Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/43

Rh as it is a part or member of a greater body; wehereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier. This double nature of good and the comparative thereof is much more engraven upon man, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being, according to that memorable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and instance by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, 'Necesse est ut eam non ut vivam. '" And when Essex proffered him assistance, he, weighing these duties, admonished his friend that this was not to interfere with his duty to his sovereign. His words were, "I must and will ever acknowledge my lord's love, trust, and favour towards me, after the queen had denied me the solicitor's place, when he said, You have spent your time and thoughts in my matters; I die, these were his very words, if I do not somewhat towards your fortune. My answer, I remember, was that for my fortune it was no great matter; but that his lordship's offer (which was of a piece of land worth about £1800) made me call to mind what was wont to be said when I was in France of the Duke of Guise, that he was the greatest usurer in France, because he had turned all his estate into obligations. He bad me take no care for that, and pressed it; whereupon I said, "My lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? Always it is with a saving of his faith to the king and his other lords."

His considerations were not, however, confined to his duties to the queen and to Essex, but extended to the peculiar situation in which, with respect to his own worldly prospects, he was placed. He saw that, if he did not plead against Essex, all his hopes of advancement might, without any benefit to his friend, be destroyed; and that if he did plead against him, he should be exposed to obloquy and misrepresentation. The consideration of his worldly prospects were to him and to the community of great importance.

It is, perhaps, to be lamented that, formed for contemplation, he was induced, either by his necessities, or any erroneous notion of the virtue of activity, to engage in public life; but he was always unskilful to note the card of prudent lore, and it was his favourite opinion that, to dignify and exalt knowledge, contemplation and action should be nearly and strongly conjoined and united together: a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.

Having engaged and encountered all the difficulties of his profession, he was entitled, by his commanding intellect, to possess the power, which, although it had not precedence in his thoughts, followed regularly in the train of his duty; not the common vulgar power, from ostentation, loving trivial pomp and city noise; or from ambition, which, like the sealed dove, mounts and mounts because it is unable to look about it; but power to advance science and promote merit, according to his maxim and in the spirit of his own words "detur digniori." "Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground." With these prospects before him, he could not be so weak as hastily to abandon them, by yielding to that generous illusion by which the noblest minds are often raised in their own esteem by imagined disinterestedness.

With respect to his professional duties, he was in less difficulty. He knew that his conduct would be subject "to envy and peril," but knowing also that these aspersions would originate in good feeling, in the supposition of ingratitude and disregard of truth, he could not be alarmed at the clamours of those who knew not what they did. To consider every suggestion, in favour and in opposition to any opinion, is, according to his doctrine in the Novum Organum, the only solid foundation upon which any judgment, even in the calm inquiries of philosophy, can be formed. In public assemblies, therefore, agitated by passions by which the progress of truth is disturbed, he of all men knew and admired the wise constitution of our courts, in which it has been deemed expedient, that, to elicit truth, the judge should hear the opposite statements of the same or of different powerful disinterested minds, who may be more able than the suitors to do justice to the causes upon which their interests depend. A more efficacious mode to disentangle difficulty, to expose falsehood, and discover truth, was, perhaps, never devised. It prevents the influence of passions by which truth may be impeded, and calls in aid every intellectual power by which justice may be advanced. He was not likely, therefore, to be moved by the censures of those who, ignorant of the principles upon which this practice is founded, imagine advocates to be indiscriminate defenders of right and wrong, instead of being officers assisting in the administration of justice, and acting under the impression that truth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question. He was not likely to be moved by that ignorant censure which mixes the counsel with his client, instead of knowing that the advocate is indifferent on which side he pleads, whether for the most unfortunate or the most prosperous, for the most virtuous or the most abandoned member of