Bacon’s Works and Philosophy.
A complete survey of Bacon’s works and an estimate of his place in literature and philosophy are matters for a volume. It is here proposed merely to classify the works, to indicate their general character and to enter somewhat more in detail upon what he himself regarded as his great achievement,—the reorganization of the sciences and the exposition of a new method by which the human mind might proceed with security and certainty towards the true end of all human thought and action.
Putting aside the letters and occasional writings, we may conveniently distribute the other works into three classes, Professional, Literary, Philosophical. The Professional works include the Reading on the Statute of Uses, the Maxims of Law and the treatise (possibly spurious) on the Use of the Law. “I am in good hope,” said Bacon himself, “that when Sir Edward Coke’s reports and my rules and decisions shall come to posterity, there will be (whatsoever is now thought) question who was the greater lawyer.” If Coke’s reports show completer mastery of technical details, greater knowledge of precedent, and more of the dogged grasp of the letter than do Bacon’s legal writings, there can be no dispute that the latter exhibit an infinitely more comprehensive intelligence of the abstract principles of jurisprudence, with a richness and ethical fulness that more than compensate for their lack of dry legal detail. Bacon seems indeed to have been a lawyer of the first order, with a keen scientific insight into the bearings of isolated facts and a power of generalization which admirably fitted him for the self-imposed task, unfortunately never completed, of digesting or codifying the chaotic mass of the English law.
Among the literary works are included all that he himself designated moral and historical pieces, and to these may be added some theological and minor writings, such as the Apophthegms. Of the moral works the most valuable are the Essays, which have been so widely read and universally admired. The matter is of the familiar, practical kind, that “comes home to men’s bosoms.” The thoughts are weighty, and even when not original have acquired a peculiar and unique tone or cast by passing through the crucible of Bacon’s mind. A sentence from the Essays can rarely be mistaken for the production of any other writer. The short, pithy sayings have become popular mottoes and household words. The style is quaint, original, abounding in allusions and witticisms, and rich, even to gorgeousness, with piled-up analogies and metaphors.[1] The first edition contained only ten essays, but the number was increased in 1612 to thirty-eight, and in 1625 to fifty-eight. The short tract, Colours of Good and Evil, which with the Meditationes Sacrae originally accompanied the Essays, was afterwards incorporated with the De Augmentis. Along with these works may be classed the curiously learned piece, De Sapientia Veterum, in which he works out a favourite idea, that the mythological fables of the Greeks were allegorical and concealed the deepest truths of their philosophy. As a scientific explanation of the myths the theory is of no value, but it affords fine scope for the exercise of Bacon’s unrivalled power of detecting analogies in things apparently most dissimilar. The Apophthegms, though hardly deserving Macaulay’s praise of being the best collection of jests in the world, contain a number of those significant anecdotes which Bacon used with such effect in his other writings. Of the historical works, besides a few fragments of the projected history of Britain there remains the History of Henry VII., a valuable work, giving a clear and animated narrative of the reign, and characterizing Henry with great skill. The style is in harmony with the matter, vigorous and flowing, but naturally with less of the quaintness and richness suitable to more thoughtful and original writings. The series of the literary works is completed by the minor treatises on theological or ecclesiastical questions. Some of the latter, included among the occasional works, are sagacious and prudent and deserve careful study. Of the former, the principal specimens are the Meditationes Sacrae and the Confession of Faith. The Paradoxes (Characters of a believing Christian in paradoxes, and seeming contradictions), which was often and justly suspected, has been conclusively proved by Grosart to be the work of another author.
Philosophical Works.—The great mass of Bacon’s writings consists of treatises or fragments, which either formed integral parts of his grand comprehensive scheme, or were closely connected with it. More exactly they may be classified under three heads: (A) Writings originally intended to form parts of the Instauratio, but which were afterwards superseded or thrown aside; (B) Works connected with the Instauratio, but not directly included in its plan; (C) Writings which actually formed part of the Instauratio Magna.
(A) This class contains some important tracts, which certainly contain little, if anything, that is not afterwards taken up and expanded in the more elaborate works, but are not undeserving of attention, from the difference in the point of view and method of treatment. The most valuable of them are: (1) The Advancement of Learning, of which no detailed account need be given, as it is completely worked up into the De Augmentis, and takes its place as the first part of the Instauratio. (2) Valerius Terminus, a very remarkable piece, composed probably about 1603, though perhaps retouched at a later period. It contains a brief and somewhat obscure outline of the first two parts in the Instauratio, and is of importance as affording us some insight into the gradual development of the system in Bacon’s own mind. (3) Temporis Partus Masculus, another curious fragment, remarkable not only from its contents, but from its style, which is arrogant and offensive, in this respect unlike any other writing of Bacon’s. The adjective masculus points to the power of bringing forth fruit possessed by the new philosophy, and perhaps indicates that all previous births of time were to be looked upon as feminine or imperfect; it is used in a somewhat similar sense in Letters and Life, vi. 183, “In verbis masculis, no flourishing or painted words, but such words as are fit to go before deeds.” (4) Redargutio Philosophiarum, a highly finished piece in the form of an oration, composed probably about 1608 or 1609, and containing in pretty full detail much of what afterwards appears in connexion with the Idola Theatri in book i. of the Novum Organum. (5) Cogitata et Visa, perhaps the most important of the minor philosophical writings, dating from 1607 (though possibly the tract in its present form may have been to some extent altered), and containing in weighty and sonorous Latin the substance of the first book of the Organum. (6) The Descriptio Globi Intellectualis, which is to some extent intermediate between the Advancement and the De Augmentis, goes over in detail the general classification of the sciences, and enters particularly on some points of minor interest. (7) The brief tract De Interpretatione Naturae Sententiae Duodecim is evidently a first sketch of part of the Novum Organum, and in phraseology is almost identical with it. (8) A few smaller pieces, such as the Inquisitio de Motu, the Calor et Frigus, the Historia Soni et Auditus and the Phaenomena Universi, are early specimens of his Natural History, and exhibit the first tentative applications of the new method.
(B) The second group consists of treatises on subjects connected with the Instauratio, but not forming part of it. The most interesting, and in many respects the most remarkable, is the philosophic romance, the New Atlantis, a description of an ideal state in which the principles of the new philosophy are carried out by political machinery and under state guidance, and where many of the results contemplated by Bacon are in imagination attained. The work was to have been completed by the addition of a second part, treating of the laws of a model commonwealth, which was never written. Another important tract is the De Principiis atque Originibus secundum Fabulas Cupidinis et Caeli, where, under the disguise of two old mythological stories, he (in the manner of the Sapientia Veterum) finds the deepest truths
- ↑ The peculiarities of Bacon’s style were noticed very early by his contemporaries. (See Letters and Life, i. 268.) Raleigh and Jonson have both recorded their opinions of it, but no one has characterized it more happily than his friend, Sir Tobie Matthews, “A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusions, as perhaps the world hath not seen since it was a world.”—“Address to the Reader” prefixed to Collection of English Letters (1660).
