Francis Bacon Research Trust

The Third Plato

(Frontispiece to the 1640 edition of Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning)

Above Francis Bacon’s head is an oval plaque surrounded by a wreath of bay leaves—the poet’s crown of laurels. The inscription on the plaque reads ‘Tertius a Platone, Philosophiæ Princeps’, which translates directly as ‘The Third from Plato, the Leader of Philosophy’.

The linking of philosophy with poetry, and both with Plato and Francis Bacon, is likewise made by the great 18/19th century English poet Shelley:-

Plato was essentially a Poet; the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive..... Lord Bacon was a Poet.

The language of Plato is that of an immortal spirit, rather than a man; Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only writer who, in these particulars can be compared to him.

Shelley, Defense of Poetry.

The inscription on the frontispiece plaque implies that Francis Bacon was perceived as the ‘Third Plato’. The ‘First Plato’ was, of course, Plato (or rather, the 4th century BC Greek poet-philosopher Aristocles, son of Ariston, who took the name Plato as his pseudonym). The ‘Second Plato’ was the 15th century Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino.

Plato was the famous pupil of Socrates and, like Socrates, an initiate of the Pythagorean and Orphic tradition, which was Hermetic in origin. It was due to Plato that the thoughts and words of Socrates were recorded and made known. Plato founded the first Academy, in 387 BC, in the Grove of Academus. The main philosophical thrust of the European Renaissance was derived primarily from Plato.

Renaissance Neoplatonism was born as a result of the works of Plato and various Neoplatonic philosophers, recorded in Greek manuscripts, being brought to Florence from Byzantium after the fall of Constantinople. With these texts was the Corpus Hermeticum, the Hermetic wisdom supposedly recorded by Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian sage who lived in the remotest antiquity and who has had various appearances or incarnations ever since. The founders of Renaissance Neoplatonism were Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, both members of the brilliant circle of scholars, writers and artists associated with the Medici court in Florence in the 15th century, under the patronage of the great Cosimo de’ Medici, who ordered the manuscripts to be brought to him at Florence.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), a scholar, physician and priest, was commissioned by Cosimo to translate into Latin the Hermetic writings and the dialogues of Plato, together with the Neoplatonic writings of Porphyry, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite and Plotinus. The translation of the Corpus Hermeticum was ready in 1464 and published in 1471 under the title of Pimander. The translations of Plato’s dialogues, completed c.1468, were published as the Platonic Theology in 1474.

Ficino’s understanding, as that of others including St. Augustine, was that a divine theology or wisdom tradition, based on love, began simultaneously with Zoroaster among the Persians and with Hermes Trismegistus among the Egyptians, and that this wisdom tradition led in an unbroken chain to Plato via Orpheus and Pythagorus. It is this wisdom which is reputed to underlie the Hebrew, Orphic and Christian teachings, all of which developed from the blended Hermetic and Magian origin.

Demonstrating that this wisdom tradition was associated with Christianity, with links via Moses and the Zoroastrian Magi, Ficino was able to reconcile Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian theology. He regarded both philosophy and religion as being manifestations of a spiritual life, each needing the other in order to attain the summum bonum, or greatest good. According to the Neoplatonic philosophy which he founded, based upon the Hermetic wisdom, love is the sustaining principle of the universe, and the attainment of the highest good is dependant not upon the Church but upon an impulse universal to mankind. The soul is not only immortal, but all souls by an inner urge naturally seek truth and goodness (i.e. God, the All-Good).

Ficino’s small country house near the Medici villa at Careggi, outside Florence, which he had received from Cosimo, became the city’s foremost philosophical centre, and from there his influence spread throughout Europe. Ficino called his villa ‘The Academy’ in memory of Plato, and it provided a sense of spiritual community as well as a forum for the discussion of religious and philosophical subjects. He and his friends celebrated Plato’s birthday with a solemn banquet. He became known as ‘the new Plato’.

Ficino, the ‘new’ or ‘Second Plato’, was the primary founder of Renaissance Neoplatonism and of the second Platonic Academy. Francis Bacon was the next in line of these great initiates—the ‘Third Plato’—who likewise laid the foundations for the next great leap in human consciousness and development, building upon the inheritance left by Ficino (and added to by Pico della Mirandola and others), who himself built upon Plato’s work.