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The Major Works
This authoritative edition brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - that reveals the essence of his work and thinking.
Francis Bacon held some of the highest public offices in the land and in his spare time studied natural philosophy and a wide variety of other subjects. His systematic classification of all branches of knowledge became the basis for all later constructions, and his Essays are unsurpassed in their observations on society and human behavior. This extensive anthology includes the major English literary works on which his reputation rests: The Advancement of Learning, The Essays (1625, as well as the earliest version of 1597), and the posthumously published Utopian fable The New Atlantis (1626). In addition it reprints other works which illustrate Bacon's abilities in politics, law, theology, and poetry.
A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and elucidates his vocabulary.
Francis Bacon held some of the highest public offices in the land and in his spare time studied natural philosophy and a wide variety of other subjects. His systematic classification of all branches of knowledge became the basis for all later constructions, and his Essays are unsurpassed in their observations on society and human behavior. This extensive anthology includes the major English literary works on which his reputation rests: The Advancement of Learning, The Essays (1625, as well as the earliest version of 1597), and the posthumously published Utopian fable The New Atlantis (1626). In addition it reprints other works which illustrate Bacon's abilities in politics, law, theology, and poetry.
A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and elucidates his vocabulary.
864 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2002
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About the author
Francis Bacon
2,506 books912 followersNot to confuse with collateral descendant and artist Francis Bacon
English philosopher, essayist, courtier, jurist, and statesman Francis Bacon, first viscount Saint Albans, in writings, which include The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the Novum Organum (1620), proposed a theory of scientific knowledge, based on observation and experiment, which people came as the inductive method.
A Baconian follows the doctrines of the philosopher Francis Bacon or believes in the theory of, relating to, or characteristic of his works or thought that he authored the plays, attributed to William Shakespeare.
This Queen's Counsel, an orator, authored. He served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, his works extremely influenced especially as advocate and practitioner during the revolution.
People called Bacon the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized simple Baconian inquiry, often called. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all natural things marked a new turn in much of the rhetorical framework, which still surrounds proper conceptions today.
Bacon received a knighthood in 1603, and people created him baron Verulam in 1618 and promoted him in 1621.
Ideas of Bacon in the 1630s and 1650s influenced scholars; Sir Thomas Browne in his Encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–72) frequently adheres to an approach to his inquiries. During the Restoration, the royal society founded under Charles II in 1660, commonly invoked Bacon as a guiding spirit.
During the 18th-century Enlightenment of France, criticism of the ancien regime associated more influential non-metaphysical approach of Bacon than the dualism of his French contemporary René Descartes. In 1733, Voltaire "introduced him as the ''father," a widespread understanding before 1750, to a French audience.
In the 19th century, William Whewell revived and developed his emphasis. People reputed him as the "father."
Because Bacon introduced the influence behind the dawning of the Industrial age in England, people also consider him. In works, Bacon,
meaning he expected that through the understanding of use of mechanics, society creates more inventions that to an extent solves the problems. This idea, found in medieval ages, changed the course in history to inventive that eventually led to the mechanical inventions that made possible the Industrial Revolutions of the following centuries.
He also a long treatise on Medicine, History of Life and Death , with the natural prolongation.
For the historian William Hepworth Dixon of biographers, so great influence of Bacon in modern world proceeds to owe to who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation
Francis Bacon's left the vast and varied that dispaly and that divided in three great branches:
Works present his ideas for an universal reform into the use of the improvement.
In literary works, he presents his morals.
Works reform in law.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with thi
English philosopher, essayist, courtier, jurist, and statesman Francis Bacon, first viscount Saint Albans, in writings, which include The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the Novum Organum (1620), proposed a theory of scientific knowledge, based on observation and experiment, which people came as the inductive method.
A Baconian follows the doctrines of the philosopher Francis Bacon or believes in the theory of, relating to, or characteristic of his works or thought that he authored the plays, attributed to William Shakespeare.
This Queen's Counsel, an orator, authored. He served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, his works extremely influenced especially as advocate and practitioner during the revolution.
People called Bacon the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized simple Baconian inquiry, often called. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all natural things marked a new turn in much of the rhetorical framework, which still surrounds proper conceptions today.
Bacon received a knighthood in 1603, and people created him baron Verulam in 1618 and promoted him in 1621.
Ideas of Bacon in the 1630s and 1650s influenced scholars; Sir Thomas Browne in his Encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–72) frequently adheres to an approach to his inquiries. During the Restoration, the royal society founded under Charles II in 1660, commonly invoked Bacon as a guiding spirit.
During the 18th-century Enlightenment of France, criticism of the ancien regime associated more influential non-metaphysical approach of Bacon than the dualism of his French contemporary René Descartes. In 1733, Voltaire "introduced him as the ''father," a widespread understanding before 1750, to a French audience.
In the 19th century, William Whewell revived and developed his emphasis. People reputed him as the "father."
Because Bacon introduced the influence behind the dawning of the Industrial age in England, people also consider him. In works, Bacon,
"the explanation of which things, and of the true relation between the nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing and decoration of the bridal chamber of the mind and the universe, out of which marriage let us hope there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity,"
meaning he expected that through the understanding of use of mechanics, society creates more inventions that to an extent solves the problems. This idea, found in medieval ages, changed the course in history to inventive that eventually led to the mechanical inventions that made possible the Industrial Revolutions of the following centuries.
He also a long treatise on Medicine, History of Life and Death , with the natural prolongation.
For the historian William Hepworth Dixon of biographers, so great influence of Bacon in modern world proceeds to owe to who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation
Francis Bacon's left the vast and varied that dispaly and that divided in three great branches:
Works present his ideas for an universal reform into the use of the improvement.
In literary works, he presents his morals.
Works reform in law.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with thi
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 18, 2021
I've been curious to explore Francis Bacon's works because of how rarely read and greatly influential he seems: no other philosopher claims a place on my person every single day ("Knowledge is Power" exclaims the New York Public Library card in my wallet), and Adorno and Horkheimer all but lay the entirety of modernity and science at his feet in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments.
His Essays are creative and clever commonsensical observations on the analysis of ideas and sentiments, and the management and counsel of behavior, civill and morall. That's good enough for me, and they are often a pleasure to read. But they certainly aren't compelling arguments, and they say little that's profound or original. Indeed, I was left a bit awe-struck by how little has really changed in consciousness, feeling, and politics between the then (the start) and now (the end) of modern philosophy. I'd say the Essays are most interesting from a literary perspective. Bacon does not adopt the welcoming and untroubled essayistic style of Montaigne nor the chilly ironism of Donne's or La Rochefoucauld's epigrams -- but neither does he write transparently. Each essay is terse, polished, and opaque, and some include pithy sentences that transmit little, if any, meaning on closer inspection. Bacon's authorial goals are intriguingly muddied, and the form of these essays complicate the supposedly practical wisdom they frame. The reader and Bacon ally to make some sense out of these spiky nests of classical allusions and sentential torsion, but fail: the composition and unravelling of each essay, one might say, is the only counsel this form offers. Something to ask Stanley Fish about, I guess.
Comprising aphorisms, letters, and narrative fiction, Bacon's philosophical works continue the Essays' interesting and deliberate style but totally abandon their matter; indeed, Bacon seems to reserve no place for the practical and witty rhetoric he excelled at there within the scope of his major philosophical project, the Great Instauration. In this multi-volume and mostly incomplete work, Bacon proposes to fundamentally re-evaluate and repurpose all previous philosophical and scientific knowledge on firmer empirical footing. Unlike the roughly contemporary project in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, Bacon's idea is not to hyperbolically doubt all the way to the lone ego's cogitations and then to rebuild a rationalist philosophy, but to raze and recategorize existing knowledge, more or less dubious, in the light of experimental science's requirements. Bacon spends quite a lot of effort in tearing down scholastics, sophists, alchemists, and politicians -- as well as the basic and fixed limitations of human perception and thought -- throughout The Proficience and Advancement of Learning and New Organon; many of these passages are sound, and many could be applied to philosophical schools today (or any time, for that matter). Furthermore, Bacon is not an iconoclast and he intends to preserve much that is worthwhile in classical and modern thought, to inspire hope for the value and promise of knowledge, and to maintain the separateness and dignity of faith and theology. Finer points of interest are Bacon's emphasis on the importance of experiments and instruments in science (and it's a shame he didn't more extensively explain what experiments are, entail, mean, and promote in thought), and the complex relationship between philosophy/science and technology: as he observes, in many periods in which science has stagnated, technology has steadily progressed. Bacon's positive contributions, however, are few, and the specific methods he proposes in Book II New Organon for philosophical inquiry show little promise. Beyond the particular ideas he advances or dismantles, Bacon's main philosophical contribution is his proposal and defense of a scientific worldview based on experimental investigation of nature, skepticism towards received wisdom, and the worldly improvement of humanity. It does not seem that empirical science and its worldview came into its full fruition and maturity for another century or so until Newton, and so much of even that is difficult to square with the infinitely specialized and recondite science of today.
Selecting across Bacon's works one finds a sensible, lively, reflective and admirable, but ultimately unpersuasive, voice for the basis and furtherance of knowledge: a basis that is durable, a furtherance that is incomplete. Bacon wrote mountains of books, many of which he left unfinished; even more he planned but never began. More than one of his works in this collection end with a note on their own inconclusiveness: New Atlantis, with the line "THE REST WAS NOT PERFECTED." As with Bacon's corpus, so with science and philosophy -- pure projection afield.
His Essays are creative and clever commonsensical observations on the analysis of ideas and sentiments, and the management and counsel of behavior, civill and morall. That's good enough for me, and they are often a pleasure to read. But they certainly aren't compelling arguments, and they say little that's profound or original. Indeed, I was left a bit awe-struck by how little has really changed in consciousness, feeling, and politics between the then (the start) and now (the end) of modern philosophy. I'd say the Essays are most interesting from a literary perspective. Bacon does not adopt the welcoming and untroubled essayistic style of Montaigne nor the chilly ironism of Donne's or La Rochefoucauld's epigrams -- but neither does he write transparently. Each essay is terse, polished, and opaque, and some include pithy sentences that transmit little, if any, meaning on closer inspection. Bacon's authorial goals are intriguingly muddied, and the form of these essays complicate the supposedly practical wisdom they frame. The reader and Bacon ally to make some sense out of these spiky nests of classical allusions and sentential torsion, but fail: the composition and unravelling of each essay, one might say, is the only counsel this form offers. Something to ask Stanley Fish about, I guess.
Comprising aphorisms, letters, and narrative fiction, Bacon's philosophical works continue the Essays' interesting and deliberate style but totally abandon their matter; indeed, Bacon seems to reserve no place for the practical and witty rhetoric he excelled at there within the scope of his major philosophical project, the Great Instauration. In this multi-volume and mostly incomplete work, Bacon proposes to fundamentally re-evaluate and repurpose all previous philosophical and scientific knowledge on firmer empirical footing. Unlike the roughly contemporary project in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, Bacon's idea is not to hyperbolically doubt all the way to the lone ego's cogitations and then to rebuild a rationalist philosophy, but to raze and recategorize existing knowledge, more or less dubious, in the light of experimental science's requirements. Bacon spends quite a lot of effort in tearing down scholastics, sophists, alchemists, and politicians -- as well as the basic and fixed limitations of human perception and thought -- throughout The Proficience and Advancement of Learning and New Organon; many of these passages are sound, and many could be applied to philosophical schools today (or any time, for that matter). Furthermore, Bacon is not an iconoclast and he intends to preserve much that is worthwhile in classical and modern thought, to inspire hope for the value and promise of knowledge, and to maintain the separateness and dignity of faith and theology. Finer points of interest are Bacon's emphasis on the importance of experiments and instruments in science (and it's a shame he didn't more extensively explain what experiments are, entail, mean, and promote in thought), and the complex relationship between philosophy/science and technology: as he observes, in many periods in which science has stagnated, technology has steadily progressed. Bacon's positive contributions, however, are few, and the specific methods he proposes in Book II New Organon for philosophical inquiry show little promise. Beyond the particular ideas he advances or dismantles, Bacon's main philosophical contribution is his proposal and defense of a scientific worldview based on experimental investigation of nature, skepticism towards received wisdom, and the worldly improvement of humanity. It does not seem that empirical science and its worldview came into its full fruition and maturity for another century or so until Newton, and so much of even that is difficult to square with the infinitely specialized and recondite science of today.
Selecting across Bacon's works one finds a sensible, lively, reflective and admirable, but ultimately unpersuasive, voice for the basis and furtherance of knowledge: a basis that is durable, a furtherance that is incomplete. Bacon wrote mountains of books, many of which he left unfinished; even more he planned but never began. More than one of his works in this collection end with a note on their own inconclusiveness: New Atlantis, with the line "THE REST WAS NOT PERFECTED." As with Bacon's corpus, so with science and philosophy -- pure projection afield.
June 22, 2016
Francis Bacon was fantastically learned, wise, shrewd, and an epigrammatic master. Not only so, but he was plainly a conscientious and sincere Christian, one who knew the Scriptures well, and who applied them ably and often. Not surprisingly, he is often falsely accused.
November 4, 2015
So you're thinking about reading some Francis Bacon. And why the hell not? You're a personage of elevated smartitudinality with a desiring to increaseth your understandingness of arts historia. Besides, you've been really letting your amazeballs Latin skillz go to waste. Wouldn't it be better to read a book in which fully 1/4th of it is written in Latin aphorisms?
This was a mistake. "This" being the selection of a version of the work of Francis Bacon that stayed true to the vernacular and kept the Latin aphorisms (up to a dozen per page) in Latin. I spent hours of my life flipping back and forth from the text to the end notes trying to make it through a single paragraph while extracting even a thread of Bacon's meaning. I read some yada at the beginning. I read his plan for education reform (well, I skipped the part about religious education) and then I set fire to the damned thing and danced around the ensuing pyre.
I've never felt better about quitting a book. That being said, it still feels bloody awful.
This was a mistake. "This" being the selection of a version of the work of Francis Bacon that stayed true to the vernacular and kept the Latin aphorisms (up to a dozen per page) in Latin. I spent hours of my life flipping back and forth from the text to the end notes trying to make it through a single paragraph while extracting even a thread of Bacon's meaning. I read some yada at the beginning. I read his plan for education reform (well, I skipped the part about religious education) and then I set fire to the damned thing and danced around the ensuing pyre.
I've never felt better about quitting a book. That being said, it still feels bloody awful.
December 5, 2022
Bacon, Francis. The Major Works. New York: Oxford, 2002.
Francis Bacon was not the opponent of Aristotle and tradition that common knowledge made him to be. Aristotle was only a problem when people read final causes into inanimate objects, thus rendering science impossible. What was needed, and what Bacon struggled to say, was an understanding of nature as contingent rationality.
We are not seeking the “pure knowledge” of universals, a pre-fall knowledge (125). Rather, what we aim for is knowledge as application, which is much closer to the biblical view of applied wisdom.
The error was not in using Aristotle’s forms and substances, but in the endless multiplying of them by the schoolmen (196). This had the added error of reading them into nature, making nature something in itself rather than something contingent.
Metaphysics has its place as a tool, not a goal. It should be an open-ended system.
A Defense of a Life of Study
The Romans never ascended the heights of empire until they achieved the heights of other disciplines (131). Societies that are too focused on teaching practicalities end up losing much of education.
Bacon’s main problem with previous models: the emphasis in those times was on copying rather than substance. This was particularly the case in using Cicero as a model. This means substance is more important than the beauty of words.
On Trusting Authorities
“For disciples owe unto their masters a temporary belief and suspension of their own judgment until they be fully instructed” (144). Antiquity helps us discover the truth, but once discovered we have to move forward.
When one approaches nature (or rational inquiry), does one begin with “certainties” or does one maintain a humble and open frame of mind? Bacon notes of older models: “If a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content with doubts, he shall end in certainties” (147).
Book II
Book II is a discourse on university curricula, of proper subjects of study and when to study them. It is interesting, yet of limited value today. We get a short treatment of Bacon’s ambivalent attitude towards “magic.” On one hand, he knew, ala the Bible, that delving into magic was forbidden. On the other hand, he did not quite dismiss the sometimes accurate results from magic. What we wanted and never got was a systematic understanding of “white magic.”
Interesting Tidbits and Essays
Bacon’s Essays are always insightful, if not always deep. He has an interesting method of employing his main idea as the opening sentence. If Bacon were alive today, he would dominate the Twitter world.
“Miracles convert not atheists, but idolaters” (191).
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out” (347).
“Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame; and servants of business” (359).
“As for nobility in particular persons; it is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle or building not in decay; or to see a fair timber tree sound and perfect” (365).
“I had rather believe all the fables in legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind” (371).
“We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom” (383).
“It hath been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are” (389).
“Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions” (396).
“Suspicions among thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight” (405).
“I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue” (409).
“Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished” (417).
“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set” (425).
Of course, there is his legendary essay on study, which is worth reading in its entirety.
Conclusion
Not everything Bacon said stands the test of time. He was correct, however, to see the direction that scientific knowledge had to go.
Francis Bacon was not the opponent of Aristotle and tradition that common knowledge made him to be. Aristotle was only a problem when people read final causes into inanimate objects, thus rendering science impossible. What was needed, and what Bacon struggled to say, was an understanding of nature as contingent rationality.
We are not seeking the “pure knowledge” of universals, a pre-fall knowledge (125). Rather, what we aim for is knowledge as application, which is much closer to the biblical view of applied wisdom.
The error was not in using Aristotle’s forms and substances, but in the endless multiplying of them by the schoolmen (196). This had the added error of reading them into nature, making nature something in itself rather than something contingent.
Metaphysics has its place as a tool, not a goal. It should be an open-ended system.
A Defense of a Life of Study
The Romans never ascended the heights of empire until they achieved the heights of other disciplines (131). Societies that are too focused on teaching practicalities end up losing much of education.
Bacon’s main problem with previous models: the emphasis in those times was on copying rather than substance. This was particularly the case in using Cicero as a model. This means substance is more important than the beauty of words.
On Trusting Authorities
“For disciples owe unto their masters a temporary belief and suspension of their own judgment until they be fully instructed” (144). Antiquity helps us discover the truth, but once discovered we have to move forward.
When one approaches nature (or rational inquiry), does one begin with “certainties” or does one maintain a humble and open frame of mind? Bacon notes of older models: “If a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content with doubts, he shall end in certainties” (147).
Book II
Book II is a discourse on university curricula, of proper subjects of study and when to study them. It is interesting, yet of limited value today. We get a short treatment of Bacon’s ambivalent attitude towards “magic.” On one hand, he knew, ala the Bible, that delving into magic was forbidden. On the other hand, he did not quite dismiss the sometimes accurate results from magic. What we wanted and never got was a systematic understanding of “white magic.”
Interesting Tidbits and Essays
Bacon’s Essays are always insightful, if not always deep. He has an interesting method of employing his main idea as the opening sentence. If Bacon were alive today, he would dominate the Twitter world.
“Miracles convert not atheists, but idolaters” (191).
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out” (347).
“Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame; and servants of business” (359).
“As for nobility in particular persons; it is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle or building not in decay; or to see a fair timber tree sound and perfect” (365).
“I had rather believe all the fables in legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind” (371).
“We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom” (383).
“It hath been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are” (389).
“Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions” (396).
“Suspicions among thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight” (405).
“I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue” (409).
“Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished” (417).
“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set” (425).
Of course, there is his legendary essay on study, which is worth reading in its entirety.
Conclusion
Not everything Bacon said stands the test of time. He was correct, however, to see the direction that scientific knowledge had to go.
November 6, 2020
This book contains his works in English, not the Novum Organum that was written in Latin.
In his Essays Bacon is more hands-on than Montaigne. The essay New Atlantis was interesting, but the world he describes seems very boring. Of course, these are all important historical works, in the light of upcoming rationality.
In his Essays Bacon is more hands-on than Montaigne. The essay New Atlantis was interesting, but the world he describes seems very boring. Of course, these are all important historical works, in the light of upcoming rationality.
November 7, 2017
An excellent collection of Baconion works that has a focus other than his scientific studies. The collection affirms Bacon as one of England's great minds under Elizabeth I and James I. The keen historian will also note Bacon's interaction with Cecil, whilst the occultist will notice the Rosicrucian references.
February 3, 2008
The glory of his age. Essays on morality, and a lot of them. Any man who writes an essay titled 'On Seeming Wise' can't be all bad in my books.
November 20, 2024
Among other things, the intellectual justification for the scientific empirical approach is provided by this foundational work. Bacon contends that one should examine the evidence of their senses and investigate the outcomes, as the antiquated method of demanding classic authors is inadequate. This excellent collection also includes "The New Atlantic" and a selection of essays.
In "The Advancement of Learning," Francis Bacon argues for a new approach to knowledge acquisition, advocating for the empirical method as the primary means of scientific understanding, emphasizing observation and experimentation over traditional reliance on authority and speculation, with the ultimate goal of improving human life through practical applications of knowledge; he outlines a detailed classification of knowledge, dividing it into history (memory), poetry (imagination), and philosophy (reason), and criticizes existing scholarship for its focus on "vain speculations" rather than useful discoveries for mankind.
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In "The Advancement of Learning," Francis Bacon argues for a new approach to knowledge acquisition, advocating for the empirical method as the primary means of scientific understanding, emphasizing observation and experimentation over traditional reliance on authority and speculation, with the ultimate goal of improving human life through practical applications of knowledge; he outlines a detailed classification of knowledge, dividing it into history (memory), poetry (imagination), and philosophy (reason), and criticizes existing scholarship for its focus on "vain speculations" rather than useful discoveries for mankind.
( )
June 13, 2020
Clunky and wildly of its time in places, and astonishingly modern and thought-provoking in others.
Bacon seems kinda underrated and largely ignored in the pantheon these days, but as one of the key minds of a key period - arguably one of the main people who kick-started the ideas that led to the Enlightenment - this is well worth the time.
Bacon seems kinda underrated and largely ignored in the pantheon these days, but as one of the key minds of a key period - arguably one of the main people who kick-started the ideas that led to the Enlightenment - this is well worth the time.
May 26, 2025
The Essays are less personal, more formal, and more obviously written for an elite audience than Montaigne's, and so are less useful for today, even if many of Bacon's points seem correct. He was certainly a prudent and worldly man.
December 13, 2024
1 star is not for Bacon; he was brilliant. But this book is terribly laid out. If you're not bilingual (in English and Latin) it's almost un-readable.
January 2, 2013
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but cursorily; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Pg. 81.I’m not sure where Francis Bacon would put his own writings, but I found his collections of essays best as tasted. As Lord Chancellor to King James I, his writings reflect the measured judgment of a man acquiescent to the throne. Typical of the Renaissance training of the time, Bacon strings together quotations from classical sources to provide the authority for the points he punctuates. At times, reading becomes tedious as his points are not necessarily reasoned through as much as given weight by the authorship of his supporting quotations.
It does not mean that his points are less well taken. The advice on topics ranging from friendship to studies to tribute comes as though from experience. The supporting sources just add rhetorical flourish.
As one expects from a man devoted to public service, he sees a practical value to service:
Clearness of judgment makes men liberal, for it teacheth men to esteem of the goods of fortune not for themselves, for so they are but jailors to them, but for their use, for so they are lords over them; and it makes us to know that it is beatius dare quam accipere, the one being a badge of sovereignty, the other of subjection. Also it leadeth us to fortitude, for it teacheth us that we should not too much prize life which we cannot keep, nor fear death which we cannot shun, that he which dies nobly doth live for ever, and he that lives in fear doth die continually; that pain and danger be great only by opinion, and that in truth nothing is fearful but fear itself… pg. 71
October 15, 2007
"knowledge is power" (Meditations)
"the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith."
(De augmentis)
"the more discordant, therefore, and incredible, the divine mystery is, the more honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith."
(De augmentis)
September 15, 2013
It was tough going at times.
January 28, 2015
I confess that I have found it very difficult to get to the end of his essays.
July 26, 2016
Sometimes compelling and insightful, sometimes painfully tedious. Suffice to say, exactly what you'd expect.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews