ESSAYS,

MORAL, ECONOMICAL, AND POLITICAL.

BY

FRANCIS BACON,

BARON VERULAM, VISCOUNT OF ST ALBANS, AND LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR

OF ENGLAND.

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS,

LONDON AND EDINBURGH.

1859.

III. That the means of producing many events which we little dream of, are actually placed within our reach; and that nothing prevents us from using those means, but our inability to select them from the crowd of other circumstances by which they are disguised and surrounded.

THIS illustrious philosopher was the son of Sir Nicholas | that combination of cirumstances out of the means which Bacon, lord-keeper of the great seal, and Anne, daughter nature has placed within our reach. of Sir Anthony Cook, tutor to Edward VI., and was born in London, January 22, 1561. The sprightliness of mind which he displayed in boyhood caused Queen Elizabeth to converse with him frequently, and to style him her young lord-keeper. In 1573, he was entered a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, where the progress of his intellect was so very rapid, that, before completing his sixteenth year, he had satisfied himself of the futility of the Aristotelian mode of reasoning. At this period of his life, he was placed under the charge of Sir Amias Powlet, the queen's ambassador in France, where he gathered a vast quantity of facts useful to an English statesman, which he formed, before his nineteenth year, into a Treatise on the State of Europe. The unex-generalise; and having done so, we shall sometimes pected death of his father having obliged him to choose a profession, he adopted that of the law, and studied it with great assiduity at Gray's Inn, but without neglecting philosophical pursuits. It was here that, at the age of twenty-six, he formed the first sketch of his great work, The Instauration of the Sciences.

IV. That therefore we should endeavour, by diligent observation, to find out what circumstances are essential, and what extraneous, to the production of each event; and its real cause being stripped free from all the perplexing concomitants which occur in nature, we shall perceive at once whether we can command the circumstances that compose it or not. This, in short, is to discover that objects, which of all others appeared the most useless, remote, and inapplicable to our purpose, possess the very properties we are in search of. Nature stands ready to minister to our designs, if we have only the sagacity to disentangle its operations from one another, to refer each event to its real source, and to trace the powers and qualities of objects into their most abstract form.

Lord Bacon's "Essays," now before the reader, are by no means the least part of his philosophy. They are the most popular of his writings, being devoted to subjects and involving thoughts which, as he says of them himself, "come home to men's business and bosoms." They often unite the most profound philosophy with the most fanciful illustration and poetical language, and sometimes display an almost scriptural pathos.

His first preferment was to the post of counsel extraordinary to the queen, which brought him rather honour than profit. His contracted circumstances leaving him In pursuing the dictates of this noble philosophy, man no other choice than between virtuous poverty and the is no longer impotent and ridiculous. He calmly vandependence of a courtier, he was so unfortunate as to quishes the barriers which oppose his wishes he eludes choose the latter. Till the accession of King James, he the causes of pain-he widens the range of enjoyment made little advance either in reputation or in fortune.—and, at the same time, feels the dignity of intellect, His learning having recommended him to the king, he which, like a magician's talisman, has made all things was knighted, and appointed king's counsel, with a salary bow before his feet. of forty pounds a-year. In consideration of the merit of his work on the Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, he was appointed, two years after, to the post of solicitor-general; and about this time his practice as a lawyer became both extensive and profitable. If Bacon had been content to wait upon fortune, he could have hardly failed, with the first abilities of his time, to reach, without discredit, the highest honours of the state. But the eagerness of his ambition, and the want of manly principle, caused him to seek elevation by means which have stamped his name with infamy. Not only was he content to present an almost impious kind of flattery to his weak sovereign, but he stooped to become the minion of a minion, namely, Villiers Duke of Buckingham, who had been recently raised from obscurity to the highest court honours, merely on account of his possessing a handsome person. By such means, and by writing to the king a letter studiously depreciating all the other great lawyers of his day, he obtained, in March 1617, the appointment of lord-keeper, and, two years after, that of lord chancellor, with the title of Baron Verulam, subsequently exchanged for that of Viscount of St Alban's.

Without apparently gaining much personal esteem, Bacon had at this time obtained the highest reputation as a philosophical writer. To the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, and afterwards republished in an extended form, was added, in 1620, the Novum Organum, which was designed as a second part of his grand work, the Instauration of the Sciences. Another portion, intended to complete the work, was never produced. The objects of the whole work were, to answer the objections made to the progress of knowledge, to classify the branches of knowledge, and to explain a new method of employing the faculties for the increase of knowledge; namely, to ascertain facts in the first place, and then to reason upon them towards conclusions-a mode which may now appear very obvious, and even unavoidable, but which was nevertheless unknown till explained by him. To come to particulars, Bacon tells us,

From the glories of the sage, it is our painful duty to revert to the infamy of the courtier. In his capacity of chancellor, Bacon displayed the same servility to the king and Buckingham as before, affixing the great seal to many patents which were intended as instruments of extortion in behalf of the royal favourite. In 1621, these abuses became the subject of investigation by Parliament, when it was discovered that Bacon had also accepted bribes from suitors in the Court of Chancery. A committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the latter delinquencies, brought no fewer than twenty distinct charges against him, comprising sums which amounted to several thousand pounds; and Bacon, with his natural pusillanimity, could only meet them with an abject confession. He was sentenced to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure, and to be for ever incapable of holding any office or employment, and never again to sit in Parliament, or to come within the verge of court.

Overwhelmed with the infamy of this sentence, he retired to solitude. During the remainder of his life, under the discouragement of public censure, a heavy burden of debt, and the still greater pressure of self-reproach, he yet retained so much vigour of intellect, and warmth of fancy, as to be capable of producing writings of singular merit, in history, morals, and philosophy.

He pursued his studies to the last, in the midst of bodily infirmities brought on by intense study, by multiplicity of business, and, above all, by anguish of mind. In the winter of 1625, he found his health and spirits much impaired. In the spring of the following year, I. That the ultimate aim of philosophical investiga-making an excursion into the country to try some extion is to bring the course of events, as much as possible, under our own control, in order that we may turn it to our own advantage.

II. That as each event depends upon a certain combination of circumstances which precede it, and constitute its cause, it is evident we shall be able to command the event, whenever we have it in our power to produce

periments upon the preservation of bodies, he is supposed to have been affected by some noxious effluvium, as he was suddenly seized with pains in his head and stomach, which obliged him to stop at the Earl of Arundel's house at Highgate. Here, after a week's illness, he expired on the 9th April 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

ESSAYS, CIVIL AND MORAL.

OF TRUTH.

OF DEATH.

falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which "WHAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in gid-it; for these winding and crooked courses are the goings diness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief-affecting of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and free-will in thinking, as well as in acting-and, though not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he insame veins, though there be not so much blood in them quired the reason why the word of the lie should be as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the such a disgrace, and such an odious charge, "If it be difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to truth; nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; men: for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man." Surely but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generathat men should love lies, where neither they make tions of men: it being foretold, that when Christ for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with cometh," he shall not "find faith upon earth.” the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth not show the masques, 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, in great severity, called poesy "the wine of demons," ("vinum dæmonum,") 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, 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 itis the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense, the last was the light of reason, 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 that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost 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;" 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 honour of man's nature, and that mixture of

MEN fear death as children fear to go into 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"-["The pageantry of death is
more terrible than death itself."] Groans, and convul-
sions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and
blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible.
It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion 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; honour aspireth to it; grief
flieth to it; fear pre-occupieth 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. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and sa-
tiety: " Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non
tantum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest."
"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❞—[“ Mind-
ful of our union, Livia, live and be happy."]-Tiberius
in dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him, "Jam Tibe-
rium vires et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant”.
[" When the body and strength of Tiberius had wasted
away, he still retained his dissimulation."]-Vespasian,

in a jest, sitting upon the stool," Ut puto Deus fio"*- | peace, which containeth infinite blessings; it establisheth ["As I think, I become a God."]-Galba with a sentence, "Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani"-["Strike, if it be for the interests of the Roman people,"] holding forth his neck-Septimus Severus in dispatch, "Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum"-[" Come quickly, if there remains any thing else for me to do,"]-and the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better, saith he, "to regard the close of life as one of the duties merely of nature"-(" Qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponat naturæ.") 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 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 dolours of death: but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, "Nunc dimittis," 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 aniabitur idem "["The same person (who was envied while alive) shall be loved when dead."]