Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/62

 them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."

So when explaining, amidst the advantages of knowledge, its excellency in diffusing happiness through succeeding ages, he says, "Let us con clude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire; which is, immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and families; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and, in effect, the strength of all other human desires. We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For, have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and destroyed? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life and truth: but the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?"

After having thus explained some of the blessings attendant upon knowledge, he concludes the first book with lamenting that these blessings are not more generally preferred.

The second book, after various preliminary observations, and particularly upon the defects of universities, of which, from the supposition that they are formed rather for the discovery of new knowledge than for diffusing the knowledge of our predecessors, he, through life, seems to have formed too high an estimate, he arranges and adorns every species of history, which he includes within the province of memory,–and every species of poetry, by which imagination can "elevate the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying its own divine essence:"–and, passing from poetry, by saying, "but it is not good to stop too long in the theatre: let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention," he proceeds to the investigation of every species of philosophy, divine, natural, and human, of which, from his analysis of human philosophy, or the science of man, some conception may be formed of the extent and perfection of the different parts of the work.

These different subjects, exhibited with this perspicuity, are adorned with beautiful illustration and imagery: as, when explaining the doctrine of the will, divided into the image of good, or the exhibition of truth, and the culture or Georgics of the mind, which is its husbandry or tillage, so as to love the truth which it sees, he says, "The neglecting these Georgics seemeth to me no better than to exhibit a fair image or statue, beautiful to behold, but without life or motion." Having thus made a small globe of the intellectual world, he, looking at the work he had made, and hoping that it was good, thus concludes: "And being now at some pause, looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, 'si nunquam fallit imago,' (as far as a man can judge of his own work,) not much better than the noise or sound which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments, which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play that have better hands. And surely, when I set before me the condition of these times, in which learning hath made her third visitation or circuit in all the qualities thereof: as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age; the noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers; the art of printing, which communicateth book to men of all fortunes; the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history; the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so generally in civil business as the states of Græcia did, in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome, in respect of the greatness of their monarchy; the present disposition of these times at this instant to peace; the consumption of all that ever can be said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted men from other sciences; and the inseparable property of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth,–I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learning; only if men will know their own strength, and their own weakness both; and take, one from the other, light of invention, and not fire of contradiction; and esteem of the inquisition of truth as of an enterprise, and not as of a quality or ornament; and employ wit and magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things vulgar and of popular estimation." Of this work he presented copies to the king