Elimizdeki kitap Türkiye’deki Bacon okumaları arasında bir ilk; Bacon’ın Latince’deki bütün eserlerinin didik didik tarandığı, bu eserlerdeki düşüncelerinin belli bir yöntem ve amaçla süzülüp cümle cümle damıtılarak ortaya serildiği ve Türk okuyucusuna armağan edildiği bir ilk. Yazarı, Latince konuşan Bacon’ı sahiden duyan biri; Latince’ye ve özellikle Bacon’ın dönemindeki Nova Latina’ya özgü mecazlara hakim. Bu yüzden bize Bacon’ı derinden tanıtacak sözleri Latince külliyatın satırları arasından rahatça bulup çıkarabilmiş.
Üç bölümden oluşmuş bu çalışma; ilk bölümü, yazarın kendi seçtiği ve Bacon’ın tarihe bakışını, ahlak duyuşunu ve felsefe anlayışını kısa ve öz şekilde ortaya çıkaracak ifadelerden oluşuyor ve tematik olarak hazırlanmış. Bu bölümde hangi Latince eserler yok ki: Sermones Fideles Sive Interiora Rerum, Novum Organum, De Interpretatione Naturae, De Sapientia Veterum, Meditationes Sacrae, Epistulae, De Augmentis Scientiarum, Nova Atlantis, bunlardan sadece birkaçı. Çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde, Bacon’ın Ornamenta Rationalia başlığı altında sunduğu ve Antikçağ’ın söz ustası Publilius Syrus’un Sententiae adlı eserinden toparladığı Antikçağ retoriğiyle süslü deyişlerinin çevirisi yer alıyor. Üçüncü bölüm ise, Bacon’ın De Augmentis Scientiarum adlı ünlü eserinin VI. Kitabı Exempla Antithetorum’da derlediği değişik konulardaki karşıt düşüncelerinin çevirisini içeriyor. Her bir bölüm açıklayıcı dipnotlarla da zenginleştirilmiş.
Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Dürüşken, Sunuş'tan
Temel Alınan Edisyonlar:
BACON, F., The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, And Lord High Chancellor Of England, New Edition. Vol.X., Francisci De Verulamio, Summi Angliae Cancellarii, Opera Civilia et Moralia, C. and J. Rivington, London 1826. ("Sermones Fideles Sive Interiora Rerum")
BACON, F., The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol.VI., coll. & edit. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, D. D. Heath, Literary And Proffessional Works, Vol I., Longman & Co., London 1861 - The Works of Francis Bacon Vol. III, London 1859 ("De Interpretatione Naturae") – The Works of Francis Bacon Vol. I., London 1857 ("Novum Organum")
BACON, F., The Works of Francis Bacon, Sechster Band, Friedrich Frommann Verlag Gunther Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1963 ("De Sapientia Veterum")
BACON, F., The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. XI., A New Edition By Basil Montagu, ESQ, William Pickering, London 1829. ("Meditationes Sacrae", "Epistolae")
BACON, F., The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: With a Life of the Author, In Three Volumes, Vol. I., Basil Montagu, Parry & McMillan, Philadelphia 1859. ("Advancement Of Learning")
BACON, F., The Works Of Francis Bacon, Vol. I., coll. & edit. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, D. D. Heath, Literary And Proffessional Works, Vol I., Longman & Co., London 1857. ("De Augmentis Scientiarum")
BACON, Francis, Ouvres Philosophiques De Bacon, M. N. Bouillet, Tome III., L. Hachette, Paris 1934 ("Nova Atlantis")
Künye:
Francis Bacon, Seçme Aforizmalar, Çev. C. Cengiz Çevik, T. İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, Hasan Ali Yücel Klasikleri Dizisi LXXXVIII, 1. Baskı (İstanbul) Temmuz 2008.
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MY LORDS, I thought it fit for my place, and for these times, to bring to hearing before your lordships some cause touching private duels, to see if this court can do any good to tame and reclaim that evil, which seems unbridled. And I could have wished that I had met with some greater persons, as a subject for your censure; both because it had been more worthy of this presence, and also the better to have shown the resolution I myself have to proceed without respect of persons in this business. But finding this cause on foot in my predecessor's time, I thought to lose no time in a mischief that groweth every day; and besides, it passes not amiss sometimes in government, that the greater sort be admonished by an example made in the meaner, and the dog to be eaten before the lion. Nay, I should think, my lords, that men of birth and quality will leave the practice, when it begins to be vilified, and come so low as to barber-surgeons and butchers, and such base mechanical persons. And for the greatness of this presence, In which I take much comfort, both as I consider it in itself, and much more in respect it is by his Majesty's direction, I will supply the meanness of the particular cause, by handling of the general point: to the end that by the occasion of this present cause, both my purpose of prosecution against duels and the opinion of the court, without which I am nothing, for the censure of them may appear, and thereby offenders in that kind may read their own case, and know what they are to expect; which may serve for a warning until example may be made in some greater person, which I doubt the times will but too soon afford.
Therefore, before I come to the particular, whereof your lordships are now to judge, I think the time best spent to speak somewhat (1) of the nature and greatness of this mischief; (2) Of the causes and remedies; (3) of the justice of the law of Eng. land, which some stick not to think defective in this matter; (4) Of the capacity of this court, where certainly the remedy of this mischief is best to be found; (5) touching my own purpose and resolution, wherein I shall humbly crave your lordships' and assistance.
For the mischief itself, it may please your lordships to take into your consideration that, when revenge is once extorted out of the magistrate's hands, contrary to God's ordinance, mihi vindicta, ego retribuam, and every man shall bear the sword, not to defend, but to assail, and private men begin once to presume to give law to themselves and to right their own wrongs, no man can foresee the danger and inconveniences that may arise and multiply thereupon. It may cause sudden storms in court, to the disturbance of his Majesty and unsafety of his person. It may grow from quarrels to bandying, and from bandying to trooping, and so to tumult and commotion; from particular persons to dissension of families and alliances; yea, to national quarrel:;, accruing to the not under foresight. So that the State by this means shall be like to a distempered and imperfect body, continually subject to inflammations and convulsions. Besides, certainly both in divinity and in policy, offenses of presumption are the greatest. Other offenses yield and consent to the law that it is good, not daring to make defense, or to justify themselves; But this offense expressly gives the law an affront, as if there were two laws, one a kind of gown law and the other a law of reputation, as they term it. So that Paul's and Westminster, the pulpit and the courts of justice, must give place to the law, as the King speaketh in his proclamation, of ordinary tables, and such reverend assemblies; the Yearbooks, and statute books must give place to some French and Italian pamphlets, which handle the doctrines of duels, which, if they be in the right, transeamus ad illa, let us receive them, and not keep the people in conflict and distraction between two laws. Again, my lords, it is a miserable effect, when young men full of towardness and hope, such as the poets call "Aurora, filii," sons of the morning, in whom the expectation and comfort of their friends consisteth, shall be cast away and destroyed in such a vain manner. But much more it is to be deplored when so much noble and genteel blood should be spilt upon such follies, as, if it were adventured in the field in service of t1ae King and realm, were able to make the fortune of a day and change the future of a kingdom. So your lordships see what a desperate evil this is; it troubleth peace; it disfurnisheth war; it bringeth calamity upon private men, peril upon the State, and contempt upon the law.
Touching the causes of it: the first motive, no doubt, is a false and erroneous imagination of honor and credit; and therefore the King, in his last proclamation, doth most aptly and excellently call them bewitching duels. For, if one judge of it truly, it is no better than a sorcery that enchanteth the spirits of young men, that bear great minds with a false show, species falsa; and a kind of satanical illusion and apparition of honor against religion, against law, against moral virtue, and against the precedents and examples of the best times and valiantest nations; as I shall tell you by and by, when I shall show you that the law of England is not alone in this point. But then the seed of this mischief being such, it is nourished by vain discourses and green and unripe conceits, which, nevertheless, have so prevailed as though a man were staid and sober-minded and a right believer touching the vanity and unlawfulness of these duels; yet the stream of vulgar opinion is such, as it imposeth a necessity upon men of value to conform themselves, or else there is no living or looking upon men's faces; so that we have not to do, in this case, so much with particular persons as with unsound and depraved opinions, like the dominations and spirits of the air which the Scripture speaketh of. Hereunto may be added that men have almost lost the true notion and understanding of fortitude and valor. For fortitude distinguisheth of the grounds of quarrels whether they be just, and not only so, but whether they be worthy; and setteth a better price upon men's lives than to bestow them idly. Nay, it is weakness and disesteem of a man's self, to put a man's life upon such ledger performances. A man's life is not to be trifled away; it is to be offered up and sacrificed to honorable services, public merits, good causes, and noble adventures. It is in expense of blood as it is in expense of money. It is no liberality to make a profusion of money upon every vain occasion; nor no more is it fortitude to make effusion of blood, except the cause be of worth. And thus much for the cause of this evil.
For the remedies. I hope some great and noble person will put his hand to this plough, and I wish that my labors of this day may be but forerunners to the work of a higher and better hand. But yet to deliver my opinion as may be proper for this time and place, there be four things that I have thought on, as the most effectual for the repressing of this depraved custom of particular combats.
The first is, that there do appear and be declared a constant and settled resolution in the State to abolish it. For this is a thing, my lords, must go down at once or not at all; for then every particular man will think himself acquitted in his reputation, when he sees that the State takes it to heart, as an insult against the King's power and authority, and thereupon hath absolutely resolved to master it; like unto that which we set down in express words in the edict of Charles IX of France, touching duels, that the King himself took upon him the honor of all that took themselves grieved or interested for not having performed the combat. So must the State do in this business; and in my conscience there is none that is but of a reasonable sober disposition, be he never so valiant, except it be some furious person that is like a firework, but will be glad of it, when he shall see the law and rule of State disinterest him of a vain and unnecessary hazard.
Secondly, care must be taken that this evil be no more cockered, nor the humor of it fed; wherein I humbly pray your lordships, that I may speak my mind freely, and yet be understood aright. The proceedings of the great and noble commissioners martial I honor and reverence much, and of them I speak not in any sort. But I say the compounding of quarrels, which is otherwise in use by private noblemen and gentlemen, is so punctual, and hath such reference and respect unto the received conceits, what is beforehand, and what is behindhand, and I cannot tell w1lat, as without all question it doth, in a fashion, countenance and authorize this practice of duels, as if it had in it somewhat of right
Thirdly, I must acknowledge that I learned out of the King's last proclamation, the most prudent and best applied remedy for this offense, if it shall please his Majesty to use it, that the wit of man can devise. This offense, my lords, is grounded upon a false conceit of honor; and therefore it would be punished in the same kind, in eo quis rectissime plectifur, in quo peccat. The fountain of honor is the King and his aspect, and the access to his person continueth honor in life, and to be banished from his presence is one of the greatest eclipses of honor that can be. If his Majesty shall be pleased that when this court shall censure any of these offenses in persons of eminent quality, to add this out of his own power and discipline, that these persons shall be banished and excluded from his court for certain years, and the courts of his queen and prince, I think there is no man that hath any good blood in him will commit an act that shall cast him into that darkness that he may not behold his sovereign's face.
Lastly, and that which more properly concerneth this court. We see, my lords, the root of this offense is stubborn; for it despiseth death, which is the utmost of punishments; and it were a just but a miserable severity to execute the law without all remission or mercy, where the case proveth capital. And yet the late severity in France was more, where by a kind of martial law, established by ordinance of the King and Parliament, the party that had slain another was presently had to the gibbet, insomuch as gentlemen of great quality were hanged, their wounds bleeding, lest a natural death should prevent the example of justice. But, my lords, the course which we shall take is of far greater lenity, and yet of no less efficacy; which is to punish, in this court, all the middle acts and proceedings which tend to the duel, which I will enumerate to you anon, and so to hew and vex the root in the branches, which, no doubt, in the end will kill the root, and yet prevent the extremity of law.
Now for the law of England, I see it excepted to, though ignorantly, in two points. The one, that it should make no difference between an insidious and foul murder, and the killing of a man upon fair terms, as they now call it. The other, that the law hath not provided sufficient punishment and reparations for contumely of words, as the lie, and the like. But these are no better than childish novelties against the divine law, and against all laws in effect, and against the examples of all the bravest and most virtuous nations of the world.
For first, for the law of God, there is never to be found any difference made in homicide, but between homicide voluntary and involuntary, which we term misadventure. And for the case of misadventure itself, there were cities of refuge; so that the offender was put to his flight, and that flight was subject to accident, whether the revenger of blood should overtake him before he had gotten sanctuary or no. It is true that our law hath made a more subtle distinction between the will inflamed and the will advised, between manslaughter in heat and murder upon prepensed malice or cold blood, as the soldiers call it; an indulgence not unfit for a choleric and warlike nation; for it is true, ira furor brevis, a man in fury is not himself. This privilege of passion the ancient Roman law restrained, but to a case; that was, if the husband took the adulterer in the manner. To that rage and provocation only it gave way, that a homicide was justifiable. But for a difference to be made in killing and destroying man, upon a forethought purpose, between foul and fair, and, as it were, between single murder and vied murder, it is but a monstrous child of this latter age, and there is no shadow of it in any law, divine or human. Only it is true, I find in the Scripture that Cain enticed his brother into the field and slew him treacherously; but Lamech vaunted of his manhood, that he would kill a young man, and if it were to his hurt; so as I see no difference between an insidious murder and a braving or presumptuous murder, but the difference between Cain and Lamech.
As for examples in civil states, all memory doth consent, that Græcia and Rome were the most valiant and generous nations of the world; and that, which is more to be noted, they were free estates, and not under a monarchy; whereby a man would think it a great deal the more reason that particular persons should have righted themselves. And yet they had not this practice of duels, nor anything that bare show thereof; and sure they would have had it, if there had been any virtue in it. Nay, as he saith, "Fas est et ab hoste doceri." It is memorable, that which is reported by a counsel or ambassador of the emperor, touching the censure of the Turks of these duels. There was a combat of this Kind performed by two persons of quality of the Turks, wherein one of them was slain, and the other party was converted before the council of bashaws. The manner of the reprehension was in these words: "How durst you undertake to fight one with the other? Are there not Christians enough to kill? Did you not know that whether of you shall be slain, the loss would be the great seignor's?" So, as we may see, the most warlike nations, whether generous or barbarous, have ever despised this wherein now men glory.
It is true, my lords, that I find combats of two natures authorized, how justly I will not dispute as to the latter of them. The one, when upon the approaches of armies in the face one of the other, particular persons have made challenges for trial of valors in the field upon the public quarrel. This the Romans called "pugna per provocationem." And this was never, but either between the generals themselves, who were absolute, or between particulars by license of the generals; never upon private authority. So you see David asked leave when he fought with Goliath; and Joab, when the armies were met, gave leave, and said "Let the young man play before us." And of this kind was that famous example in the wars of Naples, between twelve Spaniards and twelve Italians, where the Italians bore away the victory; besides other infinite like examples worthy and laudable, sometimes by singles, sometimes by numbers.
The second combat is a judicial trial of right, where the right is obscure, introduced by the Goths and the northern nations, but more anciently entertained in Spain. And this yet remains in some cases as a divine lot of battle, though controverted by divines, touching the lawfulness of it; so that a wise writer saith: "Taliter pugnantes videntur tentare Deum, quia hoc volunt ut Deus ostendat et Jaciat miraculum, ut justam causam habens victore efficiatur, quod sœpe contra accidit." But whosoever it be, this kind of fight taketh its warrant from law. Nay, the French themselves, whence this folly seemeth chiefly to have flown, never had it but only in practice and toleration, and never as authorized by law; and yet now of late they have been fain to purge their folly with extreme rigor, in so much as many gentlemen left between death and life in the duels, as I spake before, were hastened to hanging with their wounds bleeding. For the State found it had been neglected so long, as nothing could be thought cruelty which tended to the putting of it down. As for the second defect, pretended in our law, that it hath provided no remedy for lies and fillips, it may receive like answer. It would have been thought a madness amongst the ancient lawgivers to have set a punishment upon the lie given, which in effect is but a word of denial, a negative of another's saying. Any lawgiver, if he had been asked the question, would have made Solon's answer: That he had not ordained any punishment for it, because he never imagined the world would have been so fantastical as to take it so highly. The civilians dispute whether an action of injury lie for it, and rather resolve the contrary. And Francis L of France, who first set on and stamped this disgrace so deep, is taxed by the judgment of all wise writers for beginning the vanity of it; for it was he, that when he had himself given the lie and defy to the Emperor, to make it current in the world, said in a solemn assembly, "that he was no honest man that would bear the lie," which was the fountain of this new learning.
As for the words of approach and contumely, whereof the lie was esteemed none, it is not credible, but that the orations themselves are extant, what extreme and exquisite reproaches were tossed up and down in the Senate of Rome and the placer, of assembly, and the like in Græcia, and yet no man took himself fouled by them, but took them but for breath, and the style of an enemy, and either despised them or returned them, but no blood was spilt about them.
So of every touch or light blow of the person, they are not in themselves considerable, save that they have got them upon the stamp of a disgrace, which maketh these light things pass for great matters. The law of England and all laws hold these degrees of injury to tile person, slander, battery, mayhem, death; and if there be extraordinary circumstances of despite and contumely, as in case of 1flDels and bastinadoes and the like, this court taketh them in hand and punisheth them exemplarily. But for this apprehension of a disgrace that a fillip to the person should be a mortal wound to the reputation, it were good that men did hearken unto the saying of Gonsalvo, the great and famous commander, that was wont to say a gentleman's honor should be de tela crassiore, of a good strong warp or web, that every little thing should not catch in it; when as now it seems they are but of cobweb-lawn or such light stuff, which certainly is weakness, and not true greatness of mind, but like a sick man's body, that is so tender that it feels everything. And so much in maintenance and demonstration of the wisdom and justice of the law of the! and.
For the capacity of this court, I take this to be a ground infallible, that wheresoever an offense is capital, or matter of felony, though it be not acted, there the combination or practice tending to the offense is punishable in this court as high misdemeanor. So practice to imprison, though it took no effect; waylaying to murder, though it took no effect; and the like; have been adjudged heinous misdemeanors punishable in this court. Nay, inceptions and preparations in inferior crimes, that are not capital, as suborning and preparing of witnesses that were never deposed, or deposed nothing material, have likewise been censured in this court, as appeareth by the decree in Garnon's case.
Why, then, the major proposition being such, the minor cannot be denied, for every appointment of the field is but combination and plotting of murder. Let them gild it how they list, they shall never have fairer terms of me in a place of justice. Then the conclusion followeth, that it is a case fit for the censure of the court. And of this there be precedents in the very point of challenge. It was the case of Wharton, plaintiff, against Ellekar and Acklam, defendants, where Acklam, being a follower of Ellekar's, was censured for carrying a challenge from Ellekar to Wharton, though the challenge was not put in writing, but delivered only by word of message; and there are words in the decree, that such challenges are to the subversion of government. These things are well known, and therefore I needed not so much to have insisted upon them, but that in this case I would be thought not to innovate anything of my own head, but to follow the former precedents of the court, though I mean to do it more thoroughly, because the time requires it more.
Therefore now to come to that which concerneth my part, I say that by the favor of the king and the court, I will prosecute in this court in the cases following: If any man shall appoint the field, though the fight be not acted or performed. If any man shall send any challenge in writing, or any message of challenge. If any man carry or deliver any writing or message of challenge. If any man shall accept to be second in a challenge of either side. If any man shall depart the realm, with intention and agreement to perform the fight beyond the seas. If any man shall revive a quarrel by any scandalous bruits or writings, contrary to former proclamation published by his Majesty in that behalf.
Nay, I hear there be some counsel learned of duels, that tell young men when they are beforehand, and when they are otherwise, and thereby incense and incite them to the duel, and make an art of it. I hope I shall meet with some of them too; and I am sure, my lords, this course of preventing duels, in nipping them in the bud, is fuller of clemency and providence than the suffering them to go on, and hanging men with their wounds bleeding, as they did in France.
To conclude, 1 have some petitions to make first to your lordship, my lord chancellor, that in case I be advertised of a purpose in any to go beyond the sea to fight, I may have granted his Majesty's writ of ne exeat regnum to stop him, for this giant bestrideth the sea, and I would take and snare him by the foot on this side; for the combination and plotting is on this side, though it should be acted beyond the sea. And your lordship said notably the last time I made a motion in this business, that a man may be as well fur de se as felo de se, if he steal out of the realm for a bad purpose. As for the satisfying of the words of the writ, no man will doubt but he does machinari contra coronam, as the words of the writ be, seeking to murder a subject; for that is ever contra coronam et dignitatem. I have also a suit to your lordships all in general, that for justice's sake, and for true honor's sake, honor of religion, law, and the King our master, against this fond and false disguise or puppetry of honor. I may, in my prosecution, which, it is like enough, may sometimes stir coals, which I esteem not for my particular, but as it may hinder the good service, I may, I say, be countenanced and assisted from your lordships. Lastly, I have a petition to the nobles and gentlemen of England, that they would learn to esteem themselves at a just price.Nos hos qu–asitum munus in usus—their blood is not to be spilt like water or a vile thing; therefore, that they would rest persuaded there cannot be a form of honor, except it be upon a worthy matter. But this, ipsi viderunt, I am resolved.
THE WORLD'S BEST ORATIONS: FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. DAVID J. BREWER, EDITOR; EDWARD AL ALLEN, WILLIAM SCHULYER, ASSOCIATE EDITORS. 10 V. - PAGE 199 - BREWER, DAVID JOSIAH (ED.)
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Source: Down-home Bacon, or, a seventeenth-century woman's... By: Travitsky, Betty S., ANQ, 0895769X, Apr-Jul92, Vol. 5, Issue 2/3
Over the last two decades, students of Renaissance social history have come to realize that Renaissance women experienced many cross-class, gender-specific constraints. In particular, a wife, or feme covert, was without independent legal status or right of redress for even the most fundamental violations committed against herself, including any perpetrated by her husband. While this understanding has come slowly to students of Renaissance history, the reality was recognized during the Renaissance itself. As Erasmus put it, "Certainly no man will envy the condition of a wife if he observes what is true, that all the goods of marriage belong rather to the husband than the wife."(n1)
It is therefore a sadly ironic measure of the debased status of Renaissance women that only in exceptional cases did they have the liberty to choose to remain single and thus be positioned to participate in public affairs. Nevertheless, negative conceptions of the liabilities for a man on marriage were so strong that such early humanists as Alberti, Leonard Bruni, and Francesco Barbaro wrote in praise of marriage to fend off the extinction they feared of noble families.(n2) In seventeenth-century England, negative conceptions about these liabilities found a resonant echo in a well-known essay by Francis Bacon that incorporates such contradictory, and unresolved, sentiments as the following:
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; which both in affection and means have 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.... [T]he 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.... Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.... Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands.... Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity.... [A] man may have a quarrel 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 older man not at all.(n3)
Clever pronouncements like Bacon's, rich in allusion to classical authorities and in witty digs at even the virtuous wife, were beyond the ken or pen of even relatively educated Renaissance women, who were taught to read, and perhaps to write, to enable them to conduct their homes and families in a pious manner.(n4) The reformers' efforts improved women's education, but most advocated utilitarian study, limited largely to prayer book and Bible. This program reinforced such traditional ideals for women as chastity, silence, and obedience, and, sadly, left us little evidence of the thinking of obedient women, since "silence" was construed to refer to written communication as well as public speech.
Even when obedient women did write, primarily for private audiences, their writings incorporated few rhetorical flourishes since the study of rhetoric was considered inappropriate for women.(n5) Fortunately, at least one unpublished essay on marriage by an indisputably obedient wife, Elizabeth Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater (1626-1663), has been preserved for us--inadvertently--by her grieving husband, who commemorated his wife in an extraordinary epitaph after "she exchanged her earthly Coronet for an heavenly Crown" and also had copies of her "Loose Papers" made. As a result, the Countess's "Considerations concerning Marriage" is preserved in a journal that has come down to us in three scribal copies.(n6)
While her essay may seem rhetorically a species of "down-home Bacon," having none of the flourish and sophistication of Bacon's jeu d'esprit, it is nevertheless a very important social document. When contrasted with Bacon's essay it is particularly illuminating.(n7) Bacon's ideas were viable only to a male who enjoyed the options he describes, and, as the Countess's essay shows, were outside the thinking of a respectable, contemporary woman. It remains to note that the manu****** also contains a second essay on marriage, "Of Marriage, and of Widdowes," and that the more homely perspective that the Countess brings to her subject is well indicated by the comparison she considers: unlike Bacon, she does not regard the single state a serious option. Her "Considerations" follow:
Some account of Marriage as an unhappy life, by reason there is an obedience must belong from the wife to the Husband; and `tis greate reason it should so be, since we are commanded, by those that are above our capacity of reason, by God himselfe, and truly I think that person unhappy that will not esteeme of Matrimony, so as to take that tye into consideration, to inquire with themselves, whether or no they could esteeme of such a person so as to value his Judgment; and in matter of consequence, to yeild to his councell; not to be in such awe of him, as a servant of his Master, as not to speake, to contradict the least word he saith, but to have an affection, and love to him, as to a friend, and so to speake their mind, and opinion freely to him, yet not value him the lesse; & if he have a reciprocall affection to his wife, it makes them both blest in one another, whereas otherwayes if the wife be so meeke, and low in spirit, to be in Subjection, for every word, she makes him feare he is troublesome, and that shee had rather be alone then in his company; this is far from a companions way; if hye, and lofty, and willful, then of the other side, he is not himselfe when he is with her; so then rather, though he loves her, then bring himselfe into an unquiet disturbed life, he leaves her to goe into some other company, careing not how little he is with her, and when he sees her in company, doubts she will give him some undigested words, and if so, then he is discontented with the sight of her, so must give her a reprehension, at least in private, thus cloth this indiscretion cause a miserable life to them both; and if she be over awed by her owne Fancyes, 'tis a sad life to her selfe, and a trouble to her Husband, who other wayes would be a friendly companion, which makes a marriage happy, especially when a woman values her husband in busines of weight, not so much minding every petty action, as to think, now he loves me not, but love him sincerely; and if he be hasty, 'tis fitt she should be silent, giving him no cause to be angry, and then his anger cannot last long; if he be fickle and various, not careing much to be with his wife at home, then thus may the wife make her owne happinesse, for then she may give her selfe up to prayer, which St. Paul speakes as if a marryed person could not; and thus, in his absence, she is as much God's, as a virgine; and if She have a loving discreet Husband, and one that feares God, he will doubtlesse not hinder her duty to God, but endeavour the increase of her faith, and holynesse,. and there is no doubt, but where both these parties do perfectly agree, with passionate and sincere affection, but 'tis the happyest condition, a friendship never to be broke, as the words of Matrimony say, till death them depart. Now God grant all my friends to enjoy this happy and blessed friendship. (78b-84a)
"Considerations concerning Marriage" demonstrates a Renaissance woman's internalization of the patriarchal attitudes of her time. For reasons that should now be clear to us, but that may seem to us unconvincing, Egerton insists that woman's condition in the married state is a happy one. Without, perhaps, understanding what she is suggesting, she attempts to rationalize and maneuver within her subordinate state. Note, too, the barren simplicity of her language, in comparison to the rich economy of Bacon's, as well as the more limited range of reference in her essay, which never soars beyond domestic and religious considerations and which makes no allusion to the wider world. These areas were presumably of less concern to the Countess who, while educated for a woman of her time, was less learned than many men of a class lower than her own, like Bacon.(n8) A stunning instance of the adaptation by the member of an underprivileged group of the values of the privileged, Egerton's essay provides rare evidence of the thinking of a Renaissance woman about the state which was almost inevitably the lot of women in her time.
(n1.) Christiani matrimonii institutio (1526), f. 55; quoted by Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, 1956), p. 91.
(n2.) Elizabeth Welles, "The Iconography of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting", unpublished paper presented to the Colloquium on Women in the Renaissance (Washington, D.C.), November 29, 1990.
(n3.) Francis Bacon, "Of Marriage and Single Life," in Works, ed. James Spedding, et al. (Boston, 1860), XII, 101-03.
(n4.) Mary Beth Rose, "Maternal De-Formations: Renaissance Options for the Representation of Gender and Shakespearean Dramatic Genre," forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly (1991), and Betty S. Travitsky, "The New Mother of the English Renaissance: Her Writings on Motherhood," in The Lost Tradition: Mothers and Daughters in Literature, ed. E. M. Broner and Cathy N. Davidson (New York, 1980), pp. 33-43.
(n5.) Walter J. Ong, "Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite," SP 36 (1959). 103-24; Patricia A. Sullivan, "Seventeenth-Century British Biography and a Female Tradition in Rhetoric," IJWS (1980)3 143-59.
(n6.) One of the three. MS Egerton 607, is owned by the British Library, the other two by the Duke of Sutherland (a descendant of the family), who very kindly allowed me access to the manu******s to prepare an edition of the journals, now in progress under the advisement of Professor G. Thomas Tanselle, for whose patience and kindness I am greatly indebted. Citations are to MS Egerton 607; I have retained the original spelling and punctuation except for expanding contractions and conversion of u-v, i-j, and long s; line breaks are ANQ's.
(n7.) On the value of juxtaposing writings by men and women to garner new insights on the Renaissance, see Jean Howard, "Feminism and the Question of History: Resituating the Debate," Women's Studies 19 (Women in the Renaissance: An Interdisciplinary Forum, ed. Ann Rosalind Jones and Betty S. Travitsky [Summer 1991], 149-57).
(n8.) Some Renaissance women were extremely erudite; Bacon's own mother, Anna (DNB 1, 796), a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was a remarkable Tudor prodigy (Travitsky, "New Mother"). For several extraordinary women in Egerton's family, see Travitsky, "`His wife's prayers and meditations': MS Egerton 607." in Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst, 1990). 241-60. Both Bacon and Egerton had fathers who were very influential in court affairs.
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By Betty S. Travitsky, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
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Source: `Pruning by study': Self-cultivation in Bacon's Essays. By: Miller, John J., Papers on Language & Literature, 00311294, Fall95, Vol. 31, Issue 4
The question of the relationship of Bacon's Essays to his scientific project is a recurring commonplace of Bacon criticism. Generally, critics have argued over the degree to which the Essays conform to Bacon's inductive method, as described and demonstrated in The Novum Organon and The Advancement of Learning. Jacob Zeitlin's influential essay of 1928 was one of the first to argue that the Essays represent the application of induction to "civil knowledge [,] . . . which of all others is most immersed in matter, and hardliest reduced to axiom" (III: 445),[1] resulting in a "science of pure selfishness" (503).[2] Some more recent studies suggest a different approach to the question; these stress the coherence of the writings by arguing not so much that the Essays are (or are not) informed by the principles and methods of the scientific writings, as that both are the products of common anxieties, concerns, or socio-political conditions. Robert Faulkner, for instance, discovers underlying the Essays a "foundational" definition of the Baconian subject as "a needy self that must make its own provision to the point of making its own world" (87). From such a self, Faulkner argues, springs both the Essays' concern with personal security and power, and the will to power over nature which is the end of the scientific project.[3]
The following essay will begin, likewise, by exploring the nature of the self--and its "selfishness"--on which the Essays are predicated. The self portrayed in the Essays, and for which they are written, is motivated by a powerful anxiety about its ability to control and distribute its creative energies.[4] This anxiety, in turn, highlights a significant difference between the two projects--The Advancement of Learning and the advancement of the self--and thus illuminates an important methodological distinction between the two. While the scientific writings concern the present and future work of many minds, the Essays address the needs of a single concrete self, bounded by time and space, and ambitious to achieve concrete results within those bounds. Knowledge, the goal of The Advancement of Learning, is long; but life, the subject of the Essays, is short.
While the Novum Organon argues that induction, properly practiced, will proceed more efficiently than science had hitherto, it warns especially against the dangers of haste in method, particularly such haste as is encouraged by the desire to see results, whether in the form of abstract axioms or concrete, practical "fruits."[5] For the individual contingent self, however, results do count. For that self, therefore, efficiency becomes a paramount concern. The contingent self, as both subject and audience of the Essays, thus determines their difference from Bacon's progressive writings.
This difference explains and can be illustrated by a consistent difference in the uses to which a common set of figures are put in the Essays and in the scientific writings. Brian Vickers has described Bacon's use of horticultural metaphors such as seeds, fruit, gardens, and irrigation to represent the potential for the growth of knowledge from the well cultivated "seeds" which the scientific writings are supposed to plant.[6] Such figures figure prominently in the Essays as well. There, however, they are most often used as images of unrestrained growth to an opposite effect: to represent the inefficient expenditure of the self's limited creative resources. Figures of fecundity in The Advancement of Learning become, in the Essays, metaphors for profligacy.
This concern with protecting the resources of the contingent self is most evident in those essays which describe the borders of public life. These include the essays on the relationship between public and domestic life, a relationship which is necessarily competitive within the economy of the selfs limited energies. Among other things, these essays discover a greater security in the public realm, in part because the expression of creative energies is more easily controlled through the fashioning of an artificial public self--a reputation--than through the making of separate and individual selves through physical procreation. The essays on education--the process of transition from private to public life--also endorse a jealous strategy of careful investments in future returns; it is in these essays that the contrast is clearest between the processes of advancing one's own learning and those for the advancement of general knowledge. The following argument will first discuss how the essays on public and private life and on education represent the economy of the self, and will conclude by examining similar representations in two essays which prescribe the matured public relationships which are the fruits of such jealous cultivation.
IThree essays first published in the 1612 edition of the Essays--"Of Parents and Children," "Of Marriage and Single Life," and "Of Love"--address more directly than any others the domestic side of men's (and occasionally and indirectly women's) life. If, as has often been suggested, the Essays attempt to fill a gap in The Advancement of Learning's discussion of the "three wisdoms" of "civil knowledge," then these three essays may have been introduced in the 1612 edition to address concerns not attended to in the first edition. Indeed, these essays are primarily concerned not so much with domestic issues as with the relationship between domestic and public life. Each of these essays represent this relationship as a competition between the two spheres for the individual's limited creative energies; the 1625 revisions of these essays only tend to emphasize this theme. The management of that competitive relationship thus involves economic decisions about the allocation of those resources.
The first paragraph of "Of Parents and Children" represents this competition by invoking a commonplace metaphor for public works:
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. (VI: 390)
Bacon, however, does not mean the analogy between works and children metaphorically but literally: the two forms of self-reproduction conflict with one another, forcing a choice. The passage clearly suggests that works, which are "proper to men," ought to be valued by the essay's audience above the getting and raising of children, which is "common to beasts" (and women). That generation which is "proper to men" is defined by public perception: its products are "memory, merit, and noble works," objects "a man [can] see." This public approbation seems as integral to the value of such works as their usefulness; even the "care of posterity" suggests not only the future benefits of one's work but one's historical reputation as well. By contrast, according to the essay's opening sentence, "[t]he joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears." Thus, the first paragraph of "Of Parents and Children" implies that its titular topic is a less valuable and less valued form of creativity, while the creation of works which serve the public is both "proper to men" and validated by the less ambiguous reward of public recognition. Though reputation may seem a less substantial commodity than flesh and blood offspring, it is the coin which buys preferment and other benefits in the public sphere. Despite its subsequent attention to the practical matters of getting and raising children, this essay begins by declaring its topic to be a distraction from the business of "civil life," which is the business of the Essays.
The discussion of these practical matters also involves a concern with conserving resources. The second, longer paragraph of the essay describes how family size and "nature" itself can work to limit parents' control over the development of their offspring. In addition to implying that smaller families are easier to manage, the paragraph describes parenting as primarily concerned with the curbing the child's "affection." One way to do this is to avoid driving the child to "harmful error" through parental "illiberality." In the 1625 version of the essay, however, the paragraph concludes by urging the control and timely amputation of the individual inclinations of one's children:
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. (VI: 391)
This advice may partially explain why parental joys remain secret, for the engineering of a child's options from an early age involves a kind of deception on the parent's part. Custom (consuetudo), the essay promises, will make the child's imposed career tolerable to him; it may also help to inculcate the retentive habits of adulthood which the essay prescribes for both the getting and raising of children. Throughout the process of self-reproduction, whether through works or through human offspring, the chief danger seems to be a loss of control over these versions of oneself. Thus both the getting and raising of children require strategies to conserve the resources which fuel such "generation" and to control its products.
In another domestic essay that first appears in 1612, "Of Marriage and Single Life," a similar economics or husbandry of the self is the basis for weighing the merits of marriage. The essay's opening sentence formulates a model of the relationship of private and public work used consistently in the essay to compare the suitability of married and single life to a catalog of various occupations and ambitions:
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; which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. (VI: 391)
The rhetorical progression of these two sentences seems to promise a third in which the second sentence's discussion of "great enterprises . . . of virtue" will be balanced with one making the same point about those of "mischief." Instead of this second affirmation of the opening maxim, however, we get a series of equivocations on its plausibility which then digresses subtly into a consideration of the causes of bachelorhood before returning to consequences:
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 though t so much the richer . . . . 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 that 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. (VI: 391-92)
Rather than turning to the costs that bachelors inflict on others, as the opening sentence seem to promise it will do, the essay shifts its attention to the selfish motives of such men. The common denominator in each instance is greed and covetousness of resources, not "great enterprises . . . [of] mischief." Such greed results in the same wasteful draining of potentially productive resources as living dependents inflict on the family man: in each case these resources are taken out of public circulation, in the one case to support an enterprise "common to beasts," in the other simply to be hoarded to appease a familiar form of human folly. After several sentences of delay, we finally arrive at "the most ordinary cause of a single life," a rhetorical, if not logical, completion of the partitio promised in the essay's first sentence. The delayed fulfillment of this expectation adds to the reader's uncertainty about the paragraph's direction and conclusion and particularly about the costs, if any, of not marrying.
Throughout this passage the language of economics merges with the language of political restraint, duty, and liberty, contributing to the passage's ambiguities. The connotations of the term "liberty," for instance, shift over the course of the passage. The context initially associates liberty with "self-pleasing and humurous minds," of the kind perhaps produced by the :"illiberality" faulted in parents in "Of Parents and Children." As it turns out, however, the "humorous" conceits of such minds are true: "girdles and garters" are in fact the "bonds and shackles" from which the many "fugitives . . . of that condition" flee. Thus political liberty becomes a figure not for "illiberality" but for liberation from constraining obligations. Marriage seems to enforce social bonds through a kind of hostage-holding similar to that noted in the essay's opening clause; what keeps a man in subjection, whether to society or to family, is what keeps him from the great enterprises through which he might advance society's interests. The man of business must thus be free of such conventional but baser obligations in order to fulfill the greater ones to which he aspires.
The ambiguities arising from the debate between "liberty" and "restraint" lead to the essay's most succinct and resonant de******ion of the dynamics of the conservation of self: "A single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool" (VI: 392). In context of the Essays, the metaphor is supremely sly. The vehicle of the metaphor strongly suggests the very mechanism of the generation "common to beasts," thus linking charity to the act of fertilization, at the same time that its sense is in fact the opposite. The consequent implication is that the "churchman" who does not marry is in fact more of a father than he who does, for his energies are put to the most efficient creative use. The "pool"--static, enclosed, useless (perhaps a decorative garden pool is the precise referent)--figures the "secret" work of the home; placed beside the fruiffully watered ground it seems almost onanistic.
The same equation of domesticity and wasted resources reappears at the end of the essay "Of Love":
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 corrupteth and embaseth it. (VI: 398)
The language of this passage relates "Of Love" to the two other "domestic" essays previously discussed, by invoking the "secret" nature of this "inclination." "Of Parents and Children" recommends that this secrecy be used to regulate family life more efficiently, by suppressing both the parents' expressions of joy or grief and the children's expressions of their private inclinations. However, domestic life also seems to bottle up other public forms of self-expression within the "secret" economy of the home. Thus are one's "love," "water," "wealth," or "generation" "spent" rather than "spread, wasted in secret on "one or a few" rather than invested in work validated by public and historical recognition.[7]
As in the early lines of "Of Marriage and Single Life," an initially even-handed presentation of two opposing alternatives is ultimately resolved in favor of alternative about which Bacon has the least to say. Echoing the same opposition between domestic and public life developed in the two earlier essays, the remainder of the sentence equates the "humane and charitable" man, he whose generafive power is greatest, with celibacy and rejection of domesticity. The "Friendly love" of the last sentence, though never defined or discussed elsewhere in the essay, is presumably that which "spreads" one's resources like water across a field, rather than merely filling the domestic pool. Unlike the act of "mak[ing] mankind," which, as we have seen in "Of Parents and Children," is "common to beasts," this "friendly love perfecteth" mankind. It is, in other words, what is "proper" to mankind. As the reader has seen in "Of Parents and Children," what is "proper" to man is the channeling of the creative impulse towards works which receive public validation. "Friendly love" and charity thus involve the careful husbandry of the self required of the public man. Nuptial love, however, as the essay states earlier, "maketh men that they can no ways be true to their own ends" (VI: 398).
In the context of the Essays 'general concern with "the wisdom of business," these three essays on domestic or personal topics attend to issues which do not fall within the realm of public affairs but rather influence it from outside. All share certain themes and concerns. Most striking is the model of the self which informs each essay, according to which the self represents a font of limited resources whose expenditure requires economic decisions. Though each essay makes gestures which seem to reserve judgment on the relative value of using these resources in one sphere or the other, in fact each essay clearly argues for the greater value of public over private work. This conclusion seems to arise from an anxiety over loss of control of the self and its reproductions which is highligh ted by the model of a self motivated by a kind of economic jealousy. This anxiety explains in part the recurring emphasis in these essays on appearances and reputation as measures of public success; such abstract reproductions of the self are easier to manipulate and control than those corporeal offspring which grow inevitably into independent personalities.
IIBeginning with the 1612 edition, these three essays help determine the audience of the remainder of the Essays as those who have chosen public life over private (or have had it chosen for them by their parents) and are aware of the effects of that choice on their other social and personal relationships. The next step in one's fashioning for "civil life" is education. Though "Of Studies" is the first essay in the 1597 group of ten, in subsequent editions it appeared towards the end of the Essays, following the essays on domestic relations.[8] Nevertheless, "Of Studies" still appears as a kind of preface to the rest of the Essays, offering instructions on how to read, warnings against the misuses of reading, and particular recommendations regarding the therapeutic values of reading for various readers.
The method of critical reading advocated in "Of Studies" in 1597 is seconded eight years later in The Advancement of Learning, where a cautious, "Probative" approach to textual authority is prescribed:
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. ("Of Studies," VI: 497-98)
. . . disciples do owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a suspension of their own judgment until they be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity . . . (Advancement of Learning; III: 290)
As Croll and others have argued, the aphoristic style of the Essays appears consistent with Bacon's de******ion of the style appropriate to scientific investigation:
. . . Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot but be made of the pith and heart of sciences for discourse of illustration is cut off; recitals of example are cut off; discourse of connection and order is cut off; de******ions of practice are cut off; so there remaineth nothing to fill the Aphorisms but some good quantity of observation . . . Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to enquire farther . . . (Advancement of Learning; III: 405)
Thus the pursuit of knowledge, whether through the study of texts or through direct observation of phenomena, is presented in both "Of Studies" and the Advancement as requiring a cautious skepticism of hasty generalization and precedent authorities.
Both texts also place importance on the distinction between the discovery of knowledge and the application of that knowledge. Their use of this distinction, however, reveals the fundamental difference between the situation of the scientist and the predicament of the sell While the ultimate goal of Bacon's scientific method is useful knowledge, consideration of the practical "fruits" of knowledge threatens to warp the process of scientific inquiry by polluting the inductive process with predetermined ends. Thus the application of the scientist's discoveries is left to the "arts mechanical," i.e., to technology. In education, however, studies and experience must be combined in a single enterprise in order to achieve the proper end common to both: the formation of the self. In describing how these two elements combine in the education of the individual, Bacon uses language familiar from our examination of the conflict between the public and the private self:
[Studies] perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. (VI: 497)
Insofar as "perfection" here implies the unique and proper telos of a thing, study would appear to be the proper activity of man, actualizing his "natural abilities."[9] The simile which expands on the aphorism emphasizes the idea of a growth directed towards a predetermined end. Pruning a "natural plant" directs the plant's growth by blocking the wasteful or inefficient use of its resources in order that they may be expended, and the plant expanded, in a narrower yet more fruitful direction. The educational process thus resembles the secret prunings of illiberality in children prescribed in "Of Parents and Children." Studies and experience direct the individual's energies by a careful, cooperative modulation of control and release.
The subordinate clause in which the "pruning" simile appears in this sentence, was added in the final 1625 edition. The other 1625 additions to this essay are likewise interesting for what they suggest about Bacon's developing conception not only of the essay's form but of the Essays'audience and purpose as well. As many critics have noted, Bacon's revisions of earlier essays, as well as those essays which appear for the first time in 1612 and 1625 editions, evince a greater emphasis on formal partitio (Vickers 217-24; Kiernan xxxv-vi). If this tendency seems less evident in the revisions of "Of Studies," it is because the initial version of 1612 already divides its topic quite artfully into a series of roughly parallel triplicates, starting with the opening sentence: "Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability." Many of the 1625 additions to this essay--among them the "pruning" simile--tend to expand on the third element of a triplicate. These elaborations tend to mark more clearly the boundaries of the various topics; they also confirm that each triplicate represents an ascending order of importance: thus "delight" is a less valuable application of studies than "ornament," which is in turn less valuable than "ability." At the same time, however, many such elaborations in the later editions of the Essays tend to render an initial aphorism ambiguous by illustrating it with observations which qualify rather than confirm it.
The revisions of"Of Studies" reveal both of these tendencies in the structural development of the Essays. In addition, however, they seem to reflect a parallel development in the student towards a kind of self-organization. In the following passage from "Of Studies," the 1625 additions have been underlined to illustrate this new emphasis:
[Studies'] chief use . . . for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. [In the 1597 and 1612 versions the last clause reads: "but learned men are fittest to judge or censure."] (VI: 497,525, 575)
The revision of this passage clarifies the distinction between execution and judgment by elaborating on each one. Moreover, though, the revision is itself an act of the "disposition" and "marshalling" which are the results of study. The concern with such organization is not, in this essay at least, simply a rhetorical revision; rather it seems to incorporate the "wisdom" of business which the later version of the essay emphasizes both here and in the earlier "pruning" simile. The martial connotations of the words "disposition" and "marshalling" suggest the potential dangers contained and controlled by learning; the "expert," on the other hand, deals with such "affairs" only case-by-case. A consequence of learning is thus an increased sense of security, maintained by strategies of containment and control.
Another major revision to "Of Studies," added in 1612 and expanded in 1625, likewise describes study as a process of channeling and controlling creative energies.
Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies; . . . So if a man's wit be wandring, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. [If his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another [in 1612 edition: "find out resemblances"], let him study the lawyer's cases. (VI: 498, 576; 1625 additions underlined)
Those essays which deal with domestic ties tended to recommend a redirecting of energy which would otherwise be bottled up in less profitable pursuits; this passage argues that studies can both unclog and fortify the channels through which those energies will be translated into action. In addressing questions of conduct in the world of action more directly, the majority of the remaining essays develop this notion of husbandry into a more jealous view of the self which places a much greater premium on conservation than on useful or creative production.
One other essay focuses primarily on the process of education. Unlike "Of Studies," "Of Travel," which appears only in 1625, and thus well after the formulation of the scientific method, describes education as a project clearly distinct in both method and intent from scientific investigation. The inductive method of investigation is an inherently inefficient process: it resists the efficiencies offered by the "Idols" of received opinion which prematurely exclude, preclude, or edit new observations and information. It defers as long as possible the formation of coherent axioms and keeps those it does form provisional and insecure. Education, on the other hand, because it is concerned with forming a discrete self which has to exist in the real world, cannot afford such inefficiencies. Unlike induction, the aim of education is not just discovery but use.
The aim in "Of Travel" is efficiency. Though recommending exposure to a variety of objects of study, it encourages a specific, narrow focus on points of practical, contemporary interest, especially commercial and governmental institutions. Thus the "havens and harbors" of the Continent are as worthy of study as its "antiquities and ruins." The structure of the essay itself, centered on a lengthy list of such "things to be seen and observed," suggests an almost comical haste. The whirlwind pace of this catalog justifies the recommendation which precedes it, that a diary "be brought in use." The aim of the tour is to "have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much," to "abridge his travel with much profit." Important above all, therefore, is to keep moving:
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 . . . (VI: 418)
In his rush, Bacon seems to forget that he has already packed his diary several sentences earlier.
In seeking out guides--like the diary, another efficient mediation between the student and the objects of his studies--Bacon recommends employing ambassadorial staff:
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 of ambassadors: for so in travelling in one country he shall suck the experience of many. (VI: 418)
Such vampirism (deriving from the conventional figure of the student as a bee who sups at many flowers) complements the premium placed on efficiency in "Of Studies." The influx of information is susceptible to and ought to be controlled by the same mechanisms of conservation which are elsewhere recommended to regulate the student's future output. The xenophobic impulse which seems to want to hurry the student through this necessary step in his education arises in part from a related fear of allowing the self to be absorbed into the massive selflessness represented by the detailed variety of the world outside both one's country and oneself.
IIIThe essays examined so far represent supporting arches buttressing the central structure of the project of the Essays, a structure which, not unlike the scientific project is composed of discrete units of knowledge. The primary difference between the two projects is that science is allowed the luxury of reaching its fulfillment in properly developed axioms, unhurried by any pressure to produce useful results on a schedule. Science can wait for its results. The project of the essays, however, aims at the production of a man who can participate in the world. While some of the essays, including those already discussed, are primarily concerned with guiding such a man to the world, the majority aim at guiding him through it. The same model of the self, expressed in similar metaphors, informs the majority of these essays on the "science of negociation." "Of Counsel" and "Of Friendship" are a useful pair by which to illustrate the persistence and use of this underlying model of the self, because both concern the relationship of the self to other selves.
"Of Counsel" focuses on the self in what would seem to be its most secure and efficiently potent state: kingship. However, the paranoia which in fact characterizes the self's position at the top of the hierarchy of its fellow selves is not unique to that position. Rather, kingship represents the paradigm of the matured self in the world: now able to exercise its power, yet all the more susceptible to and jealous of losing control of how that power is deployed. "Of Counsel" is consequently concerned with almost nothing but the maintenance of control over one's power, as epitomized in the problems of kingship. The myth of Athena's birth figures the desire of the matured self jealously to guard its own powers so as neither to depend on the infusions of others nor to disperse wastefully one's own vital energies.
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 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. Which monstrous fable containeth a secret of empire; how kings are to make use of their counsel 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 Counsel 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. (VI: 424)
The force of this "monstrous Fable"--a rare device in the Essays--is not so much in its illumination of the political stratagem described, but rather in its almost literal embodiment of the problem of personal power. The figure is an assertion--similar to others noted above--of the dependence of physical body on the control of creative power. The jealousy it represents is not simply a jealousy of one's "Authority" but of one's personal security. For the close reader of the essays, the politics of the counsel room recalls the economics of the self detailed in the essays on domestic relations and education. The fable also illustrates, however, that with proper handling this threat of loss or dismemberment can in fact be turned to profit, for the marriage to Metis can be redeemed as marriage to one's wife cannot. As the domestic essays have shown, a wife cannot increase the efficiency of the economy of self-hood, but is rather a drain on the self. Metis, on the other hand, can be swallowed by the clever king; in fact, it is his ability to do so which constitutes and preserves his power over others. Authority is maintained by maintaining the appearance that ideas gleaned from others in fact emanate from oneself. As in several of the domestic essays, the efficient use of personal power is validated by public recognition, though "Of Counsel" suggests that, like domestic exertions, public work may also involve a certain secrecy. To main-rain this fiction of self-sufficiency, and thus personal power, counselors must be made dependent for their own safety on the safety of the king.
Most of the rest of this essay is devoted to enumerating "the inconveniences of counsel, and . . . the remedies" (VI: 424). These "inconveniencies" are three: the difficult of maintaining secrecy, the threat to authority described in the "Fable," and the more specific threat posed by "unfaithful" or self-interested counsellors. In each case counsel represents a threat to the process of maintaining power; absent is any mention of the benefits of counsel.
This, it turns out, is the subject addressed in the 1625 revision of "Of Friendship." In 1612, this topic generated only a brief, highly aphoristic essay, one of the shortest in the collection. The revised version retains the flavor of the earlier essay only in its opening paragraph. The rest details the three "fruits" of friendship. This metaphor echoes figural language used in both the essays on domestic life and those on education. As in those, here the concern is exclusively with the fruits which grow on the boughs of the self. The first and most completely discussed of these "fruits" sets the tone for all the rest:
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, flower 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. (VI: 437-38)
Thus the "principal fruit of friendship" is based on the model of the self sketched out so far, on both the necessity of giving its energies proper outlets and the attendant jealousy with which those energies ought to be husbanded. The ideal friend is a confessor: an anonymous receptacle of potentially dangerous passions, into which the overflowings of the self are vented and in which they are contained in secrecy: Like the ends of education, the ******** of a "true friend" is not understood to exist in any benefits beyond those to the self, but only in terms of his ability to help safely direct and secure the creative--and thus potentially disruptive--forces of the self.
The second and third fruits of friendship are no less selfish. The second fruit arises from conversation, the benefit of which proceeds not from the combination of two perspectives or opinions but from hearing one's own ideas aired:
. . . certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and bread 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. (VI: 440)
The military figure for the disposition of energies is familiar, as is the ultimately selfish nature of this sort of improvement. One might almost as well be talking to oneself; it is the regulation of an internal pressure--here apparently intellectual though elsewhere less clearly specified--that is important, not the regulator itself:
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 a picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. (VI: 440-41)
The final fruit of friendship--the ability of friends to do things one cannot do oneself--is likewise couched entirely in terms of a profitable economy the self. Friends become one's "deputies," lesser yet ********al extensions of the self. Though by this point in the essay the more specific initial focus on the friends of kings has been dropped, interpersonal relations at all levels continue to be represented hierarchically: the self is sovereign and as such embodies its own state and its own bounded economy striving for self-sufficiency (see Faulkner 116-26).
IVThis economy represents the mature stage of the self first developed in the essays on domestic relations and education. Those introductory essays represent the self as an entity possessed of limited resources which must be profitably employed within a limited span of time and opportunity. The essays on domestic life are concerned with harnessing those energies so as to maximize their productivity; metaphors of agriculture and husbandry help these essays to argue that domesticity exploits these energies inefficiently and even dangerously. The essays on education offer ways to develop the self and its energies as quickly and efficiently as possible. Finally, in at least two essays addressing the apparently matured self, the economic model of the self culminates in the view of the self as a jealous sovereign anxious about maintaining and securing its power and dominion in the public sphere.
A consistent corollary of this model is that the self's security is a ******** of public perception. Thus Bacon's Essays return consistently to the importance of fashioning a specifically public self which is constituted in the responses of others. These responses are the final, delicate fruit of the self-cultivation the Essays recommend to the public man. Compared to the fruits which are the goals and justification posited for Bacon's scientific methods, reputation might seem an ephemeral good and one even opposed to truth (however conceived[10]). Within the tangible spatial and temporal compass of an individual life, however, reputation produces concrete benefits. The scientist, on the other hand, working his way carefully and warily towards truths, must acknowledge, as Bacon did of his own unfinished scientific project, that the work may not bear fruits in his lifetime.
The individual self is the object of the Essays. Though their model of induction may inform the style of the Essays, the scientific writings differ in both object and, consequently, purpose. The scientific works set forth a program which encourages patience in the interests of a cautious expansion of knowledge in the public interest. The Essays, however, reveal--and in fact arise from--an anxiety over the concerns of personal and professional security to which the individual, political flesh is heir. The Essays therefore value efficiency over methodological rigor, conservation over progress, personal over public good, the self over truth. The Essays demonstrate a recognition of the limits of the scientific program as a guide of practical conduct, for the methods of Baconian science do not apply within the micro-economics of the bounded self.
[S]imple experience . . . , if taken as it comes, is called accident; if sought for, experiment. But this kind of experience is not better than a broom without its band, as the saying is--a mere groping, as of men in the dark, that feel all round them for the chance of finding their way, when they had much better wait for daylight, or light a candle, and then go. But the true method of experience, on the contrary, first lights the candle, and then by means of the candle shows the way; commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it educing axioms, and from established axioms again new experiments; even as it was not without order and method that the divine word operated on the created mass. Let men therefore cease to wonder that the course of science is not yet wholly run, seeing that they have gone altogether astray, either leaving and abandoning experience entirely, or losing their way in it and wandering round and round as in a labyrinth. Whereas a method rightly ordered leads by an unbroken route through the woods of experience to the open ground of axioms.
Passages on the danger of hasty generalization are too frequent to need citation, but the reader may be referred in Aphorisms XXXVIII-LXVIII, where the Idols are introduced and discussed.
There is formed in every thing a double nature of good: the one, as every thing is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the later is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form. (III: 420)
The opposition here, however, is between public and personal good rather than between public and domestic exertions. For a discussion of Bacon's thoughts on the value of "communicative good" and its analogies in his writings on other subjects, particularly mechanics, see Johann Mouton, "'The Summary Law of Nature': Revisiting Bacon's Views on the Unity of Sciences" in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts. Ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS, 1990), 139-50.
Bacon, Francis. The Works of Francis Bacon. Ed. James Spedding. 14 vols. London, 1864-74.
-----. The New Organon and Related Writings. Ed. Fulton H. Anderson. New York: Liberal Arts, 1960.
----- The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis. Ed. Arthur Johnston. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974
----- The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall. Ed. Michael Kiernan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
Croll, Morris W. "Attic Prose: Lipsius, Montaigne, Bacon." Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm. Ed.J. Max Patrick. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966. 167-202.
Faulkner, Robert K. Francis Bacon and the Project of Proffress. Lanham, MD: Rowman, 1993.
Fish, Stanley. "Georgics of the Mind: The Experience of Bacon's Essays." Self-Consuming Artifacts. Berkeley: U of California P, 1972.78-155.
Hall, Joan Wylie. "Bacon's Triple Curative: The 1597 Essayes, Meditations, and Places. "Papers on Language and Literature 21 (1985): 345-58.
-----. "'Loving Brothers' and 'Excellent Lords': The 'Epistles Dedicatorie' to Bacon's Essays. "CLA Journal 32 (1988): 81-90.
Jardine, Lisa. Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1974.
Martin, Julian. Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
Mouton, Johann. "'The Summary Law of Nature': Revisiting Bacon's Views on the Unity of Sciences:" Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts. Ed. William Sessions. New York: AMS, 1990. 139-50.
Urbach, Peter. Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science: An Account and a Reappraisal. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987.
Vickers, Brian. Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968.
Whitney, Charles. Francis Bacon and Modernity. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.
Zeitlin, Jacob. "The Development of Bacon's Essays and Montaigne." JEGP 27 (1928): 503.
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By JOHN J. MILLER
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In recent years, Francis Bacon has been receiving long overdue attention. As we directly confront the problems of modernity, scholars have begun to reexamine the thoughts of the man held by so many philosophers to be the very founder of modernity itself. Some find reasons to blame Bacon for current messes; some search for solutions that he might have suggested. That Bacon's life's work is largely responsible for our present situation is recognized by virtually all modern commentators. Jerry Weinberger, in his introduction to The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, points out that "there is no disagreement at all" about the fact that "whatever it is that makes our world modern, the History has much to teach about it and in fact did much to bring it into being" (p. 16). And not just Bacon's History, but his theoretical works, the Essays, even his legal writings, are now acknowledged to have shaped a new political and social order (pp. 3-5). Nieves Mathews cites dozens of famous philosophers, poets, and statesmen who attest to Bacon's profound influence in Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination. Robert K. Faulkner's Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, an impressive analysis of Bacon's moral and political thought as a whole, is launched with these words: "Sometimes the importance of a topic is obvious" (p. 3). He also affirms that "it is not difficult to show that our familiar notions of progress are inherited from a more comprehensive plan, such as Bacon's" (p. 5). Understanding modernity may well require paying close attention to Francis Bacon.
Weinberger classifies interpretations of the History into three main categories: the first type seems to conclude that Bacon was interesting but a flawed thinker compared to "me"; the second category generally maintains "what counts is not what Bacon thought of his own work, but how later writers were influenced by the thought paradigms...which [his work] transmitted quite unseen by Bacon himself" (p. 13); and the third, the "intentionalist" type, begin with the salutary interpretive premise that Bacon might have been self conscious about what he is doing (p. 14). Though Weinberger does not say so, these categories may be applicable to scholarship on Bacon generally, and seem to correspond in reverse order to the three types of brains mentioned by both Machiavelli and Aristotle (Prince, chap. 22; Nicomachean Ethics 1095b), borrowed from Hesiod: "That man is all-best who himself works out every problem and solves it, seeing what will be best late and in the end. That man, too, is admirable who follows one who speaks well. He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly useless" (Works and Days, 292-97; Lattimore translation).
Unfortunately, many treatments of Bacon seem to correspond to the useless type, based as they are on the historicist presumption of our superiority. So we need not bother to try to learn from Bacon--only pay attention long enough to flatter ourselves, like the dwarf climbing upon the giant's back. Happily, none of these three books slide into that category. Indeed, all three authors are acutely aware of the problems of such interpretive prejudices about history and philosophy. Faulkner, for example, disparages "an all-too -common historicism." Bacon may well be more self conscious than a careless reader can perceive. Faulkner acknowledges that the times forced Bacon to disguise his criticism of Christianity by means of literary art, and, citing Lisa Jardine's Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), Faulkner lists some techniques Bacon employed for concealment: "he twists authorities, plays on familiar-sounding notions, quotes misleadingly, makes 'opportunistic' use of myths to 'communicate precepts in persuasive form,' and takes care to manipulate the ear's proclivities for pleasant sounds. But beneath it all is arrangement and calculation, 'every move' in a discourse, according to Jardine, being 'planned so as to insinuate the desired conclusion into the mind of the audience'"(p. 31).
There are two quite simple reasons for the poor treatment Bacon has received. The first reason (which is addressed later) is that Bacon deliberately made his books difficult to understand by his acroamatic writing: Bacon, like all true political philosophers, wrote esoterically and this immediately poses a problem for interpretation. The second is based on the dominant opinions about Bacon the man: someone viewed as corrupt, obsequious, and sleazy is not readily approached as though he might be able to teach us what we desperately need to know. Instead, it is typically more gratifying to feel superior to famous people of dubious morality and intellect. Psychologically, this issue must be dealt with first. Mathews mounts an attack on this common perception with her scrutiny of the evidence surrounding the charges repeatedly leveled against Bacon; her examination concludes that the ignominy slapped upon Bacon constitutes an unjust character assassination.
For over a century, Bacon's position in the history of modernity has been controversial. This is partly due to the specialization endemic to academia which makes it virtually impossible for someone academically trained to be educated enough to appreciate the full range of Bacon's thought and work. As Mathews so rightly points out, even many who admire parts of Bacon's philosophy have trouble integrating the whole range of his genius, and thus either are peripherally troubled by the controversies surrounding his life or ignore them. "The few people actively engaged in Baconian scholarship, as one of them put it informally, know perfectly well that nearly all the charges brought against the man and his work 'are misconceived, wrong or plain loopy.' Yet many of these specialists tend to shrug their shoulders. Bacon the man is irrelevant to the particular aspect of Bacon the thinker they are concerned with" (p. 431). Faced with Mathews's big (600-page) book, I too wondered if I wanted to read that much about a man whose life I had been inclined to ignore in the interests of examining his ideas, because "he probably was not a very likable guy." Well, Nieves Mathews has pierced my easy complacency; I must recant every slur on his character that I foolishly repeated over the years--lucky for me and other readers, none of mine are in print.
Mathews's book is painstakingly researched, with over 100 pages of citations (2,072 notes), many compiled of multiple sources. In the course of thirty-four chapters, she details the evidence for and against Bacon, and is apparently conversant with every biography of him. But hers is no mere citation index of biographies, no mere democratic count of the number of times Bacon is praised versus the number of times he is criticized. Mathews recognizes the essential scholarly duty of judgment and evaluation that should be involved in assessing sources before writing a work for unsuspecting readers (who may yet become scholars): "Readers may be forgiven for succumbing to the deceptions practiced upon them by the trained minds who have placed their scholarship at the service of a preconceived image. The best historians have been taken in by the scholarly apparatus with which Abbott and his followers support the deft manipulations whereby Bacon is made to advocate what he deplored and Spedding to express mistrust where he was affirming his belief in Bacon's truthfulness. These unscholarly scholars cite but fail to evaluate the reliability of their sources" (p. 434).
Mathews vindicates Bacon against the charges of treachery to Essex, of fraud and corruption in office, and of being a cold, ambitious, selfish schemer. With regard to Essex, Mathews presents scads of evidence indicating Essex had for years engaged in suspicious if not outright treasonous behavior, and she cites some of Bacon's actual correspondence with Essex, demonstrating that he had cautioned Essex all along. Mathews's most powerful evidence is brought forth in the twelve chapters she devotes to the charges that Bacon was a corrupt chancellor (pp. 89-225). My initial thoughts were, "What can she hope to achieve by way of defense? Didn't Bacon confess?" Well, this is where the story gets exciting.
Among the many parts of the episode Mathews dissects are the irregularities in the trial in the House of Lords; the very irregularity of the "trial" being in the House of Lords; Bacon's apparent "confession" actually being an itemized answer to charges; the inclusion of gifts Bacon never accepted; Coke's flip-flop on some issues; witnesses who were few and guilty; the fact that more than one of the cases had actually been decided against the party who nevertheless gave the customary tip; the fact none of Bacon's decisions were ever overturned, even though the fame of the "trial" encouraged appeals, and several cases were appealed, repeatedly; and the fact that only eight of the charges might even have qualified as instances of accepting gratuities from someone who had a case before the courts. There is much in these twelve chapters worth knowing about the workings of politics.
A reader of Mathews cannot help becoming involved in the twists and turns of the evidence, in the amazing slanders, and in how easy it is to maintain a libelous legend. About a third of the way through, we begin rooting for Bacon, and cheering him on as the evidence against his detractors mounts; we become frustrated by the slander and libel that seem to have a creeping life of their own. Then, about two-thirds of the way through the book, one sits back, recognizing that Mathews must be right: a frightful fraud has been perpetrated in the guise of scholarship, and something is seriously wrong with academia as well as with "historians" such as Macauley, Abbott et. al. if such scholarship continues to be rewarded.
With regard to Bacon's personal dealings, Mathews cites hundreds of sources which contradict the absurd and shameless errors of biographers who repeat the charges as though they were justified. Bacon was not as obsequious as most, and at times he was quite blunt in his criticisms of those in positions of power over him, rebuking Essex, admonishing Buckingham, and exhorting King James, even to the point of telling him to bridle his tongue (pp. 266-80).
Mathews declares that it would take someone with the abilities of Bacon to write the biography of Bacon. Referring to biographer Iris Origo, Mathews describes the duty of the historian: "He must, at least for a time, give up self, and cast his own opinions aside. This is not easy. But if a few trustworthy historians have succeeded so far in giving us a glimpse of the rich reality that Bacon was, it is because, as [Origo] enjoins, they did not drown his voice in their own. ... May Bacon meet with the biographer he deserves" (p. 444). Something similar may be said of Bacon's interpreters.
Faulkner and Weinberger provide an antidote to the other cause of inadequate treatments of Bacon: they acknowledge he was a profound thinker. Bacon, like all politically aware people, knew that we must not speak exactly the same way to everyone--and not only to save our own skins, although that is often justified. But esoteric writing presents what seems at first glance (but only at first glance) an insurmountable problem with interpretation: When have you gone deep enough, and what, if anything, can be taken at face value? The answer, though this is not the place to expound upon it, is that the interpretation must conform to the full requirements of rational coherence. When an author deliberately writes esoterically, he will anticipate that not all readers will understand his deepest teaching. Some will see apparent contradictions and therefore believe themselves superior to the author. Hence the increasing number of shallow debunkers of great philosophers--multiple dwarfs on the giants' backs.
Faulkner's Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress is a wide-ranging book presenting the fruit of his long study of Bacon and modernity. He provides an incisive diagnosis of the critical elements of modernity, and reveals the shallowness of some postmodern and so-called critical-theorist analyses. His is a much more profound understanding. This book elaborates the complex architecture of the interconnected elements of modernity, from the modern state, the reliance on technology, a new psychology with a new view of the human self, a new focus on economics, the administrative state, the management of hopes, the emphasis on security, etc., all essential elements of our modern world. Faulkner analyzes each and unearths their roots (indeed, not only the roots, but various trunks, stems, and even some of the flowers) in Bacon's writings. Therein too, however, lie buried the roots of the angst and nihilism of the modern world.
"Remove the old veils and the tacit but imported premises, and one can discern the gray shades of contemporary nihilism. Does a pursuit of power without limit deconstruct what delimits human being and therefore what defines a life worth living?" (pp. 276-77). Faulkner points to a major problem of modernity. The use of power without a corresponding inquiry into rationally knowable standards to guide change or determine its proper use leads to tyrannical destruction or nihilism. Faulkner finds that Bacon's critique of ancient philosophy, particularly his critique of teleology and of the contemplative life, leads him to this point. Bacon, of course, often defends teleology and contemplation too. His enigmatic style of writing has left many commentators bemused, for it is hard to pin him down. Faulkner argues that whatever seems a defense of antiquity in Bacon's writing is put there by Bacon in order that the "odor" or "scent" of antiquity will appeal to learned lovers of antiquity, who will not find Bacon a harsh antagonist. According to Faulkner, Bacon can thus insinuate his modern teachings under the old veils.
If Bacon disowned everything Aristotelian, as Faulkner argues, then the modern project would have undercut itself; but Faulkner adds, "what seems in contemporary philosophy a crisis of nihilism has its origin in the foundation of modern philosophy. It is then a limited crisis. There remain now as ever paths to serious lives" (p. 277). If Bacon fully believed in the truth of the modernity he launched, then Faulkner sees Bacon involved in two profound contradictions characteristic of that modernity. First, Bacon's argument that observations should be prior to theories seems itself, in key instances, to be based upon theory, not observations: "a theory of nature controls Bacon's decisive observations; it controls what it was supposed to control." His account depends on something that his theory would exclude (p. 274). And second, Faulkner finds Bacon to be involved in a contradiction whenever he ranks human lives, which Bacon does repeatedly: "the gravest difficulty is a reliance on notions of human quality that Bacon's critical epistemology would exclude" (p. 275). "In short, Bacon had to borrow from precritical and prescientific human awareness, moral and intellectual, in order to destroy the authority of morality and ordinary knowing. Intellect, soul, justice, the noble, beauty, friendship, and even life, become but reconstituted shadows, artificial and calculated representations and powers of the self. But the new constructions cannot be extricated from the new criticism. The things that Bacon's theory alleged to be real, such as 'bodies in motion,' 'power,' and the self itself, are in his formulation reducible to but artificial and invented abstractions. The conquest of nature may afflict man's environment, but the most serious effects are on man. However fruitful of human power and the security of human bodies, the projects of progress leads toward an emptiness for human being" (p. 277).
In addition to his penetrating critique of modernity, in his second chapter, "The Art of Enlightenment," Faulkner tantalizingly provides us with the conclusions of his years of studying Bacon's Essays: there is an order to the Essays beneath their apparent disorder, an order that complies with Bacon's great project of progress. This chapter almost irresistibly invites the reader to devote the next few months to Bacon's Essays to see if the threads of the arguments really bear out his interpretation. Faulkner's book may help to promote the activity of philosophy itself, by inciting the reader to return to Bacon and to rethink the issues posed by the Essays. Bacon would not expect more from an interpreter.
Weinberger's book, a new edition of Bacon's The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, complete with interpretive essay and many valuable annotations, will be of lasting interest to students of history and historiography as well as to political theorists and Bacon scholars. Weinberger's annotations (on average, four to five per page) range from relatively simple glosses, through changes from the Latin edition and notations on the manu******, to Bacon's departures from history or from other historians' accounts.
Weinberger's introduction discusses how to approach a work like this, in which, admittedly, Bacon invented many speeches and often made up historical details. "Likewise, there is no possible corroboration for Bacon's account of Henry's thoughts, material unique to Bacon" (p. 8). Though the History does not conform to modern academic standards of writing history, it would be a mistake to dismiss Bacon upon finding an historical "error" in his History. Thucydides and others have established the utility of writing this kind of history. But how are we to understand Bacon's purposes in creating a Henry superior to the actual King Henry?
"Bacon shows the way to his teaching with his own observations and conclusions, but they are sufficiently incomplete or contradictory as to leave its truth secret and retired, as is appropriate, so he says, for the science of government" (p. 224). Following his own advice about interpreting Bacon--advice rendered plausible by Bacon's own many discussions about the importance of circumspection in political matters--Weinberger examines Bacon's apparent criticism of Henry's shortsightedness, convincingly reveals the several layers of Bacon's text, and shows us what might be at stake in approaching Henry and the History with historicist dogmatism. As Weinberger's detailed examination of the text reveals, we "have reason to doubt the honesty of Bacon's claim about Henry's lack of foresight" (p. 228). The doubts arise from Bacon's own words, but so that it takes careful reading to notice that his Henry is even wiser than he openly says. By tracing out some of the apparently contradictory assessments Bacon makes about Henry, Weinberger provides in his brief but illuminating interpretation, a clear example of how to read Bacon. For instance, if Bacon says that only two courses are prudent, and then Bacon shows that Henry took a third, and things worked out very well, we are invited to rethink the other two courses, as well as the third, and then synthesize them into a new understanding of political prudence. Although Weinberger's entire, densely argued interpretation cannot be presented here, an example might entice a serious student to reread Bacon's History and read Weinberger's essay. In the context of Henry's dealing with conspiracies--a topic likely to attract spirited youth--Weinberger's interpretation of Bacon reveals that the apparent "troubles" in Henry's regime were anything but proof of his shortsightedness. "Bacon tells us not that the conspiracy caught Henry unaware, but rather that he knew of it all along and chose not to follow the obvious course of declaring the testimony of the still-living assassin. ...Instead of simply debunking the rumors, Henry chose to abet them and to penetrate every recess of the conspiracy" (p. 233). "The extraordinary point is that Henry did not dispel the rumors, because his 'nature and customs' inclined him to a 'fashion rather to create doubts than assurance'" (p. 229). Bacon's Henry knew when to aid and abet conspiracies against himself (p. 237). "Bacon shows careful readers that these 'troubles' [in Henry's reign] were intended" (p. 238). We learn an important lesson about people and princes, a lesson that "Henry-as-Bacon- invents-him" already knows.
In agreement with Faulkner (and to some extent with Matthews) Weinberger interprets the History as being an integral part of Bacon's larger project: to bring about progress in the political and social order. Bacon also is not unwittingly under the sway of some ideology of the time: "There is nothing in the History that could be correctly related to a Machiavellian 'paradigm,' unless one begin with the assumption that Bacon was not able to know his own mind" (p. 241). Weinberger says explicitly: "It is possible that a farsighted Bacon could understand modernity more clearly than we do, since, situated at its dawn, he was not himself in the grip of its long-established certainties and habits as thought" (p. 221). Bacon may have understood only too well that at least two accounts of modernity must be provided, one more palatable and hopeful, the other more realistic. As Weinberger puts it, "Bacon thus presents us with two outwardly different future models: the morally familiar world indicated by Henry's laws and the strictly utilitarian world [actually] produced by Henry's laws and policy. The latter is the aim of Bacon's project, and its essence is unmasked by the grim, lobotomized, technological hedonism of the New Atlantis. Because this world to come is at once Bacon's goal and also so repellent, Bacon doubts that the real world to come will ever dispense with the trappings of the more familiar republicanism suggested by Henry's laws. For Bacon, the truth of the world to come will always be at odds with its moral facade" (p. 244). Faulkner suggests something similar; "the image of beneficence to come requires the concealment of dangers that will also come" (p. 55). Mathews, too, points out, "alone among the forerunners of modern science, Bacon had foreseen the potential dangers of man's domination over nature" (p. 411) It seems quite plausible, therefore, that Bacon self consciously made modernity his goal, while aware of its dangers. It seems, to me, that the obvious next question is: Why did Bacon make this his goal? What was his ultimate purpose, and why did he choose to devote his genius and energy to the founding of modernity? Perhaps the modern project, even with its angst and nihilism, was preferable to something else and was required to sustain Bacon's refounding of philosophy.
It seems hazardous to presume that Bacon himself was caught in the contradiction that Faulkner perceives in modernity. Bacon might have escaped that contradiction despite his apparent attack on the ancients. Perhaps Bacon's understanding of nature and of morality fits into neither the materialists' camp nor into textbook Aristotelianism. It may be too simplistic to conclude that the only important dichotomy in philosophy is that of anticontemplative, antiteleological moderns like Machiavelli versus the procontemplation, proteleology ancients like Aristotle and Plato. Bacon may have discerned a rationally coherent alternative to both, and the full range of reasons for esoteric writing (including philosophic reasons as well as political) might account for why he sounds both modern and ancient. I, for one, am unwilling to conclude at this point that there can be no other choice, or no "middle ground," or no mixing and matching. There is, after all, another interfering player on the scene: Christianity. Perhaps Bacon thought Christianity poses unique and serious dangers to philosophy, partly because of its surface ability to co-opt so much Aristotle and Plato. Not every attack on Christianity, however, can be constructed as an attack on ancient philosophy. Bacon with his acroamatic and inimitable style, may have a new, as yet untried, solution to fundamental questions of philosophy. Weinberger directs future scholarship on Bacon toward a promising possibility. In the final pages of his interpretive essay, in what seems to begin a debate between himself and other "intentionalists" (perhaps including Faulkner), Weinberger suggests, without of course having the space to present the case, that perhaps Bacon was not involved in a fundamental contradiction after all.
As Weinberger says after explaining Bacon's elaborate, infolded, and complex argument that Henry did not lack foresight, "Bacon makes it hard to rest easy with the conclusion that his metaphysical teaching about nature and morality was genuinely dogmatic. When we discover an obvious contradiction, we should be prepared to look for a broader teaching or argument that explains the contradiction and makes it disappear" (p. 252). And as Faulkner points out: "Bacon explicitly recommends forms of enigmatic and unmethodical writing. As particular and compact, such techniques have the power to convey and provoke; as compressed, ambiguous, and scattered, they are politic in disguising a strange whole" (p. 28). Bacon's "strange whole" may hold answers to fundamental philosophic questions, answers that have not yet been articulated by any scholar. I suspect that Faulkner is right that the key to understanding the precise difference between Bacon and the ancients does indeed lie in their understandings of philosophy and the contemplative life. And I suspect the key to that difference is that Bacon thinks Aristotle's three categories of knowledge (theoretical, practical and productive) and the notion of "contemplation for its own sake" may not be humanly sustainable (just as the distinction that replaced Aristotle's--pure vs. applied science--breaks down). Yet Bacon may be correct about this. No one, least of all a philosopher, would deny himself the opportunity to act in light of his understanding of what is true about the world. Second, even Aristotle conceded that some knowledge is too important not to use (e.g., military knowledge). And third, knowledge that is discovered "for its own sake" is nevertheless open to being sold to the highest bidder by anyone who learns it (as our science of genetics has made abundantly clear, this can even apply to knowledge of being). Or maybe Bacon disagreed with something else of Aristotle's. He still might be right. Let us investigate further. However much we may be in doubt about answers to the biggest philosophical questions, we must recognize that the possibility of philosophy requires that we can doubt. Bacon certainly deplored what the "christianization" of Aristotle had done to the possibility of philosophy. But Bacon would not likely have thrown out the plates with the dish-water, though he took pains to rinse the suds of Christian dogmatism from the utensils.
Postmodernists and most other historicists will not like these three books, for all three treat Bacon seriously. They portray interpretations of Bacon that seek to grasp his comprehensive vision of the world, as a preliminary step on the route to the question of whether he could have been right.
Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress. (Lanham and London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993, pp. 308. $12.95.)
Nieves Mathews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996, pp. xiii, 592. $50.00.)
Jerry Weinberger, Francis Bacon: The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, a New Edition with Introduction Annotation, and Interpretive Essay. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 260. $29.95.)
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By Heidi D. Studer
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