Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

The Two Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Humane

1605, 1640

"For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."

(9) But lastly, there is yet a much more important and profound kind of fallacies in the mind of man, which I find not observed or inquired at all, and think good to place here, as that which of all others appertaineth most to rectify judgment, the force whereof is such as it doth not dazzle or snare the understanding in some particulars, but doth more generally and inwardly infect and corrupt the state thereof. For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. For this purpose, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by the general nature of the mind, beholding them in an example or two; as first, in that instance which is the root of all superstition, namely, that to the nature of the mind of all men it is consonant for the affirmative or active to affect more than the negative or privative. So that a few times hitting or presence countervails ofttimes failing or absence, as was well answered by Diagoras to him that showed him in Neptune’s temple the great number of pictures of such as had escaped shipwreck, and had paid their vows to Neptune, saying, “Advise now, you that think it folly to invocate Neptune in tempest.” “Yea, but,” saith Diagoras, “where are they painted that are drowned?” Let us behold it in another instance, namely, that the spirit of man, being of an equal and uniform substance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature a greater equality and uniformity than is in truth. Hence it cometh that the mathematicians cannot satisfy themselves except they reduce the motions of the celestial bodies to perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines, and labouring to be discharged of eccentrics. Hence it cometh that whereas there are many things in Nature as it were monodica, sui juris, yet the cogitations of man do feign unto them relatives, parallels, and conjugates, whereas no such thing is; as they have feigned an element of fire to keep square with earth, water, and air, and the like. Nay, it is not credible, till it be opened, what a number of fictions and fantasies the similitude of human actions and arts, together with the making of man communis mensura, have brought into natural philosophy; not much better than the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks, and the opinion of Epicurus, answerable to the same in heathenism, who supposed the gods to be of human shape. And, therefore, Velleius the Epicurean needed not to have asked why God should have adorned the heavens with stars, as if He had been an aedilis, one that should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays. For if that great Work-master had been of a human disposition, He would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders like the frets in the roofs of houses; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square, or triangle, or straight line, amongst such an infinite number, so differing a harmony there is between the spirit of man and the spirit of Nature.

Optics::Mirror::Glass

Reading Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 42. Found again, Rayna Kalas, Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 149.

See Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning; or, the Partitions of Sciences. Nine Books. Written in Latin by the Most Eminent, Illustrious, and Famous Lord Francis Bacon Baron of Verulam, Vicount St. Alban, Councellor of Estate, and Lord Chancellor of England. Interpreted by Gilbert Watts. (Oxford: printed by Leon Lichfield printer to the University, for Robert Young and Edward Forrest, 1640). <Link to EEBO-TCP>

Some text drawn from EEBO-TCP; some from 1893 edition, from ebooks@Adelaide <Link>

Reading Francis Bacon, Selected Writings, introd. Hugh G. Dick (New York: Modern Library, 1955); and Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. Michael Kiernan. The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. iv (Oxford: OUP, 2000).

08/19/2013