s assailants are forgotten; Bacon will be remembered with gratitude and veneration forever.

He was again, in 1621, promoted in the peerage to be Viscount Saint-Albans; his patent particularly celebrating his “integrity in the administration of justice.”

In this same year the Parliament assembled. The House of Commons first voted the subsidies demanded by the Crown, and next proceeded, as was 21 usual in those times, to the redress of grievances. A committee of the House was appointed to inquire into “the abuses of Courts of Justice.” A report of this committee charged the Lord Chancellor with corruption, and specified two cases; in the first of which Aubrey, a suitor in his court, stated that he had presented the Lord Chancellor with a hundred pounds; and Egerton, another suitor in his court, with four hundred pounds in addition to a former piece of plate of the value of fifty pounds; in both cases decisions had been given against the parties whose presents had been received. (Lord Campbell asserts that in the case of Egerton both parties had made the Chancellor presents.) 16 His enemies, it is said, estimated his illicit gains at a hundred thousand pounds; a statement which, it is more than probable, is greatly exaggerated. 17 “I never had,” said Bacon in his defence, “bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced sentence or order.” This is an acknowledgment of the fact, and perhaps an aggravation of the offence. He 22 then addressed “an humble submission” to the House, a kind of general admission, in which he invoked as a plea of excuse vitia temporis .

How widely different from this is his own language! It is fair justice to appeal from the judge to the tribunal of the philosopher and moralist; it is appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; unhappily it is likewise

He says, in his Essay of Great Place: “For corruption: do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servant’s hands from taking, but bind the hands of suitors from offering. For integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion.” 18 He says again, in the same Essay: “Set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow them.”

But the allegation that it was a custom of the times requires examination. It was a custom of the times in reality to make presents to superiors. Queen Elizabeth received them as New Year’s gifts from functionaries of all ranks, from her prime minister down to Charles Smith, the dust-man (see note 1, page 7), and this custom probably continued under her successor, and may have been applied to other high functionaries, but it does not appear to have 23 been in legitimate use in the courts of judicature. Coke, himself Chief Justice, was Bacon’s principal accuser; and, although an enemy, he has been said to have conducted himself with moderation and propriety on this occasion only. Lord Campbell, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, and author of the Lives of the Chancellors and Chief Justices of England , repels the plea, as inadmissible. It cannot be denied that if Bacon extended the practice to the courts of justice, he has heaped coals of fire on his head; for applied to his own case personally it would be sufficiently odious; but what odium would not that man deserve who should systematize, nay, legitimize a practice that must inevitably poison the stream of justice at its fountain-head! What execration could be too great, if that man were the most intelligent, the wisest of his century, one of the most dignified in rank in the land, clad in spotless ermine, the emblem of purity, in short, the Minister of Justice!

The Lords resolved that Bacon should be called upon to put in a particular answer to each of the special charges preferred against him. The formal articles with proofs in support were communicated to him. The House received the “confession and humble submission of me, the Lord Chancellor.” In this document, Bacon acknowledges himself to be guilty of corruption; and in reply to each special charge admits in every instance the receipt of money or valuable things from the suitors in his court; but alleging in some cases that it was after judgment, 24 or as New Year’s gifts, a custom of the times, or for prior services. A committee of nine temporal and three spiritual lords was appointed to ascertain whether it was he who had subscribed this document. The committee repaired to his residence, were received in the hall where he had been accustomed to sit as judge, and merely asked him if the signature affixed to the paper they exhibited to him was his. He passionately exclaimed: “My lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” The committee withdrew, overwhelmed with grief at the sight of such greatness so fallen.

Four commissioners dispatched by the King demanded the Great Seal of the Chancellor, confined to his bed by sickness and sorrow and want of sustenance; for he refused to take any food. He hid his face in his hand, and delivered up that Great Seal for the attainment of which he “had sullied his integrity, had resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with judges, had tortured prisoners, had plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men.” 19

All this he did to be Lord High Chancellor of England; and, had he not been the unworthy min 25 ister of James, he might have been, to use the beautiful language of Hallam, “the high-priest of nature.”

On the 3d of May, he was unanimously declared to be guilty, and he was sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure, to be incapable of holding any public office, and of sitting in Parliament or of coming within the verge of the court. 20 Such was the sentence pronounced on the man whom three months before the King delighted to honor for “his integrity in the administration of justice.”

The fatal verdict affected his health so materially that the judgment could not receive immediate execution; he could not be conveyed to the Tower until the 31st of May; the following day he was liberated. He repaired to the house of Sir John Vaughan, who held a situation in the prince’s household. 21 He wished to retire to his own residence at York House; but this was refused. He was ordered to proceed to his seat at Gorhambury, whence he was not to remove, and where he remained, though very reluctantly, till the ensuing spring.

The heavy fine was remitted. But as he had 26 lived in great pomp, he had economized naught from his legitimate or ill-gotten gains. As he was now insolvent, a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was bestowed on him; from his estate and other revenues he derived thirteen hundred pounds per annum more. On the 17th of October, his remaining penalties were remitted. It cannot but strike the reader as a most remarkable circumstance that, within eighteen months of the condemnation, all the penalties were successively remitted. Would this induce the belief that he was but the scape-goat of the court, that the condemnation was purely political? It is, we believe, to be explained ostensibly by the advanced age of Bacon, but really by the circumstance that the King’s favorite, Buckingham, was an accomplice.

Bacon discovered, alas! when it was too late, that the talent God had given him he had “misspent in things for which he was least fit;” or as Thomson has beautifully expressed it: 22 —

It is gratifying to turn from the melancholy scenes exhibited by the political life of Bacon, to behold him 27 in his study in the deep search of truth; no contrast is more striking than that between the chancellor and the philosopher, or, as Macaulay has well termed it, “Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals—Bacon in speculation, and Bacon in action.” From amidst clouds and darkness we emerge into the full blaze and splendor of midday light.

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.

Here the writer yielded not to vitia temporis ; but combated them with might and main, with heart and soul.

In 1623, he published the Life of Henry VII. In a letter addressed to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: “’Time was I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor.” But his honor without leisure had precipitated him into “bottomless perdition;” his leisure without honor retrieved his name, and raised him again to an unattainable height.

In the following year, he printed his Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning , under the title of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum .

This was not, however, a mere translation; for he made in it omissions and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter; in short, he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted in France in 1624, one year after its appearance in England. It was immediately translated into French and Italian, and was published in Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 1645, 1650, and 1662.

In 1624, he solicited of the King a remission of the sentence, to the end, says he, “that blot of ignominy may be removed from me and from my memory with posterity.” The King granted him a full pardon. But he never more took his seat in the House of Lords. When the new Parliament met, after the accession of Charles the First, age, infirmity, and tardy wisdom had extinguished the ambition of Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. When the writ of summons to the Parliament reached him, he exclaimed: “I have done with such vanities!”

But the philosopher pursued his labor of love. He published new editions of his writings, and translated them into Latin, from the mistaken notion that in that language alone could they be rescued from oblivion. His crabbed latinity is now read but by few, or even may be said to be nearly forgotten; while his noble, majestic English is read over the 29 whole British empire, on which the sun never sets, is studied and admired throughout the old world and the new, and it will be so by generations still unborn; it will descend to posterity in company with his contemporary, Shakspeare (whose name he never mentions), and will endure as long as the great and glorious language itself; indeed, as he foretold of his Essays, it “will live as long as books last.”

In the translation of his works into Latin, he was assisted by Rawley, his future biographer, and his two friends, Ben Jonson, the poet, and Hobbes, the philosopher.

He wrote for his “own recreation,” amongst very serious studies, a Collection of Apophthegms, New and Old , said to have been dictated in one rainy day, but probably the result of several “rainy days.” This contains many excellent jocular anecdotes, and has been, perhaps, with too much indulgence, pronounced by Macaulay to be the best jest-book in the world.

He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England , but he soon discontinued it, because it was “a work of assistance, and that which he could not master by his own forces and pen.” James the First had not sufficient elevation of mind to afford him the means of securing the assistance he required.

He wrote his will with his own hand on the 19th of December, 1625. He directs that he shall be interred in St. Michael’s Church, near St. Albans: “There was my mother buried, and it is the parish 30 church of my mansion-house at Gorhambury.... For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.” This supreme act of filial piety towards his gifted mother is affecting. Let no “uncharitable” word be uttered over his last solemn behest; foreign nations and all ages will not refuse a tribute of homage to his genius! Gassendi presents an analysis of his labors, and pays a tribute of admiration to their author; Descartes has mentioned him with encomium; Malebranche quotes him as an authority; Puffendorff expressed admiration of him; the University of Oxford presented to him, after his fall, an address, in which he is termed “a mighty Hercules, who had by his own hand greatly advanced those pillars in the learned world which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable.” Leibnitz ascribed to him the revival of true philosophy; Newton had studied him so closely that he adopted even his phraseology; Voltaire and D’Alembert have rendered him popular in France. The modern philosophers of all Europe regard him reverentially as the father of experimental philosophy.

He attempted at this late period of his life a metrical translation into English of the Psalms of David; although his prose is full of poetry, his verse has but little of the divine art.

He again declined to take his seat as a peer in Charles’s second Parliament; but the last stage of his life displayed more dignity and real greatness 31 than the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” of his high offices and honors. The public of England and of “foreign nations” forgot the necessity of “charitable speeches” and anticipated “the next ages.” The most distinguished foreigners repaired to Gray’s Inn to pay their respects to him. The Marquis d’Effiat, who brought over to England the Princess Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles the First, went to see him. Bacon, confined to his bed, but unwilling to decline the visit, received him with the curtains drawn. “You resemble the angels,” said the French minister to him, “we hear those beings continually talked of; we believe them superior to mankind; and we never have the consolation to see them.”

But in ill health and infirmity he continued his studies and experiments; as it occurred to him that snow might preserve animal substances from putrefaction as well as salt, he tried the experiment, and stuffed a fowl with snow with his own hands. “The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to become its martyr;” he took cold. From his bed he dictated a letter to the Earl of Arundel, to whose house he had been conveyed. “I was likely to have had the fortune of Caïus Plinius the Elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mount Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently 32 well.” He had, indeed, the fortune of Pliny the Elder; for he never recovered from the effects of his cold, which brought on fever and a complaint of the chest; and he expired on the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Thus died, a victim to his devotion to science, Francis Bacon, whose noble death is an expiation of the errors of his life, and who was, as has been justly observed, notwithstanding all his faults, one of the greatest ornaments and benefactors of the human race.

No account has been preserved of his funeral; but probably it was private. Sir Thomas Meautys, his faithful secretary, erected at his own expense a monument to Bacon’s memory. Bacon is represented sitting, reclining on his hand, and absorbed in meditation. The effigy bears the inscription: sic sedebat .

The singular fact ought not to be omitted, that notwithstanding the immense sums that had been received by him, legitimately or otherwise, he died insolvent. The fault of his life had been that he never adapted his expenses to his income; perhaps even he never calculated them. To what irretrievable ruin did not this lead him? To disgrace and dishonor, in the midst of his career; to insolvency at its end. His love of worldly grandeur was uncontrollable, or at least uncontrolled. “The virtue of prosperity is temperance,” says he himself; but this virtue he did not possess. His stately bark rode proudly over the waves, unmindful of the rocks; on one of these, alas! it split and foundered.

Bacon was very prepossessing in his person; he was in stature above the middle size; his forehead was broad and high, of an intellectual appearance; his eye was lively and expressive; and his countenance bore early the marks of deep thought.

It might be mentioned here with instruction to the reader, that few men were more impressed than Bacon with the value of time, the most precious element of life. He assiduously employed the smallest portions of it; considering justly that the days, the hours, nay minutes of existence require the greatest care at our hands; the weeks, months, and years have been wisely said to take care of themselves. His chaplain, Rawley, remarks: “ Nullum momentum aut temporis segmentum perire et intercidere passus est ,” he suffered no moment nor fragment of time to pass away unprofitably. It is this circumstance that explains to us the great things he accomplished even in the most busy part of his life.

The whole of Bacon’s biography has been admirably recapitulated by Lord Campbell 23 in the following paragraph:—

“We have seen him taught his alphabet by his mother; patted on the head by Queen Elizabeth; mocking the worshippers of Aristotle at Cambridge; catching the first glimpses of his great discoveries, and yet uncertain whether the light was from heaven; associating with the learned and the gay at the court of France; devoting himself to Bracton 24 and 34 the Year Books in Gray’s Inn; throwing aside the musty folios of the law to write a moral Essay, to make an experiment in natural philosophy, or to detect the fallacies which had hitherto obstructed the progress of useful truth; contented for a time with taking “all knowledge for his province;” roused from these speculations by the stings of vulgar ambition; plying all the arts of flattery to gain official advancement by royal and courtly favor; entering the House of Commons, and displaying powers of oratory of which he had been unconscious; being seduced by the love of popular applause, for a brief space becoming a patriot; making amends, by defending all the worst excesses of prerogative; publishing to the world lucubrations on morals, which show the nicest perception of what is honorable and beautiful as well as prudent, in the conduct of life; yet the son of a Lord Keeper, the nephew of the prime minister, a Queen’s counsel, with the first practice at the bar, arrested for debt, and languishing in a spunging-house; tired with vain solicitations to his own kindred for promotion, joining the party of their opponent, and after experiencing the most generous kindness from the young and chivalrous head of it, assisting to bring him to the scaffold, and to blacken his memory; seeking, by a mercenary marriage to repair his broken fortunes; on the accession of a new sovereign offering up the most servile adulation to a pedant whom he utterly despised; infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down, with three hundred others, to receive the honor of knighthood; truckling to a worthless favorite with the most slavish subserviency that he might be appointed a law-officer of the Crown; then giving the most admirable advice for the compilation and emendation of the laws of England, and helping to inflict torture on a poor parson whom he wished to hang as a traitor for writing an unpublished and 35 unpreached sermon; attracting the notice of all Europe by his philosophical works, which established a new era in the mode of investigating the phenomena both of matter and mind; basely intriguing in the meanwhile for further promotion, and writing secret letters to his sovereign to disparage his rivals; riding proudly between the Lord High Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal, preceded by his mace-bearer and purse-bearer, and followed by a long line of nobles and judges, to be installed in the office of Lord High Chancellor; by and by, settling with his servants the account of the bribes they had received for him; a little embarrassed by being obliged, out of decency, the case being so clear, to decide against the party whose money he had pocketed, but stifling the misgivings of conscience by the splendor and flattery which he now commanded; struck to the earth by the discovery of his corruption; taking to his bed, and refusing sustenance; confessing the truth of the charges brought against him, and abjectly imploring mercy; nobly rallying from his disgrace, and engaging in new literary undertakings, which have added to the splendor of his name; still exhibiting a touch of his ancient vanity, and, in the midst of pecuniary embarrassment, refusing to ‘be stripped of his feathers;’ 25 inspired, nevertheless, with all his youthful zeal for science, in conducting his last experiment of ‘stuffing a fowl with snow to preserve it,’ which succeeded ‘excellently well,’ but brought him to his grave; and, as the closing act of a life so checkered, making his will, whereby, conscious of the shame he had incurred among his contemporaries, but impressed with a swelling conviction of what he had achieved for mankind, he bequeathed his ‘name and memory to men’s charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages.’”

After this brilliant recapitulation of the principal facts of Bacon’s eventful life, there remains the 36 difficult task of examining his character as a writer and philosopher; and then of presenting some observations on his principal works. As these subjects have occupied the attention of the master minds and most elegant writers of England, we shall unhesitatingly present the reader with the opinions of these, the most competent judges in each special department.

But first, let the philosopher speak for himself.

The end and aim of the writings of Bacon are best described by himself, as these descriptions may be gleaned from his various works. He taught, to use his own language, the means, not of the “amplification of the power of one man over his country, nor of the amplification of the power of that country over other nations; but the amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over the world.” 26 “A restitution of man to the sovereignty of nature.” 27 “The enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.” 28 From the enlargement of reason, he did not separate the growth of virtue; for he thought that “truth and goodness were one, differing but as the seal and the print, for truth prints goodness.” 29

The art which Bacon taught, has been well said to be “the art of inventing arts.”

The great qualities of his mind, as they are exhibited in his works, have been well portrayed by the 37 pen of Sir James Mackintosh. We subjoin the opinion of this elegant writer in his own words:

“It is easy to describe his transcendent merit in general terms of commendation: for some of his great qualities lie on the surface of his writings. But that in which he most excelled all other men, was in the range and compass of his intellectual view—the power of contemplating many and distant objects together, without indistinctness or confusion—which he himself has called the discursive or comprehensive understanding. This wide-ranging intellect was illuminated by the brightest Fancy that ever contented itself with the office of only ministering to Reason: and from this singular relation of the two grand faculties of man, it has resulted, that his philosophy, though illustrated still more than adorned by the utmost splendor of imagery, continues still subject to the undivided supremacy of intellect. In the midst of all the prodigality of an imagination which, had it been independent, would have been poetical, his opinions remained severely rational. “It is not so easy to conceive, or at least to describe, other equally essential elements of his greatness, and conditions of his success. He is probably a single instance of a mind which, in philosophizing, always reaches the point of elevation whence the whole prospect is commanded, without ever rising to such a distance as to lose a distinct perception of every part of it.” 30

Mr. Macaulay speaks of the following peculiarity of Bacon’s understanding: 31 —

“With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human being. The small fine mind of La Bruyère had not a more delicate tact than the large intel 38 lect of Bacon. The “Essays” contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to prince Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of the lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade. “In keenness of observation he has been equalled, though, perhaps, never surpassed. But the largeness of his mind was all his own. The glance with which he surveyed the intellectual universe, resembled that which the archangel, from the golden threshold of heaven, darted down into the new creation.

Bacon’s philosophy is, to use an expression of his own, “the servant and interpreter of nature;” he cultivated it in the leisure left him by the assiduous study and practice of the law and by the willing duties of a courtier; it was rather the recreation than the business of his life; “my business,” said he, “found rest in my contemplations;” but his very recreations rendered him, according to Leibnitz, the father of experimental philosophy, and, according to all, the originator of all its results, of all later discoveries in chemistry and the arts, in short, of all modern science and its applications.

Mr. Macaulay is of opinion that the two leading principles of his philosophy are utility and progress ; that the ethics of his inductive method are to do good, to do more and more good, to mankind.

Lord Campbell believes that a most perfect body of ethics might be made out from the writings of Bacon.

The origin of his philosophy was the conviction with which he was impressed of the insufficiency of that of the ancients, or rather of that of Aristotle, which reigned with almost undisputed sway throughout Europe. He reverenced antiquity for its great works, its great men; but not because of its ancientness; he deemed its decrees worthy of reverential consideration, but did not think they admitted of no appeal; he was not a bigot to antiquity or a contemner of modern times. He happily combated that undue and blind submission to the authority of ancient times for the mere reason that they are older than our own, alleging truly that “ ANTIQUITAS SECULI JUVENTUS MUNDI , that our times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient, ordine retrogrado , by a computation backward from ourselves.” 32

Throwing off, then, all allegiance to antiquity, he appealed directly from Aristotle to nature, from reasoning to experiment.

But let us invoke the testimony of an eminent philosopher, Sir John Herschel:—

“By the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the errors of the Aristotelian philosophy were effectually overturned on a plain appeal to the facts of nature; but it remained to show, on broad and general principles, how and why Aristotle was in the wrong; to set in evidence the peculiar weakness of his method of philosophizing, and to substitute in its place a stronger and better. This important task was executed by Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, who will therefore justly be looked upon in all future ages as the great reformer of philosophy, though his own actual contributions to the stock of physical truths were small, and his ideas of particular points strongly tinctured with mistakes and errors, which were the fault rather of the general want of physical information of the age than of any narrowness of view on his own part; of this he was fully aware. It has been attempted by some to lessen the merit of this great achievement, by showing that the inductive method had been practised in many instances, both ancient and modern, by the mere instinct of mankind; but it is not the introduction of inductive reasoning, as a new and hitherto untried process, which characterizes the Baconian philosophy, but his keen perception, and his broad and spirit-stirring, almost enthusiastic, announcement of its paramount importance, as the alpha and omega of science, as the grand and only chain for the linking together of physical truths, and the eventual key to every discovery and every application. Those who would deny him his just glory on such grounds would refuse to Jenner or to Howard their civic crowns, because a few farmers in a remote province had, time out of mind, been acquainted with vaccination, or philanthropists, in all ages, had occasionally visited the prisoner in his dungeon.” “It is to our immortal countryman Bacon,” says he, again, “that we owe the broad announcement of this grand and fertile principle; and the development of the idea, that the whole of natural philosophy consists entirely of a series of 41 inductive generalizations, commencing with the most circumstantially stated particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or axioms, which comprehend in their statements every subordinate degree of generality and of a corresponding series of inverted reasoning from generals to particulars, by which these axioms are traced back into their remotest consequences, and all particular propositions deduced from them, as well those by whose immediate consideration we rose to their discovery, as those of which we had no previous knowledge.... “It would seem that a union of two qualities almost opposite to each other—a going forth of the thoughts in two directions, and a sudden transfer of ideas from a remote station in one to an equally distant one in the other—is required to start the first idea of applying science . Among the Greeks, this point was attained by Archimedes, but attained too late, on the eve of that great eclipse of science which was destined to continue for nearly eighteen centuries, till Galileo in Italy, and Bacon in England, at once dispelled the darkness; the one, by his inventions and discoveries; the other, by the irresistible force of his arguments and eloquence.” 33

His style is copious, comprehensive, and smooth; it does not flow with the softness of the purling rill, but rather with the strength, fulness, and swelling of a majestic river, and the rude harmony of the mountain stream. His images are replete with poetry and thought; they always illustrate his subject. Hallam is of opinion that the modern writer that comes nearest to him is Burke. “He had,” said Addison, “the sound, distinct, comprehensive knowledge of Aristotle, with all the beautiful lights, graces, and 42 embellishments of Cicero. One does not know which to admire most in his writings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of imagination.” 34

Bacon improved so much the melody, elegance, and force of English prose, that we may apply to him what was said of Augustus with regard to Rome: lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit ; he found it brick, and he left it marble. Mr. Hallam’s opinion differs somewhat from this; it is as follows:—

“The style of Bacon has an idiosyncrasy which we might expect from his genius. It can rarely indeed happen, and only in men of secondary talents, that the language they use is not, by its very choice and collocation, as well as its meaning, the representative of an individuality that distinguishes their turn of thought. Bacon is elaborate, sententious, often witty, often metaphorical; nothing could be spared; his analogies are generally striking and novel; his style is clear, precise, forcible; yet there is some degree of stiffness about it, and in mere language he is inferior to Raleigh.” 35

It is a most remarkable characteristic of Bacon, and one in which Burke resembled him, that his imagination grew stronger with his increasing years, and his style richer and softer. “The fruit came first,” says Mr. Macaulay, “and remained till the last; the blossoms did not appear till late. In eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration, his later writings are far 43 superior to those of his youth.” His earliest Essays have as much truth and cogent reasoning as his latest; but these are far superior in grace and beauty. A most striking illustration of this is afforded by one of the last Essays, added a year before Bacon’s death, that of Adversity (Essay V.), than which naught can be more graceful and beautiful.

The account of Bacon’s works will necessarily be very succinct, and, we fear, imperfect. We shall, however, for each of them, call in the aid of the most competent judges, whose award public opinion will not reverse.

Bacon published his Essays in 1597. They were, in the estimation of Mr. Hallam, the first in time and in excellence of English writings on moral prudence. Of the fifty-eight Essays, of which the work is now composed, ten only appeared in the first edition. But to these were added Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, Seene and allowed ; many of which were afterwards embodied in the Essays. These Essays were: 1. Of Studie; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Sutors; 6. Of Expence; 7. Of Regiment of Health; 8. Of Honor and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of Negociating. In the edition of 1612, “The Essaies of S r Francis Bacon Knight, the King’s Atturny Generall,” were increased to forty-one.

The new Essays added are: 1. Of Religion; 2. Of Death; 3. Of Goodnesse, and Goodnesse of Nature; 4. Of Cunning; 5. Of Marriage and Single Life; 6. Of Parents and Children; 7. Of Nobility; 8. Of Great Place; 9. Of Empire; 10. Of Counsell; 11. Of Dispatch; 12. Of Love; 13. Of Friendship; 14. Of Atheism; 15. Of Superstition; 16. Of Wisedome for a Man’s selfe; 20. Of seeming wise; 21. Of Riches; 22. Of Ambition; 23. Of Young Men and Age; 24. Of Beauty; 25. Of Deformity; 26. Of Nature in Men; 27. Of Custom and Education; 28. Of Fortune; 35. Of Praise; 36. Of Judicature; 37. of Vaine-Glory; 38. Of Greatnesse of Kingdomes; 39. Of the Publique; 40. Of Warre and Peace.

These forty-one Essays were afterwards again augmented to fifty-eight, with the new title of The Essaies or Covnsels, Civill and Morall ; they were likewise improved by corrections, additions, and illustrations. By the peculiarity of Bacon, already noticed, the later Essays rise in beauty and interest.

Bacon considered his Essays but as “the recreations of his other studies.” He has entitled them, in the Latin translation, Sermones fideles, sive Interiora rerum . The idea of them, as has been already mentioned, was suggested by those of Montaigne; but there is but little resemblance between the two productions. Montaigne is natural, ingenuous, sportive. Bacon’s “ Essays or Counsels, civil and moral ,” “the fragments of his conceits,” as he styles them, are all study, art, and gravity; but the reflections in them 45 are true and profound. Montaigne confessedly painted himself, declared that he was the matter of his own book, 36 while with Bacon the man was merged in the author and the philosopher, who propounded like Seneca, and somewhat in Seneca’s style, the maxims of practical wisdom, that, to use Bacon’s own language, “come home to men’s business and bosoms,” and clothed them in a garb, new, elegant, and rich, hitherto unknown in England. But our author, if we may judge by the matter and even manner of his Essays, may have had in view, not so much Montaigne’s Essais as Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius . The Essay of Death is obviously founded on Seneca’s Epistles on this subject. That he was well acquainted with Seneca’s Letters , is incontrovertible. He alludes to them thus in the dedication to Prince Henry, in 1612: “The word (Essays),” says he, “is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca’s Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but Essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles.” Bacon justly foretold of his Essays that they “would live as long as books last.”

The following is the opinion of Dugald Stewart, himself an eminent philosopher and elegant writer:

“His Essays are the best known and most popular of all his works. It is also 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 triteness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon’s writings, and only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties.” 37

The reader will, perhaps, be rather gratified than wearied with another appreciation of this valuable production of our young moralist of twenty-six. It is of no incompetent judge,—Mr. Hallam.

“The transcendent strength of Bacon’s mind is visible in the whole tenor of these Essays, unequal as they must be from the very nature of such compositions. They are deeper and more discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later work in the English language, full of recondite observation, long matured and carefully sifted. It is true that we might wish for more vivacity and ease; Bacon, who had much wit, had little gayety; his Essays are consequently stiff and grave where the subject might have been touched with a lively hand; thus it is in those on Gardens and on Building. The sentences have sometimes too apophthegmatic a form and want coherence; the historical instances, though far less frequent than with Montaigne, have a little the look of pedantry to our eyes. But it is from this condensation, from this 47 gravity, that the work derives its peculiar impressiveness. Few books are more quoted, and what is not always the case with such books, we may add that few are more generally read. In this respect they lead the van of our prose literature; for no gentleman is ashamed of owning that he has not read the Elizabethan writers; but it would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted with the Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to read this or any other book for reputation sake; but very few in our language so well repay the pains, or afford more nourishment to the thoughts. They might be judiciously introduced, with a small number more, into a sound method of education, one that should make wisdom, rather than mere knowledge, its object, and might become a text-book of examination in our schools.” 38

ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.

The Advancement of Learning was published in 1605. It has usually been considered that the whole of Bacon’s philosophy is contained in this work, excepting, however, the second book of the Novum Organum . Of the Advancement of Learning he made a Latin translation, under the title of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum , which, however, contains about one third of new matter and some slight interpolations; a few omissions have been remarked in it.

The Advancement of Learning is, as it were, to use his own language, “a small globe of the 48 intellectual world, as truly and faithfully as I could discover with a note and description of those facts which seem to me not constantly occupate or not well converted by the labor of man. In which, if I have in any point receded from that which is commonly received, it hath been with a purpose of proceeding in melius and not in aliud , a mind of amendment and proficience, and not of change and difference. For I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others, but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me.”

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. Our author states the deficiencies he observes in each.

All the peculiar qualities of his style are fully developed in this noble monument of genius, one of the finest in English, or perhaps any other language; it is full of deep thought, keen observation, rich imagery, Attic wit, and apt illustration. Dugald Stewart and Hallam have both expressed their just admiration of the short paragraph on poesy; but, with all due deference, we must consider that the beautiful passage on the dignity and excellency of 49 knowledge is surpassed by none. Can aught excel the noble comparison of the ship? The reader shall judge for himself.

“If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?”

DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM.

The Wisdom of the Ancients , or rather, De sapientia veterum (for it was written in Latin), is a short treatise on the mythology of the ancients, by which Bacon endeavors to discover and to show the physical, moral, and political meanings it concealed. If the reader is not convinced that the ancients understood by these fables all that Bacon discovers in them, he must at least admit the probability of it, and be impressed with the penetration of the author and the variety and depth of his knowledge.

INSTAURATIO MAGNA.

The Instauratio Magna was published in 1620, while Bacon was still chancellor.

In his dedication of it to James the First, in 1620, in which he says he has been engaged in it nearly thirty years, he pathetically remarks: “The reason 50 why I have published it now, specially being imperfect, is, to speak plainly, because I number my days, and would have it saved.” His country and the world participate in the opinion of the philosopher, and would have deemed its loss one of the greatest to mankind.

Such was the care with which it was composed, that Bacon transcribed it twelve times with his own hand.

It is divided into six parts. The first entitled Partitiones Scientiarum , or the divisions of knowledge possessed by mankind, in which the author has noted the deficiencies and imperfections of each. This he had already accomplished by his Advancement of Learning .

Part 2 is the Novum Organum Scientiarum , or new method of studying the sciences, a name probably suggested by Aristotle’s Organon (treatises on Logic). He intended it to be “the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things and of the true end of understanding.” This has been generally denominated the inductive method , i. e. the experimental method, from the principle of induction , or bringing together facts and drawing from them general principles or truths, by which the author proposes the advancement of all kinds of knowledge. In this consists preëminently the philosophy of Bacon. Not reasoning upon conjecture on the laws and properties of nature, but, as Bacon quaintly terms it, “asking 51 questions of nature,” that is, making experiments, laboriously collecting facts first, and, after a sufficient number has been brought together, then forming systems or theories founded on them.

But this work is rather the summary of a more extensive one he designed, the aphorisms of it being rather, according to Hallam, “the heads or theses of chapters.” But some of these principles are of paramount importance. An instance may be afforded of this, extracted from the “Interpretation of Nature, and Man’s dominion over it.” It is the very first sentence in the Novum Organum . “Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, can only understand and act in proportion as he observes and contemplates the order of nature; more, he can neither know nor do.” This, as has justly been observed, is undoubtedly the foundation of all our real knowledge.

The Novum Organum is so important, that we deem it desirable to present some more detailed accounts of it.

The body of the work is divided into two parts; the former of which is intended to serve as an introduction to the other, a preparation of the mind for receiving the doctrine.

Bacon begins by endeavoring to remove the prejudices and to obtain fair attention to his doctrine. He compares philosophy to “a vast pyramid, which ought to have the history of nature for its basis;” he likens those who strive to erect by the force of abstract speculation to the giants of old, who, 52 according to the poets, endeavored to throw Mount Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa. The method of “anticipating nature,” he denounces “as rash, hasty, and unphilosophical;” whereas, “interpretations of nature, or real truths arrived at by deduction, cannot so suddenly arrest the mind; and when the conclusion actually arrives, it may so oppose prejudice, and appear so paradoxical as to be in danger of not being received, notwithstanding the evidence that supports it, like mysteries of faith.”

Bacon first attacks the “Idols of the Mind,” i. e. the great sources of prejudice, then the different false philosophical theories; he afterwards proceeds to show what are the characteristics of false systems, the causes of error in philosophy, and lastly the grounds of hope regarding the advancement of science.

He now aspires, to use his own language, “only to sow the seeds of pure truth for posterity, and not to be wanting in his assistance to the first beginning of great undertakings.” “Let the human race,” says he further, “regain their dominion over nature, which belongs to them by the bounty of their Maker, and right reason and sound religion will direct the use.”

The second part of the Novum Organum may be divided into three sections. The first is on the discovery of forms, i. e. causes in nature. The second section is composed of tables illustrative of the inductive method, and the third and last is 53 styled the doctrine of instances , i. e. facts regarding the discovery of causes.

Part the third of the Instauratio Magna was to be a Natural History, as he termed it, or rather a history of natural substances, in which the art of man had been employed, which would have been a history of universal nature.

Part 4, to be called Scala intellectus , or Intellectual Ladder , was intended to be, to use his own words, “types and models which place before our eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of truth, selecting various and remarkable instances.”

He had designed in the fifth part to give specimens of the new philosophy; a few fragments only of this have been published. It was to be “the fragment of interest till the principal could be raised.”

The sixth and last part was “to display a perfect system of philosophy deduced and confirmed by a legitimate, sober, and exact inquiry according to the method he had laid down and invented.” “To perfect this last part,” says Bacon, “is above our powers and beyond our hopes.”

Let us return, however, for a moment to the commencement, to remark that he concludes the introduction by an eloquent prayer that his exertions may be rendered effectual to the attainment of truth and happiness. But he feels his own inability, for “his days are numbered,” to conduct mankind to the hoped for goal. It was given to him to point out the road to the promised land; but, 54 like Moses, after having descried it from afar, it was denied him to enter the land to which he had led the way.

LIFE OF HENRY VII.

The Life of Henry VII. , published in 1622, is, in the opinion of Hallam, “the first instance in our language of the application of philosophy to reasoning on public events in the manner of the ancients and the Italians. Praise upon Henry is too largely bestowed; but it was in the nature of Bacon to admire too much a crafty and selfish policy; and he thought also, no doubt, that so near an ancestor of his own sovereign should not be treated with severe impartiality.” 39

His Letters published in his works are numerous; they are written in a stiff, ungraceful, formal style; but still, they frequently bear the impress of the writer’s greatness and genius. Fragments of them have been frequently quoted in the course of this notice; they have, perhaps, best served to exhibit more fully the man in all the relations of his public and private life.

MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.

Amongst his miscellaneous papers there was found after his death a remarkable prayer, which Addison 55 deemed sufficiently beautiful to be published in the Tatler 40 for Christmas, 1710. We extract a passage or two, that may serve to illustrate Bacon’s position or his character.

“I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men. If any have been my enemies, I thought not of them, neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness.” “Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea? Earth, heaven, and all these are nothing to thy mercies.”

Addison observes of this prayer, that for elevation of thought and greatness of expression, “it seems—rather the devotion of an angel than a man.”

In taking leave of the life and the works of the greatest of philosophers, and alas! the least of men, we have endeavored to present a succinct but faithful narrative—“his glory not extenuated wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered” merited obloquy with his own contemporaries and all posterity. Our endeavor has been

But his failings, great as they were, are forgotten through his transcendent merit; his faults injured but few, and in his own time alone; his genius has benefited all mankind. The new direction he gave to philosophy was the indirect cause of all the modern 56 conquests of science over matter, or, as it were, over nature. What it has already accomplished, and may yet effect for the whole human race, is incalculable. Macaulay, the historian of England, has been likewise the eloquent narrator of the progress, that owes its origin to the genius of Francis Bacon.

“Ask a follower of Bacon,” says Macaulay, “what the new philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready: ‘It hath lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscle; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land on cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.’” 41

I.—OF TRUTH.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; 42 and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. 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. One of the later schools 43 of the Grecians examineth 58 the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, 44 in great severity, called poesy “vinum dæmonum,” 45 because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. 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, 59 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. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; 46 the last was the light of reason; 47 and his sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet 48 that beautified the sect, 49 that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: “It is a 60 pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth” (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), “and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below;” 50 so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin 61 of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne 51 saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge: saith he, “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man;” surely, the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that, when “Christ cometh,” he shall not “find faith upon the earth.” 52

II.—OF DEATH. 53

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars’ books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger’s end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb, for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, “Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa.” 54 Groans and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks 55 and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion 63 in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. 56 Nay, Seneca 57 adds niceness and satiety: “Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non tantum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest.” 58 A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. It is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good spirits the approaches of death make: for they appear to be the same men till the last instant. Augustus Cæsar died in a compliment: “Livia, conjugii nostri memor, vive et vale.” 59 Tiberius in dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him, “Jam Tiberium vires et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant:” 60 Vespasian in a jest, sitting 64 upon the stool, 61 “Ut puto Deus fio;” 62 Galba with a sentence, “Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani,” 63 holding forth his neck; Septimus Severus in dispatch, “Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum,” 64 and the like. Certainly, the Stoics 65 bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better, saith he, “qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponit naturæ.” 66 It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that 65 is wounded in hot blood, who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is “Nunc dimittis,” 67 when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy: “Extinctus amabitur idem.” 68

III.—OF UNITY IN RELIGION.

Religion being the chief band of human society, it is a happy thing when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief; for you may imagine what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church were the poets. 66 But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore his worship and religion will endure no mixture nor partner. We shall therefore speak a few words concerning the unity of the church; what are the fruits thereof; what the bounds; and what the means.

The fruits of unity (next unto the well-pleasing of God, which is all in all), are two; the one towards those that are without the church, the other towards those that are within. For the former, it is certain that heresies and schisms are, of all others, the greatest scandals, yea, more than corruption of manners; for as in the natural body a wound or solution of continuity is worse than a corrupt humor, so in the spiritual; so that nothing doth so much keep men out of the church, and drive men out of the church, as breach of unity; and therefore, whensoever it cometh to that pass that one saith, “Ecce in Deserto,” 69 another saith, “Ecce in penetralibus;” 70 that is, when some men seek Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and others in an outward face of a church, that voice had need continually to sound in men’s ears, “nolite exire,” “go not out.” The doctor of the Gentiles (the propriety of whose vocation drew him to have a special care of those without) saith: “If a heathen 71 come 67 in, and hear you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are mad?” and, certainly, it is little better: when atheists and profane persons do hear of so many discordant and contrary opinions in religion, it doth avert them from the church, and maketh them “to sit down in the chair of the scorners.” 72 It is but a light thing to be vouched in so serious a matter, but yet it expresseth well the deformity. There is a master of scoffing, that, in his catalogue of books of a feigned library, sets down this title of a book, “The Morris-Dance 73 of Heretics;” for, indeed, every sect of them hath a diverse posture, or cringe, by themselves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings and depraved politicians, who are apt to contemn holy things.

As for the fruit towards those that are within, it is peace, which containeth infinite blessings; it establisheth faith; it kindleth charity; the outward 68 peace of the church distilleth into peace of conscience, and it turneth the labors of writing and reading of controversies into treatises of mortification and devotion.

Concerning the bounds of unity, the true placing of them importeth exceedingly. There appear to be two extremes; for to certain zealots all speech of pacification is odious. “Is it peace, Jehu?”—“What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.” 74 Peace is not the matter, but following, and party. Contrariwise, certain Laodiceans 75 and lukewarm persons think they may accommodate points of religion by middle ways, 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 Saviour himself, were in the two cross clauses thereof soundly and plainly expounded: “He that is not with us is against us;” 76 and again, “He that is not against us, is with us;” that is, if the points fundamental, and of substance in religion, 69 were truly discerned and distinguished from points not merely of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention. This is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial, and done already; but if it were done less partially, it would be embraced more generally.

Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small model. Men ought to take heed of rending God’s church by two kinds of controversies; the one is, when the matter of the point controverted is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction; for, as it is noted by one of the fathers, “Christ’s coat indeed had no seam, but the church’s vesture was of divers colors;” whereupon he saith, “In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit,” 77 they be two things, unity and uniformity; the other is, when the matter of the point controverted is great, but it is driven to an over-great subtilty and obscurity, so that it becometh a thing rather ingenious than substantial. A man that is of judgment and understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself, that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet they themselves would never agree; and if it come so to pass in that distance of judgment, which is between man and man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, 70 intend the same thing, and accepteth of both? The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed by St. Paul, in the warning and precept that he giveth concerning the same: “Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiæ.” 78 Men create oppositions which are not, and put them into new terms, so fixed as, whereas the meaning ought to govern the term, the term in effect governeth the meaning. There be also two false peaces, or unities; the one, when the peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark; the other, when it is pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental points; for truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image; 79 they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.

Concerning the means of procuring unity, men must beware that, in the procuring or muniting of religious unity, they do not dissolve and deface the laws of charity and of human society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual and temporal, and both have their due office and place in the maintenance of religion; but we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet’s sword, 80 71 or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or, by sanguinary persecutions, to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions, to authorize conspiracies and rebellions, to put the sword into the people’s hands, and the like, tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of God; for this is but to dash the first table against the second, and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of Agamemnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed;—

What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in France, 82 or the powder treason of England? 83 He would have been seven times more epicure and atheist than he was; for as the temporal 72 sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in cases of religion, so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the hands of the common people; let that be left unto the Anabaptists, and other furies. It was great blasphemy when the devil said, “I will ascend and be like the Highest;” 84 but it is greater blasphemy to personate God, and bring him in saying, “I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness;” and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend to the cruel and execrable actions of murdering princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and governments? Surely, this is to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in the shape of a vulture or raven; and to set out of the bark of a Christian church a flag of a bark of pirates and assassins; therefore, it is most necessary that the church by doctrine and decree, princes by their sword, and all learnings, both Christian and moral, as by their Mercury rod, 85 do damn and send to hell forever those facts and opinions tending to the support of the same, as hath been already in good part done. Surely, in counsels concerning religion, that counsel of the apostle would be prefixed: “Ira hominis non implet justitiam Dei;” 86 and it was 73 a notable observation of a wise father, and no less ingenuously confessed, that those which held and persuaded pressure of consciences, were commonly interested therein themselves for their own ends.

IV.—OF REVENGE.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out; for as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon; and Solomon, I am sure, saith, “It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence.” That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong’s sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like; therefore, why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which 74 there is no law to remedy; but then, let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish, else a man’s enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh. This is the more generous; for the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the party repent; but base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, Duke of Florence, 87 had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable. “You shall read,” saith he, “that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends.” But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: “Shall we,” saith he, “take good at God’s hands, and not be content to take evil also?” 88 and so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. Public revenges 89 are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Cæsar; 90 75 for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; 91 and many more. But in private revenges it is not so; nay, rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches, who, as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.

V.—OF ADVERSITY.

It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that “the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.” (“Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia.”) 92 Certainly, if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), “It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a God.” (“Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis securitatem Dei.”) 93 This would have done 76 better in poesy, where transcendencies are more allowed, and the poets, indeed, have been busy with it; for it is, in effect, the thing which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, 94 which seemeth not to be without mystery; nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian, “that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher,” lively describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of the world. But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God’s favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David’s harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs 95 as carols; and the pencil of the 77 Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see, in needleworks 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 odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. 96

VI.—OF SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION.

Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell truth, and to do it; therefore it is the weaker sort of politicians that are the great dissemblers.

Tacitus saith, “Livia sorted well with the arts of her husband, and dissimulation of her son; 97 attributing arts or policy to Augustus, and dissimulation to Tiberius:” and again, when Mucianus encourageth Vespasian to take arms against Vitellius, he saith, “We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius.” 98 These properties of arts or policy, and dissimulation or closeness, are indeed habits and faculties several, and to be distinguished; for if a man have that penetration of judgment as he can discern what things are to be laid open, and what to be secreted, and what to be showed at half-lights, and to whom and when (which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus well calleth them), to him a habit of dissimulation is a hinderance and a poorness. But if a man cannot obtain to that judgment, then it is left to him generally to be close, and a dissembler; for where a man cannot choose or vary in particulars, there it is good to take the safest and wariest way in general, like the going softly by one 79 that cannot well see. Certainly, the ablest men that ever were, have had all an openness and frankness of dealing, and a name of certainty and veracity: but then they were like horses well managed, for they could tell passing well when to stop or turn; and at such times, when they thought the case indeed required dissimulation, if then they used it, it came to pass that the former opinion spread abroad, of their good faith and clearness of dealing, made them almost invisible.

There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self: the first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is: the second, dissimulation in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not that he is: and the third, simulation in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be that he is not.

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. Besides 80 (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. As for talkers and futile persons, they are commonly vain and credulous withal; for he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not; therefore set it down, that a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral: and in this part it is good that a man’s face give his tongue leave to speak; for the discovery of a man’s self by the tracts 99 of his countenance, is a great weakness and betraying, by how much it is many times more marked and believed than a man’s words.

For the second, which is dissimulation, it followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity; so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree; for men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence as by his speech. As for equivocations, or oraculous speeches, they cannot hold out long: so that no man can be secret, except he give himself a little scope of dissimulation, which is, as it were, but the skirts or train of secrecy.

But for the third degree, which is simulation and 81 false profession, that I hold more culpable, and less politic, except it be in great and rare matters; and, therefore, a general custom of simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice rising either of a natural falseness, or fearfulness, or of a mind that hath some main faults; which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of use.

The advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three: first, to lay asleep opposition, and to surprise; for, where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them: the second is, to reserve to a man’s self a fair retreat; for if a man engage himself by a manifest declaration, he must go through or take a fall: the third is, the better to discover the mind of another; for to him that opens himself men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will (fair) let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought; and therefore it is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard, “Tell a lie, and find a troth;” 100 as if there were no way of discovery but by simulation. There be also three disadvantages to set it even; the first, that simulation and dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark; the second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that, perhaps, would otherwise coöperate with him, and 82 makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends: the third, and greatest, is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action, which is trust and belief. The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign if there be no remedy.

VII.—OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears; they cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death. 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. They that are the first raisers of their houses are most indulgent towards their children, beholding them as the continuance, not only of their kind, but of their work; and so both children and creatures.

The difference in affection of parents towards their several children is many times unequal, and some 83 times unworthy, especially in the mother; as Solomon saith, “A wise son rejoiceth the father, but an ungracious son shames the mother.” 101 A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons; 102 but in the midst some that are, as it were, forgotten, who many times, nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in allowance towards their children, is a harmful error, makes them base, acquaints them with shifts, makes them sort with mean company, and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty; and, therefore, the proof 103 is best when men keep their authority towards their children, but not their purse. Men have a foolish manner (both parents, and schoolmasters, and servants), in creating and breeding an emulation between brothers during childhood, which many times sorteth 104 to discord when they are men, and disturbeth families. 105 The Italians 84 make little difference between children and nephews, or near kinsfolk; but so they be of the lump, they care not, though they pass not through their own body; and, to say truth, in nature it is much a like matter; insomuch that we see a nephew sometimes resembleth an uncle or a kinsman more than his own parent, as the blood happens. Let parents choose betimes the vocations and courses they mean their children should take, for then they are most flexible; and let them not too much apply themselves to the disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best to that which they have most mind to. It is true, that if the affection or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it; but generally the precept is good, “Optimum elige, suave et facile illud faciet consuetudo.” 106 —Younger brothers are commonly fortunate, but seldom or never where the elder are disinherited.

VIII.—OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, 85 which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences; nay, there are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges; nay more, there are some foolish, rich, covetous men, that take a pride in having no children, because they may be thought so much the richer; for, perhaps they have heard some talk, “Such an one is a great rich man,” and another except to it, “Yea, but he hath a great charge of children;” as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool. 107 It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile 86 and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly, in their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks maketh the vulgar soldier more base. Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was said of Ulysses, “Vetulam suam praetulit immortalitati.” 108 Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses, so as a man may have a quarrel 109 to marry when he will; but yet he was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry, “A young man not yet, an elder 87 man not at all.” 110 It is often seen that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their husbands’ kindness when it comes, or that the wives take a pride in their patience; but this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends’ consent, for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.

IX.—OF ENVY.

There be none of the affections which have been noted to fascinate or bewitch, but love and envy. They both have vehement wishes; they frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions, and they come easily into the eye, especially upon the presence of the objects which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such thing there be. We see, likewise, the Scripture calleth envy an evil eye; 111 and the astrologers call the evil influences of 88 the stars evil aspects; so that still there seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, an ejaculation, or irradiation of the eye; nay, some have been so curious as to note that the times, when the stroke or percussion of an envious eye doth most hurt, are, when the party envied is beheld in glory or triumph, for that sets an edge upon envy; and besides, at such times, the spirits of the person envied do come forth most into the outward parts, and so meet the blow.

But, leaving these curiosities (though not unworthy to be thought on in fit place), we will handle what persons are apt to envy others; what persons are most subject to be envied themselves; and what is the difference between public and private envy.

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others; for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain to another’s virtue, will seek to come at even hand 112 by depressing another’s fortune.

A man that is busy and inquisitive, is commonly envious; for to know much of other men’s matters cannot be, because all that ado may concern his own estate; therefore, it must needs be that he taketh a kind of play-pleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others; neither can he that mindeth but his own business find much matter for envy; for 89 envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep home: “Non est curiosus, quin idem sit malevolus.” 113

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they rise, for the distance is altered; and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think themselves go back.

Deformed persons and eunuchs, and old men and bastards, are envious; for he that cannot possibly mend his own case, will do what he can to impair another’s; except these defects light upon a very brave and heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his honor; in that it should be said, “That a eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters,” affecting the honor of a miracle; as it was in Narses 114 the eunuch, and Agesilaus and Tamerlane, 115 that were lame men.

The same is the case of men that rise after calamities and misfortunes; for they are as men fallen out with the times, and think other men’s harms a redemption of their own sufferings.

They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity and vainglory, are ever envious, for they cannot want work; it being impossible but many, in some one of those things, should surpass them; which was the character of Adrian the emperor, that mortally envied poets and painters, and artificers in works, wherein he had a vein to excel. 116

Lastly, near kinsfolk and fellows in office, and those that have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when they are raised; for it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, and pointeth at them, and cometh oftener into their remembrance, and incurreth likewise more into the note 117 of others; and envy ever redoubleth from speech and fame. Cain’s envy was the more vile and malignant towards his brother Abel, because when his sacrifice was better accepted, there was nobody to look on. Thus much for those that are apt to envy.

Concerning those that are more or less subject to envy: First, persons of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are less envied, for their fortune seemeth but due unto them; and no man envieth 91 the payment of a debt, but rewards and liberality rather. Again, envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy; and therefore kings are not envied but by kings. Nevertheless, it is to be noted, that unworthy persons are most envied at their first coming in, and afterwards overcome it better; whereas, contrariwise, persons of worth and merit are most envied when their fortune continueth long; for by that time, though their virtue be the same, yet it hath not the same lustre; for fresh men grow up that darken it.

Persons of noble blood are less envied in their rising; for it seemeth but right done to their birth: besides, there seemeth not so much added to their fortune; and envy is as the sunbeams, that beat hotter upon a bank or steep rising ground, than upon a flat; and, for the same reason, those that are advanced by degrees are less envied than those that are advanced suddenly, and per saltum . 118

Those that have joined with their honor great travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy; for men think that they earn their honors hardly, and pity them sometimes, and pity ever healeth envy. Wherefore you shall observe, that the more deep and sober sort of politic persons, in their greatness, are ever bemoaning themselves what a life they lead, chanting a quanta patimur ; 119 not that they feel 92 it so, but only to abate the edge of envy; but this is to be understood of business that is laid upon men, and not such as they call unto themselves; for nothing increaseth envy more than an unnecessary and ambitious engrossing of business; and nothing doth extinguish envy more than for a great person to preserve all other inferior officers in their full rights and preëminences of their places; for, by that means, there be so many screens between him and envy.

Above all, those are most subject to envy, which carry the greatness of their fortunes in an insolent and proud manner; being never well but while they are showing how great they are, either by outward pomp, or by triumphing over all opposition or competition. Whereas wise men will rather do sacrifice to envy, in suffering themselves, sometimes of purpose, to be crossed and overborne in things that do not much concern them. Notwithstanding, so much is true, that the carriage of greatness in a plain and open manner (so it be without arrogancy and vainglory), doth draw less envy than if it be in a more crafty and cunning fashion; for in that course a man doth but disavow fortune, and seemeth to be conscious of his own want in worth, and doth but teach others to envy him.

Lastly, to conclude this part, as we said in the beginning that the act of envy had somewhat in it of witchcraft, so there is no other cure of envy but the cure of witchcraft; and that is, to remove 93 the lot (as they call it), and to lay it upon another; for which purpose, the wiser sort of great persons bring in ever upon the stage somebody upon whom to derive the envy that would come upon themselves; sometimes upon ministers and servants, sometimes upon colleagues and associates, and the like; and, for that turn, there are never wanting some persons of violent and undertaking natures, who, so they may have power and business, will take it at any cost.

Now, to speak of public envy: there is yet some good in public envy, whereas in private there is none; for public envy is as an ostracism, 120 that eclipseth men when they grow too great; and therefore it is a bridle also to great ones, to keep them within bounds.

This envy, being in the Latin word invidia , 121 goeth in the modern languages by the name of discontentment, of which we shall speak in handling sedition. It is a disease in a state like to infection; for as infection spreadeth upon that which is sound, and tainteth it, so, when envy is gotten once into a state, it traduceth even the best actions thereof, and turneth them into an ill odor; and therefore there is little won by intermingling of plausible actions; for that doth argue but a weakness and fear of envy, 94 which hurteth so much the more, as it is likewise usual in infections, which, if you fear them, you call them upon you.

This public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings and estates themselves. But this is a sure rule, that if the envy upon the minister be great, when the cause of it in him is small; or if the envy be general in a manner upon all the ministers of an estate, then the envy (though hidden) is truly upon the state itself. And so much of public envy or discontentment, and the difference thereof from private envy, which was handled in the first place.

We will add this in general, touching the affection of envy, that, of all other affections, it is the most importune and continual; for of other affections there is occasion given but now and then; and therefore it was well said, “Invidia festos dies non agit:” 122 for it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted, that love and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual. It is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the devil, who is called “The envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night;” 123 as it always cometh to pass that envy worketh subtilely, and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.

X.—OF LOVE.

The stage is more beholding 124 to love than the life of man; for as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury. You may observe, that, amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent), there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, 125 the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate, but the latter was an austere and wise man; and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, “Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus;” 126 as if man, 96 made for the contemplation of heaven and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are) yet of the eye, which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature and value of things, by this, that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love, neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, “That the arch flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self;” certainly, the lover is more; for there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, “That it is impossible to love and to be wise.” 127 Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved, but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciprocal; for it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the 97 reciprocal, or with an inward and secret contempt; by how much the more men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself. As for the other losses, the poet’s relation 128 doth well figure them: “That he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas;” for whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods in the very times of weakness, which are, great prosperity and great adversity, though this latter hath been less observed; both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men’s fortunes, and maketh men that they can nowise be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love; I think it is, but as they are given to wine, for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man’s 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 itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupted and embaseth it.

XI.—OF GREAT PLACE. 129

Men in great place are thrice servants—servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing: “Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere.” 130 Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they when it were reason; but are impatient of privateness even in age and sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn. Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other men’s opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are 99 happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within; for they are the first that find their own griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. Certainly, men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.

In place, there is license to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse; for in evil, the best condition is not to will, the second not to can. But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground. Merit and good works are the end of man’s motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man’s rest; for if a man can be partaker of God’s theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God’s rest. “Et conversus Deus, ut aspiceret opera, quæ fecerunt manus suæ, vidit quod omnia essent bona nimis;” 132 and then the Sabbath.

In the discharge of thy place, set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts, and after a time set before thee thine own example; and examine thyself strictly whether thou didst not best at first. Neglect not also the examples of those that have carried themselves ill in the same place; not to set off thyself by taxing their memory, but to direct thyself what to avoid. Reform, therefore, without bravery or scandal of former times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow them. Reduce things to the first institution, and observe wherein and how they have degenerated; but yet ask counsel of both times—of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest. Seek to make thy course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect; but be not too positive and peremptory, and express thyself well when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve the right of thy place, but stir not questions of jurisdiction; and rather assume thy right in silence, and de facto , 133 than voice it with claims and challenges. Preserve likewise the rights of inferior places; and think it more honor to direct in chief than to be busy in all. Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execution of thy place; and do not drive away such as bring thee information, as meddlers, but accept of them in good part. The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness, and facility. For delays, 101 give easy access, keep times appointed, go through with that which is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption, do not only bind thine own hands or thy servant’s hands from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also from offering; for integrity used doth the one, but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption; therefore, always when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to steal it. A servant or a favorite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption. For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent: severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, and not taunting. As for facility, 134 it is worse than bribery, for bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or idle respects 135 lead a man, he shall never be without; as Solomon saith, “To respect persons is not good; for such a man will transgress for a piece of bread.” 136

It is most true that was anciently spoken: “A place showeth the man; and it showeth some to the better, and some to the worse:” “Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset,” 137 saith Tacitus of Galba; but of Vespasian he saith, “Solus imperantium, Vespasianus mutatus in melius;” 138 though the one was meant of sufficiency, the other of manners and affection. It is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honor amends; for honor is, or should be, the place of virtue; and as in nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the memory of thy predecessor fairly and tenderly; for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them; and rather call them when they look not for it, than exclude them when they have reason to look to be called. Be not too sensible or too remembering of thy place in conversation and private answers to suitors; but let it rather be said, “When he sits in place, he is another man.”

XII.—OF BOLDNESS.

It is a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise man’s consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? He answered, Action. What next?—Action. What next again?—Action. 139 He said it that knew it best, and had, by nature, himself no advantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, should be placed so high above those other noble parts of invention, elocution, and the rest; nay, almost alone, as if it were all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise; and therefore, those faculties by which the foolish part of men’s minds is taken are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business. What first?—Boldness: what second and third?—Boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts; but, nevertheless, it doth fascinate, and bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in judgment or weak in courage, which are the greatest part, yea, and prevaileth with wise man at weak times; therefore, we see it hath done wonders in popular states, but with senates and princes less, and more, ever upon the first entrance of bold persons into action than 104 soon after; for boldness is an ill keeper of promise. Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body; men that undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out; nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do Mahomet’s miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, “If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.” So these men, when they have promised great matters and failed most shamefully, yet, if they have the perfection of boldness, they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly, to men of great judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold; nay, and to the vulgar also boldness hath somewhat of the ridiculous; for if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity; especially it is a sport to see when a bold fellow is out of countenance, for that puts his face into a most shrunken and wooden posture, as needs it must; for in bashfulness the spirits do a little go and come, but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir; but this 105 last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed, that boldness is ever blind, for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences; therefore, it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds and under the direction of others; for in counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them except they be very great.

XIII.—OF GOODNESS, AND GOODNESS OF NATURE.

I take goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call philanthropia ; and the word humanity, as it is used, is a little too light to express it. Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; 140 the desire of knowledge 106 in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it. The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man, insomuch that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds; insomuch, as Busbechius 141 reporteth, a Christian boy in Constantinople had like to have been stoned for gagging in a waggishness a long-billed fowl. 142 Errors, indeed, in this 107 virtue, of goodness or charity, may be committed. The Italians have an ungracious proverb: “Tanto buon che val niente;” “So good, that he is good for nothing;” and one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, 143 had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, “That the Christian faith had given up good men in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust;” 144 which he spake, because, indeed, there was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth; therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, it is good to take knowledge of the errors of a habit so excellent. Seek the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or fancies; for that is but facility or softness, which taketh an honest mind 108 prisoner. Neither give thou Æsop’s cock a gem, who would be better pleased and happier if he had had a barley-corn. The example of God teacheth the lesson truly: “He sendeth his rain, and maketh his sun to shine upon the just and the unjust;” 145 but he doth not rain wealth, nor shine honor and virtues upon men equally; common benefits are to be communicate with all, but peculiar benefits with choice. And beware how, in making the portraiture, thou breakest the pattern; for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern, the love of our neighbors but the portraiture: “Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, and follow me;” 146 but sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow me; that is, except thou have a vocation wherein thou mayest do as much good with little means as with great; for otherwise, in feeding the streams thou driest the fountain. Neither is there only a habit of goodness directed by right reason, but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition towards it; as, on the other side, there is a natural malignity, for there be that in their nature do not affect the good of 109 others. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to a crossness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficileness, or the like; but the deeper sort to envy, and mere mischief. Such men in other men’s calamities are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus’s sores, 147 but like flies that are still buzzing upon any thing that is raw; misanthropi, that make it their practice to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree for the purpose in their gardens, as Timon 148 had. Such dispositions are the very errors of human nature, and yet they are the fittest timber to make great politics of; like to knee timber, 149 that is good for ships that are ordained to be tossed, but not for building houses that shall stand firm. The parts and signs of goodness are many. If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, 110 and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them; if he be compassionate towards the afflictions of others, it shows that his heart is like the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the balm; 150 if he easily pardons and remits offences, it shows that his mind is planted above injuries, so that he cannot be shot; if he be thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs men’s minds, and not their trash; but, above all, if he have St. Paul’s perfection, that he would wish to be an anathema 151 from Christ for the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a divine nature, and a kind of conformity with Christ himself.

XIV.—OF NOBILITY.

We will speak of nobility, first, as a portion of an estate, then as a condition of particular persons. A monarchy, where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny as that of the Turks; for nobility attempers sovereignty, and draws the 111 eyes of the people somewhat aside from the line royal: but for democracies they need it not; and they are commonly more quiet and less subject to sedition than where there are stirps of nobles; for men’s eyes are upon the business, and not upon the persons; or if upon the persons, it is for the business sake, as fittest, and not for flags and pedigree. We see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their diversity of religion and of cantons; for utility is their bond, and not respects. 152 The United Provinces of the Low Countries 153 in their government excel; for where there is an equality the consultations are more indifferent, and the payments and tributes more cheerful. A great and potent nobility addeth majesty to a monarch, but diminisheth power, and putteth life and spirit into the people, but presseth their fortune. It is well when nobles are not too great for sovereignty nor for justice; and yet maintained in that height, as the insolency of inferiors may be broken upon them, before it come on too fast upon the majesty of kings. A numerous nobility causeth poverty and inconvenience in a state, for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity that many of the nobility fall in time to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion between honor and means.

As for nobility in particular persons, it is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle or building not in decay, or to see a fair timber-tree sound and perfect; how much more to behold an ancient noble family, which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time! For new nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time. Those that are first raised to nobility are commonly more virtuous, 154 but less innocent than their descendants; for there is rarely any rising but by a commixture of good and evil arts; but it is reason the memory of their virtues remain to their posterity, and their faults die with themselves. Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry, and he that is not industrious, envieth him that is; besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay when others rise, can hardly avoid motions of envy. 155 On the other side, nobility extinguisheth the passive envy from others towards them, because they are in possession of honor. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their business; for people naturally bend to them, as born in some sort to command.

XV.—OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES.

Shepherds of people had need know the calendars of tempests in state, which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality; as natural tempests are greatest about the equinoctia, 156 and as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states:—

Libels and licentious discourses against the state, when they are frequent and open; and in like sort false news, often running up and down, to the disadvantage of the state, and hastily embraced, are amongst the signs of troubles. Virgil, giving the pedigree of Fame, saith she was sister to the giants:—

As if fames were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less indeed the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever, he noteth it right, that 114 seditious tumults and seditious fames differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced; for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith, “Conflatâ magnâ, invidiâ, seu bene, seu male, gesta premunt.” 159 Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity should be a remedy of troubles; for the despising of them many times checks them best, and the going about to stop them doth but make a wonder long-lived. Also that kind of obedience, which Tacitus speaketh of, is to be held suspected: “Erant in officio, sed tamen qui mallent imperantium mandata interpretari, quam exsequi;” 160 disputing, excusing, cavilling upon mandates and directions, is a kind of shaking off the yoke, and assay of disobedience; especially if, in those disputings, they which are for the direction speak fearfully and tenderly, and those that are against it audaciously.

Also, as Machiavel noteth well, when princes, that ought to be common parents, make themselves as a party, and lean to a side; it is as a boat that is overthrown by uneven weight on the one side, as was well seen in the time of Henry the Third of France; for first himself entered league 161 for the extirpation of the Protestants, and presently after the same league was turned upon himself; for when the authority of princes is made but an accessary to a cause, and that there be other bands that tie faster than the band of sovereignty, kings begin to be put almost out of possession.

Also, when discords, and quarrels, and factions are carried openly and audaciously, it is a sign the reverence of government is lost; for the motions of the greatest persons in a government ought to be as the motions of the planets under “primum mobile,” 162 according to the old opinion, which is, that every of them is carried swiftly by the highest motion, and softly in their own motion; and therefore, when great ones in their own particular motion move violently, and as Tacitus expresseth it well, “liberius 116 quam ut imperantium meminissent,” 163 it is a sign the orbs are out of frame; for reverence is that wherewith princes are girt from God, who threateneth the dissolving thereof: “Solvam cingula regum.” 164

So when any of the four pillars of government are mainly shaken or weakened (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure), men had need to pray for fair weather. But let us pass from this part of predictions (concerning which, nevertheless, more light may be taken from that which followeth), and let us speak first of the materials of seditions; then of the motives of them; and thirdly of the remedies.

Concerning the materials of seditions, it is a thing well to be considered, for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it), is to take away the matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire. The matter of seditions is of two kinds, much poverty and much discontentment. It is certain, so many overthrown estates, so many votes for troubles. Lucan noteth well the state of Rome before the civil war:—

This same “multis utile bellum,” 166 is an assured and infallible sign of a state disposed to seditions and troubles; and if this poverty and broken estate in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great; for the rebellions of the belly are the worst. As for discontentments, they are in the politic body like to humors in the natural, which are apt to gather a preternatural heat and to inflame; and let no prince measure the danger of them by this, whether they be just or unjust; for that were to imagine people to be too reasonable, who do often spurn at their own good; nor yet by this, whether the griefs whereupon they rise be in fact great or small; for they are the most dangerous discontentments where the fear is greater than the feeling: “Dolendi modus, timendi non item.” 167 Besides, in great oppressions, the same things that provoke the patience, do withal mate 168 the courage; but in fears it is not so; neither let any prince or state be secure concerning discontentments, because they have been often or have been long, and yet no peril hath ensued; for as it is true that every vapor or fume doth not turn into a storm, so it is nevertheless true that storms, though they blow 118 over divers times, yet may fall at last; and, as the Spanish proverb noteth well, “The cord breaketh at the last by the weakest pull.” 169

The causes and motives of seditions are, innovation in religion, taxes, alteration of laws and customs, breaking of privileges, general oppression, advancement of unworthy persons, strangers, dearths, disbanded soldiers, factions grown desperate, and whatsoever in offending people joineth and knitteth them in a common cause.

For the remedies, there may be some general preservatives, whereof we will speak; as for the just cure, it must answer to the particular disease, and so be left to counsel rather than rule.

The first remedy, or prevention, is to remove, by all means possible, that material cause of sedition whereof we spake, which is, want and poverty in the estate; 170 to which purpose serveth the opening and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufactures; the banishing of idleness; the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws; 171 the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulating of prices of things vendible; the moderating of taxes and tributes, and the like. Generally, it is 119 to be foreseen that the population of a kingdom (especially if it be not mown down by wars) do not exceed the stock of the kingdom which should maintain them; neither is the population to be reckoned only by number; for a smaller number, that spend more and earn less, do wear out an estate sooner than a greater number that live lower and gather more. Therefore the multiplying of nobility and other degrees of quality, in an over-proportion to the common people, doth speedily bring a state to necessity; and so doth likewise an overgrown clergy, for they bring nothing to the stock; 172 and in like manner, when more are bred scholars than preferments can take off.

It is likewise to be remembered, that, forasmuch as the increase of any estate must be upon the foreigner 173 (for whatsoever is somewhere gotten is somewhere lost), there be but three things which one nation selleth unto another; the commodity, as nature yieldeth it; the manufacture; and the vecture, or carriage; so that, if these three wheels go, wealth will flow as in a spring tide. And it cometh many times to pass, that, “materiam superabit 120 opus,” 174 that the work and carriage is more worth than the material, and enricheth a state more; as is notably seen in the Low Countrymen, who have the best mines 175 above ground in the world.

Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the treasure and moneys in a state be not gathered into few hands; for, otherwise, a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, 176 not good except it be spread. This is done chiefly by suppressing, or, at the least, keeping a strait hand upon the devouring trades of usury, engrossing 177 great pasturages, and the like.

For removing discontentments, or, at least, the danger of them, there is in every state (as we know) two portions of subjects, the nobles and the commonalty. When one of these is discontent, the danger is not great; for common people are of slow motion, if they be not excited by the greater sort; and the greater sort are of small strength, except the multitude be apt and ready to move of themselves; then is the danger, when the greater sort 121 do but wait for the troubling of the waters amongst the meaner, that then they may declare themselves. The poets feign that the rest of the gods would have bound Jupiter, which he hearing of, by the counsel of Pallas, sent for Briareus, with his hundred hands, to come in to his aid; an emblem, no doubt, to show how safe it is for monarchs to make sure of the good-will of common people.

To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate (so it be without too great insolency or bravery), is a safe way; for he that turneth the humors back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers and pernicious imposthumations.

The part of Epimetheus 178 might well become Prometheus, in the case of discontentments, for there is not a better provision against them. Epimetheus, when griefs and evils flew abroad, at last shut the lid, and kept Hope in the bottom of the vessel. Certainly, the politic and artificial nourish 122 ing and entertaining of hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the best antidotes against the poison of discontentments; and it is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction; and when it can handle things in such manner as no evil shall appear so peremptory, but that it hath some outlet of hope; which is the less hard to do, because both particular persons and factions are apt enough to flatter themselves, or at least to brave that which they believe not.

Also the foresight and prevention, that there be no likely or fit head whereunto discontented persons may resort, and under whom they may join, is a known but an excellent point of caution. I understand a fit head to be one that hath greatness and reputation, that hath confidence with the discontented party, and upon whom they turn their eyes, and that is thought discontented in his own particular: which kind of persons are either to be won and reconciled to the state, and that in a fast and true manner; or to be fronted with some other of the same party that may oppose them, and so divide the reputation. Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions and combinations that are adverse to the state, and setting them at distance, or, at least, distrust amongst themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.

I have noted, that some witty and sharp speeches, which have fallen from princes, have given fire to seditions. Cæsar did himself infinite hurt in that speech—“Sylla nescivit literas, non potuit dictare,” 179 for it did utterly cut off that hope which men had entertained, that he would, at one time or other, give over his dictatorship. Galba undid himself by that speech, “Legi a se militem, non emi;” 180 for it put the soldiers out of hope of the donative. Probus, likewise, by that speech, “Si vixero, non opus erit amplius Romano imperio militibus;” 181 a speech of great despair for the soldiers, and many the like. Surely princes had need, in tender matters and ticklish times, to beware what they say, especially in these short speeches, which fly abroad like darts, and are thought to be shot out of their secret intentions; for as for large discourses, they are flat things, and not so much noted.

Lastly, let princes, against all events, not be without some great person, one or rather more, of military valor, near unto them, for the repressing of seditions in their beginnings; for without that, there useth to be more trepidation in court upon the first breaking out of troubles than were fit, and the state runneth the danger of that which Tacitus saith: “Atque is habitus animorum fuit, ut pessimum facinus auderent pauci, plures vellent, omnes paterentur:” 182 but let such military persons be assured, and well reputed of, rather than factious and popular; holding also good correspondence with the other great men in the state, or else the remedy is worse than the disease.

XVI.—OF ATHEISM.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends, 183 and the Talmud, 184 and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind; and, therefore, God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, 125 because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy 185 inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism, doth most demonstrate religion: that is, the school of Leucippus, 186 and Democritus, 187 and Epicurus; for it is a thousand times more credible that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, 188 duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty without a divine marshal. The Scripture saith, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no 126 God;” 189 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 190 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, that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others; nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects; and, which is most of all, you shall have of them that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas, if they did truly think that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? Epicurus is charged, that he did but dissemble for his credit’s sake, when he affirmed there were blessed natures, but such as enjoyed themselves without having respect to the government of the world. Wherein they say he did temporize, though in secret he thought there was no God; but certainly he is traduced, for his words are noble and divine: “Non Deos vulgi negare profanum; sed vulgi opiniones Diis applicare profanum.” 191 Plato could have said 127 no more; and, although he had the confidence to deny the administration, he had not the power to deny the nature. The Indians 192 of the west have names for their particular gods, though they have no name for God; as if the heathens should have had the names Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, &c., but not the word Deus, which shows that even those barbarous people have the notion, though they have not the latitude and extent of it; so that against atheists the very savages take part with the very subtlest philosophers. The contemplative atheist is rare; a Diagoras, 193 a Bion, 194 a Lucian, 195 perhaps, and some others, and yet they seem to be more than they are; for that all that impugn a received religion, or superstition, are, by the adverse part, branded with the name of atheists. But the great atheists indeed are hypocrites, which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling, so as they must needs be 128 cauterized in the end. The causes of atheism are: divisions in religion, if they be many; for any one main division addeth zeal to both sides, but many divisions introduce atheism. Another is, scandal of priests, when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith: “Non est jam dicere, ut populus, sic sacerdos; quia nec sic populus, ut sacerdos.” 196 A third is, custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, which doth by little and little deface the reverence of religion: and lastly, learned times, specially with peace and prosperity; for troubles and adversities do more bow men’s minds to religion. They that deny a God destroy a man’s nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature; for, take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who, to him, is instead of a God, or “melior natura;” 197 which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So 129 man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favor, gathereth a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain; therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty. As it is in particular persons, so it is in nations: never was there such a state for magnanimity as Rome. Of this state hear what Cicero saith: “Quam volumus, licet, Patres conscripti, nos amemus, tamen nec numero Hispanos, nec robore Gallos, nec calliditate Pœnos, nec artibus Græcos, nec denique hoc ipso hujus gentis et terræ domestico nativoque sensu Italos ipsos et Latinos; sed pietate, ac religione, atque hâc unâ sapientiâ, quod Deorum immortalium numine omnia regi, gubernarique perspeximus, omnes gentes, nationesque superavimus.” 198

XVII.—OF SUPERSTITION.

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, 199 and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: “Surely,” saith he, “I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children 200 as soon as they were born,” as the poets speak of Saturn; and, as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further, and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times; but superstition hath been the confusion 131 of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile , 201 that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, 202 where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics 203 and epicycles, 204 and such engines of orbs to save 205 the phenomena, though they knew there were no such things; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had framed a number of subtle and intricate axioms and theorems, to save the practice of the Church. The causes of superstition are, pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies; excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; over-great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the Church; the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre; the favoring too much of good intentions, which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture 132 of imaginations; and, lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters. 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. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received; therefore care would be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when the people is the reformer.

XVIII.—OF TRAVEL.

Travel , in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor or grave servant, I allow well, so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the country where they go, what acquaintances they are to seek, what exercises or discipline the place 133 yieldeth; for else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a strange thing that, in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it, as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation. Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use. The things to be seen and observed are, the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories 206 ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns; and so the havens and harbors, antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go, after all which the tutors or servants ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected. If you 134 will have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, this you must do: first, as was said, he must have some entrance into the language before he goeth; then he must have such a servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was likewise said; let him carry with him also some card or book, describing the country where he travelleth, which will be a good key to his inquiry; let him keep also a diary; let him not stay long in one city or town, more or less, as the place deserveth, but not long; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town to another, which is a great adamant of acquaintance; let him sequester himself from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth; let him, upon his removes from one place to another, procure recommendation to some person of quality residing in the place whither he removeth, that he may use his favor in those things he desireth to see or know: thus he may abridge his travel with much profit. As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the secretaries and employed men 207 of ambassadors, for so in travelling in one country he shall suck the experience of many; let him also see and visit eminent persons in all kinds which are of great name abroad, that he may be 135 able to tell how the life agreeth with the fame. For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided; they are commonly for mistresses, healths, 208 place, and words; and let a man beware how he keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome persons, for they will engage him into their own quarrels. When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him, but maintain a correspondence by letters with those of his acquaintance which are of most worth; and let his travel appear rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture, and in his discourse let him be rather advised in his answers, than forward to tell stories; and let it appear that he doth not change his country manners for those of foreign parts, but only prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the customs of his own country.

XIX.—OF EMPIRE.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is the case of kings, who, being, at the highest, want matter of desire, 209 which makes their 136 minds more languishing; and have many representations of perils and shadows, which makes their minds the less clear; and this is one reason, also, of that effect which the Scripture speaketh of, “that the king’s heart is inscrutable;” 210 for multitude of jealousies, and lack of some predominant desire, that should marshal and put in order all the rest, maketh any man’s heart hard to find or sound. Hence it comes, likewise, that princes many times make themselves desires, and set their hearts upon toys: sometimes upon a building; sometimes upon erecting of an order; sometimes upon the advancing of a person; sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art or feat of the hand,—as Nero for playing on the harp; Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow; Commodus for playing at fence; 211 Caracalla for driving chariots, and the like. This seemeth incredible unto those that know not the principle, that the mind of man is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things than by standing at a stay 212 in great. We see, also, that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first years, it being not possible for them to go forward infinitely, but that they must have some check or arrest in their fortunes, turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy; as did 137 Alexander the Great, Diocletian, 213 and, in our memory, Charles the Fifth, 214 and others; for he that is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favor, and is not the thing he was.

To speak now of the true temper of empire, it is a thing rare and hard to keep, for both temper and distemper consist of contraries; but it is one thing to mingle contraries, another to interchange them. The answer of Apollonius to Vespasian is full of excellent instruction. Vespasian asked him, “What was Nero’s overthrow?” He answered, “Nero could touch and tune the harp well; but in government sometimes he used to wind the pins too high, sometimes to let them down too low.” 215 And certain it is, that nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.

This is true, that the wisdom of all these latter times in princes’ affairs is rather fine deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and mischiefs, when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof; but this is but to try masteries with fortune, and let men beware how they neglect and suffer matter of trouble to be prepared. For no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence it may come. 138 The difficulties in princes’ business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes (saith Tacitus) to will contradictories: “Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariæ;” 216 for it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.

Kings have to deal with their neighbors, their wives, their children, their prelates or clergy, their nobles, their second nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their men of war; and from all these arise dangers, if care and circumspection be not used.

First, for their neighbors, there can no general rule be given (the occasions are so variable), save one which ever holdeth; which is, that princes do keep due sentinel, that none of their neighbors do overgrow so (by increase of territory, by embracing of trade, by approaches, or the like), as they become more able to annoy them than they were; and this is generally the work of standing counsels to foresee and to hinder it. During that triumvirate of kings, King Henry the Eighth of England, Francis the First, King of France, 217 and Charles the Fifth, Emperor, there was such a watch kept that 139 none of the three could win a palm of ground, but the other two would straightways balance it, either by confederation, or, if need were, by a war; and would not, in any wise, take up peace at interest; and the like was done by that league (which Guicciardini 218 saith was the security of Italy) made between Ferdinando, King of Naples, Lorenzius Medicis, and Ludovicus Sforza, potentates, the one of Florence, the other of Milan. Neither is the opinion of some of the schoolmen to be received, that a war cannot justly be made, but upon a precedent injury or provocation; for there is no question, but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of a war.

For their wives, there are cruel examples of them. Livia is infamed 219 for the poisoning of her husband; Roxolana, Solyman’s wife, 220 was the destruction of 140 that renowned prince, Sultan Mustapha, and otherwise troubled his house and succession; Edward the Second of England’s Queen 221 had the principal hand in the deposing and murder of her husband.

This kind of danger is then to be feared chiefly when the wives have plots for the raising of their own children, or else that they be advoutresses. 222

For their children, the tragedies likewise of dangers from them have been many; and generally the entering of fathers into suspicion of their children hath been ever unfortunate. The destruction of Mustapha (that we named before) was so fatal to Solyman’s line, as the succession of the Turks from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of strange blood; for that Selymus the Second was thought to be supposititious. 223 The destruction of Crispus, a young prince of rare towardness, by Constantinus the Great, his father, was in like manner fatal to his house; for both Constantinus and Constance, his sons, died violent deaths; and Constantius, his other son, did little better, who died indeed of sickness, but after that Julianus had taken arms against him. The destruction of Demetrius, 224 son to Philip the Second of Macedon, turned upon 141 the father, who died of repentance. And many like examples there are; but few or none where the fathers had good by such distrust, except it were where the sons were up in open arms against them; as was Selymus the First against Bajazet, and the three sons of Henry the Second, King of England.

For their prelates, when they are proud and great, there is also danger from them; as it was in the times of Anselmus 225 and Thomas Becket, Archbishops of Canterbury, who, with their crosiers, did almost try it with the king’s sword; and yet they had to deal with stout and haughty kings; William Rufus, Henry the First, and Henry the Second. The danger is not from that state, but where it hath a dependence of foreign authority; or where the churchmen come in and are elected, not by the collation of the King, or particular patrons, but by the people.

For their nobles, to keep them at a distance it is not amiss; but to depress them may make a king more absolute, but less safe, and less able to perform anything that he desires. I have noted it in my History of King Henry the Seventh of England, who depressed his nobility, whereupon it came to pass that his times were full of difficulties and 142 troubles; for the nobility, though they continued loyal unto him, yet did they not coöperate with him in his business; so that, in effect, he was fain to do all things himself.

For their second nobles, there is not much danger from them, being a body dispersed. They may sometimes discourse high, but that doth little hurt; besides, they are a counterpoise to the higher nobility, that they grow not too potent; and, lastly, being the most immediate in authority with the common people, they do best temper popular commotions.

For their merchants, they are “vena porta:” 226 and if they flourish not, a kingdom may have good limbs, but will have empty veins, and nourish little. Taxes and imposts upon them do seldom good to the king’s revenue, for that which he wins 227 in the hundred 228 he loseth in the shire; the particular rates being increased, but the total bulk of trading rather decreased.

For their commons, there is little danger from them, except it be where they have great and potent heads; or where you meddle with the point of religion, or their customs, or means of life.

For their men of war, it is a dangerous state 143 where they live and remain in a body, and are used to donatives; whereof we see examples in the Janizaries 229 and Prætorian bands of Rome; but trainings of men, and arming them in several places, and under several commanders, and without donatives, are things of defence and no danger.

Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times; and which have much veneration, but no rest. All precepts concerning kings are in effect comprehended in those two remembrances, “Memento quod es homo;” 230 and “Memento quod es Deus,” 231 or “vice Dei;” 232 the one bridleth their power and the other their will.

XX.—OF COUNSEL.

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel; for in other confidences men commit the parts of life, their lands, their goods, their children, their credit, some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellors they commit the whole; by how much the more they 144 are obliged to all faith and integrity. The wisest princes need not think it any diminution to their greatness, or derogation to their sufficiency to rely upon counsel. God himself is not without, but hath made it one of the great names of his blessed Son, “The Counsellor.” 233 Solomon hath pronounced that, “in counsel is stability.” 234 Things will have their first or second agitation: if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune, and be full of inconstancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling of a drunken man. Solomon’s son 235 found the force of counsel, as his father saw the necessity of it; for the beloved kingdom of God was first rent and broken by ill counsel; upon which counsel there are set for our instruction the two marks whereby bad counsel is forever best discerned, that it was young counsel for the persons, and violent counsel for the matter.

The ancient times do set forth in figure both the incorporation and inseparable conjunction of counsel with kings, and the wise and politic use of counsel by kings; the one, in that they say Jupiter did marry Metis, which signifieth counsel; whereby they intend that sovereignty is married to counsel; the 145 other in that which followeth, which was thus: they say, after Jupiter was married to Metis, she conceived by him and was with child; but Jupiter suffered her not to stay till she brought forth, but eat her up; whereby he became himself with child, and was delivered of Pallas armed, out of his head. 236 Which monstrous fable containeth a secret of empire, how kings are to make use of their council of state; that first, they ought to refer matters unto them, which is the first begetting or impregnation; but when they are elaborate, moulded, and shaped in the womb of their counsel, and grow ripe and ready to be brought forth, that then they suffer not their council to go through with the resolution and direction, as if it depended on them; but take the matter back into their own hands, and make it appear to the world, that the decrees and final directions (which, because they come forth with prudence and power, are resembled to Pallas armed), proceeded from themselves; and not only from their authority, but (the more to add reputation to themselves) from their head and device.

Let us now speak of the inconveniences of counsel, and of the remedies. The inconveniences that have been noted in calling and using counsel are three: first, the revealing of affairs, whereby they become less secret; secondly, the weakening of the authority of princes, as if they were less of themselves; thirdly, the danger of being unfaithfully 146 counselled, and more for the good of them that counsel than of him that is counselled; for which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings’ times, hath introduced cabinet councils; a remedy worse than the disease. 237

As to secrecy, princes are not bound to communicate all matters with all counsellors, but may extract and select; neither is it necessary that he that consulteth what he should do, should declare what he will do; but let princes beware that the unsecreting of their affairs comes not from themselves; and, as for cabinet councils, it may be their motto, “Plenus rimarum sum:” 238 one futile person, that maketh it his glory to tell, will do more hurt than many that know it their duty to conceal. It is true, there be some affairs which require extreme secrecy, which will hardly go beyond one or two persons besides the king. Neither are those counsels unprosperous; for, besides the secrecy, they commonly go on constantly in one spirit of direction without distraction; but then it must be a prudent king, such as is able to grind with a hand-mill; 239 and those inward counsellors had need also to be wise men, and especially true and trusty to the king’s ends; as it was with King Henry the 147 Seventh of England, who, in his greatest business, imparted himself to none, except it were to Morton 240 and Fox. 241

For weakening of authority, the fable 242 showeth the remedy; nay, the majesty of kings is rather exalted than diminished when they are in the chair of council; neither was there ever prince bereaved of his dependencies by his council, except where there hath been either an over-greatness in one counsellor, or an over-strict combination in divers, which are things soon found and holpen. 243

For the last inconvenience, that men will counsel with an eye to themselves; certainly, “non inveniet fidem super terram,” 244 is meant of the nature of times, 245 and not of all particular persons. There be 148 that are in nature faithful and sincere, and plain and direct, not crafty and involved: let princes, above all, draw to themselves such natures. Besides, counsellors are not commonly so united, but that one counsellor keepeth sentinel over another; so that if any do counsel out of faction or private ends, it commonly comes to the king’s ear; but the best remedy is, if princes know their counsellors, as well as their counsellors know them:—

And on the other side, counsellors should not be too speculative into their sovereign’s person. The true composition of a counsellor is, rather to be skilful in their master’s business than in his nature; 247 for then he is like to advise him, and not to feed his humor. It is of singular use to princes, if they take the opinions of their council both separately and together; for private opinion is more free, but opinion before others is more reverend. In private, men are more bold in their own humors; and in consort, men are more obnoxious 248 to others’ humors; therefore it is good to take both; and of the inferior sort rather in private, to preserve freedom; of the greater, rather in consort, to preserve respect. It is in vain for princes to take counsel 149 concerning matters, if they take no counsel likewise concerning persons; for all matters are as dead images; and the life of the execution of affairs resteth in the good choice of persons. Neither is it enough to consult concerning persons, “secundum genera,” 249 as in an idea or mathematical description, what the kind and character of the person should be; for the greatest errors are committed, and the most judgment is shown, in the choice of individuals. It was truly said, “Optimi consiliarii mortui:” 250 “books will speak plain when counsellors blanch;” 251 therefore it is good to be conversant in them, specially the books of such as themselves have been actors upon the stage.

The councils at this day in most places are but familiar meetings, where matters are rather talked on than debated; and they run too swift to the order or act of council. It were better that in causes of weight, the matter were propounded one day and not spoken to till the next day; “In nocte consilium;” 252 so was it done in the commission of 150 union 253 between England and Scotland, which was a grave and orderly assembly. I commend set days for petitions; for both it gives the suitors more certainty for their attendance, and it frees the meetings for matters of estate, that they may “hoc agere.” 254 In choice of committees for ripening business for the council, it is better to choose indifferent persons, than to make an indifferency by putting in those that are strong on both sides. I commend, also, standing commissions; as for trade, for treasure, for war, for suits, for some provinces; for where there be divers particular councils, and but one council of estate (as it is in Spain), they are in effect no more than standing commissions, save that they have greater authority. Let such as are to inform councils out of their particular professions (as lawyers, seamen, mintmen, and the like) be first heard before committees; and then, as occasion serves, before the council; and let them not come in multitudes, or in a tribunitious 255 manner; for that is to clamor councils, not to inform them. A long table and a square table, or seats about the walls, seem things of form, but are things of substance; for at a long table a few at the upper end, in effect, sway all the business; but in the 151 other form there is more use of the counsellors’ opinions that sit lower. A king, when he presides in council, let him beware how he opens his own inclination too much in that which he propoundeth; for else counsellors will but take the wind of him, and, instead of giving free counsel, will sing him a song of “placebo.” 256

XXI.—OF DELAYS.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again, it is sometimes like Sibylla’s offer, 257 which at first 152 offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price; for occasion (as it is in the common verse) “turneth a bald noddle, 258 after she hath presented her locks in front, and no hold taken;” or, at least, turneth the handle of the bottle first to be received, and after the belly, which is hard to clasp. 259 There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. 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. On the other side, to be deceived with too long shadows (as some have been when the moon was low, and shone on their enemies’ back), and so to shoot off before the time; or to teach dangers to come on by over early buckling towards them, is another extreme. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion (as we said) must ever be well weighed; and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands, first to watch and then to speed; for the helmet of Pluto, 260 which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the council, and celerity in 153 the execution; for when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outruns the eye.

XXII.—OF CUNNING.

Ethics, Politics, and Friendship in Bacon’s Essays (1625): Between Past and Future

• First Online: 28 September 2016

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• Annalisa Ceron 4  

Part of the book series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées ((ARCH,volume 220))

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This chapter sheds light on the final version of Bacon’s Essays , an early modern advice book that weaves together different and often contrasting Renaissance lines of thought. When offering his Counsels, civil and moral Bacon was in fact deeply influenced by Machiavelli’s pessimistic view of man and combined it not only with the new Tacitean humanism that laid emphasis on private and personal interests, but also with Ciceronian ideas and Machiavellian republican arguments that prioritised public duty. He thereby continuously oscillated between common and personal good, generating ambiguities and ambivalences that should be neither emphasised nor minimised but instead related to his view of moral philosophy as a therapy that needed to be grounded on a realistic diagnosis of human nature in order to heal the mind of its perturbations and misleading tendencies. In Of Friendship the connection between Bacon’s advice and the doctrine of the idols is clearer than anywhere else. Moreover this essay developed a very interesting reflection on friendship that is suspended between past and future. On the one hand, Bacon was the heir to the authors of the fifteenth-century ‘mirrors for princes’, who used the language of friendship to describe the counselors of the prince. On the other, he conceived friendship in terms that would be familiar to us today: a private and intimate relationship of mutual affection between people committed to taking care of one another. Bacon’s view of friendship confirms that Renaissance ways of thinking continued to be far-reaching and were inseparable from new, more modern, conceptions.

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See Voltaire ( 2010 ) and, for instance, Agassi ( 2013 ).

For example Lee ( 2008 ), 600–609.

Bacon ( 1857 –1874), vol. VIII, 323; henceforth abbreviated as Works .

The 1612 collection was reprinted in 1613, 1614 and 1624. The first anonymous Italian translation of Bacon’s Essays was published in London in 1617 and reprinted both in England and in Italy before he died. Another Italian translation by Andrea Cioli appeared in 1619 and the first French translation was published in the same year. Moreover, in a famous letter written in the autumn of 1625 to Fulgenzio Micanzio, Bacon announced his desire for a Latin translation of the Essays . For further information, see Vickers ’ introduction in Bacon ( 1999 ), xxiii–xxv.

Bacon was expelled from public office after the House of Lords convicted him for bribery. In the Jacobean court the distinction between bribes and gifts from followers was often ambiguous. Moreover the Lord Chancellor become gradually involved in several conflicts with judges of other courts, constitutionals battles between the parliament and the king, and clashes due to his association with the corrupt network of patronage of the favourite of the King, George Villiers. On Bacon’s impeachment see Levy Peck ( 1990 ), 50–52 and 86–190; Jardin and Stewart ( 1998 ), 444–475. Wootton ( 1999 ) accounts for Bacon’s references to gift-giving and patronage in the different versions of his Essays .

Castiglione’s The Courtier was published in 1561 in an English translation by Thomas Hoby; Guazzo ’s Civil Conversation was published in 1586 in an English translation by George Pettie and Bartholomew Yonge; Della Casa ’s Galateo was printed in 1576 in an English translation by Robert Patterson. Even though the influence of those works is generally emphasised by Vickers and other editors of Bacon’s Essays , there are no specific studies dedicated to this aspect. For a general framework see Burke ( 1993 ) and Wyatt ( 2005 ), 179–184.

Crane ( 1923 ). For Bacon’s scientific method as a medicine of the mind see Corneanu ( 2011 ), 14–45.

Works , vol. VI, 310–311 and 342.

On this Stoic tradition of thought see Nussbaum ( 1994 ) and Hadot ( 2002 ), in which the Stoic notion of the cultivation of the mind is analysed as a ‘way of life’.

Box ( 1996 ), 260–282.

In the De augmentis scientiarum , moral knowledge is included in the doctrina animae humanae and separated from the doctrina civilis , but Bacon himself underlined that his divisions were branches of the same tree.

Fish ( 1971 ), 56.

Skinner ( 1996 ), 215–244; according to Skinner, Hobbes may have been one of the Latin translators of Bacon’s Essays.

Vickers ( 1996 ), 200–223.

Kenneth ( 1991 ).

Works , vol. XI, 340.

Dzelzainis ( 2000 ).

Essays ,10–12, 80–83. For Guicciardini’s influence on Bacon’s Essays see Lepri and Severini ( 2011 ).

Rossi , ( 1957 ), 234–255.

Works , vol. VI, 327.

Tuck ( 1993 ), 105–110.

Peltonen ( 1992 ); the republican side of Machiavelli’s influence is less accentuated in Zagorin ( 1998 ), 129–174.

For a detailed analysis of Bacon’s ideas about territorial expansion, his opposition to Botero’s theses, and his affinity with Machiavelli’s arguments see the chapter by Sara Miglietti.

Works , vol. VI, 311–313.

For the influence of Ciceronian humanism on Bacon’s Essays see Vickers ( 1984 ).

Essays , 93.

Essays , 28–29. The sentence is explicitly, albeit not faithfully, related to Machiavelli’s thesis on Christian religion; for sake of brevity in this chapter it is not possible to delve into this aspect of Machiavelli’s influence.

Essays , 53.

Essays , 55.

Essays , 16.

On Blake’s opinion and its diffusion in twentieth-century scholarship, see Melchionda ( 1979 ), 5–10.

James and Kent ( 2009 ), 111; this study analyses Bacon’s O f friendship (and Montaigne’s De l’amitié) in the light of Burke ( 1999 ), Hyatte ( 1994 ), Langer ( 1994 ), and other relevant contributions on the Renaissance conceptions of friendship.

Essays , 23.

Essays , 59.

For friendship as part and parcel of Bacon’s medicine of the mind, see also Giglioni ( 2011 ).

Essays , 60.

Essays , 62. Pythagoras’s saying is quoted from Plutarch’s The Education of Children .

Essays , 62.

Works , vol. VI, 95 and 260.

Works , vol. VI, 77.

According to Colclough ( 2005 ), 40–45, at the request of King Henry VIII, Thomas Elyot made an English version of Erasmus ’s Latin translation, but Bacon probably referred to the English translation by Philemon Holland ( 1603 ).

See Essays , 63; Erasmus ( 1995 ), 56–57; Castiglione ( 1967 ), 261–265. Bacon’s indebtedness to Plutarch is examined in Achilleos ( 2010 ), which refers to Erasmus and Castiglione’s works, but insists on the similarities.

LaBreche ( 2010 ) offers a critical discussion of recent studies on friendship and patronage in the Jacobean era.

For a close examination of friendship in fifteenth-century mirrors for princes see Ceron ( 2011 ), 215–479.

See Essays , 60 and Patrizi ( 1531 ), 337. As shown by Warren ( 1950 ), Patrizi’s De regno was a crucial source for English mirrors for princes.

Vicini ( 1977 ), 59 and 63.

Essays , 100–102.

See Elliott and Brockliss ( 1999 ), 1–12 and 54–71.

Lupini ( 2010 ).

Essays , 180; Vickers refers to Xylander’s Latin translation of Dio Cassius’ work since in Tacitus’s Annales the term was socius laborum .

See Essays , 122 and Platina ( 1979 ), 69. While Platina drew the metaphor from Dio Chrysostom’s orations, in the Plutarchan chapter on the diversity between flatterers and friends Elyot borrowed it from Aristotle’s Politics : Elyot ( 1966 ),110–113.

A well-known drama by Ben Johnson ( Sejanus. His Fall , 1603), which has been read as a topical reference to the fall of the former royal favourite Robert Devereux, rendered famous the tragic death of Sejanus. Around twenty years later, George Villiers became the target of the literary criticism of royal favourites: see Keenan ( 2011 ).

Essays , 46–47.

Essays , 47.

On the republican inclinations of Bacon’s political thought see Peltonen ( 1996 ).

See Machiavelli ( 2005 ), 81. Both Holcomb ( 1995 ) and Solomon ( 1998 ), 103–160 offer a close reading of Bacon’s fable and insist on Bacon’s trick, but they make no direct references to Machiavelli’s Prince .

See Essays , 64–65.

Montaigne ( 1965 ), I: 188–192. On the absolute union of the wills in Montaigne’s De l’amitié see Starobinski ( 1982 ), 52–70.

See, for instance, Von Heyking and Avramenko ( 2008 ) and Daumas ( 2011 ).

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Ceron, A. (2016). Ethics, Politics, and Friendship in Bacon’s Essays (1625): Between Past and Future. In: Muratori, C., Paganini, G. (eds) Early Modern Philosophers and the Renaissance Legacy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32604-7_12

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