The Temple of Philosophy

(Title-page to the 1645 edition of Francis Bacon’s De Dignitate & Augmentis Scientiarum.)

Above the actor, on the crown of the rocky hill, is a temple, symbolic of the Temple of Philosophy which Bacon’s method can build. But there is more to it than this, for the depiction of this precipitously rocky, flat-topped hill with the temple on it shows that it is an acropolis—the most famous and fitting one for this Shakespeare-Bacon story being the acropolis of Athens, home of the spear-shaking goddess, patroness of philosophers and poets.

However, the temple shown in the picture is circular, covered with a dome and having arches between its columns. There were not many circular temples built by either the Greeks or Romans in classical times. There was certainly not one on the acropolis of Athens, and the Greeks did not use domes or arches in their temple architecture. However, the Romans did, but they did not have a steep-sided rocky acropolis like Athens. Their famous round temple was the Temple of Vesta in Rome, the most sacred shrine in the imperial city where the vestal fire, representing the fire of the heart or hearth, was kept continually burning by the vestal virgins. The Baconian temple in the picture would appear, therefore, to represent an entirely new temple built on ancient principles and foundations, fusing together the best and most sacred elements of the martial Romans and mercurial Greeks, being a Temple of the Virgin Goddess, the buskinned Diana (Greek, Artemis), sister of Apollo, great goddess of nature and of child-birth, guardian of the flame of love. Such symbolism beautifully encapsulates Bacon’s philosophy and goal.

Since Bacon made it clear that his active science would be nothing else but charity—for love, the cause of all causes, is the object of all true knowledge—then the Temple of Diana, founded on its acropolis of philosophy and containing the vestal flame of the heart, is a fitting image of the sixth part of the Great Instauration, which Bacon named ‘The Second Philosophy or Active Science’.

Appropriately, the temple is shown raised high up (on its acropolis) in the picture, on Bacon’s left, counterbalancing the sun-face of Apollo which is depicted low down (on Bacon’s cloak), on the Lord Chancellor’s right. Apollo and Artemis are twins, brother and sister, god of the sun and goddess of the moon. One rules the heart, the other the mind. They are polarities to each other. The Apollonian light is the light of nature, hidden in its heart as the foundation of all things, whilst the temple and vestal flame of Artemis is that of the soul, the illumined mind that is the crown of creation.

Apollo and Artemis are also represented by the ‘Double A’ headpiece (‘AA’) which is printed at the head of certain pages of the Shakespeare folio and other works by Bacon.

© Peter Dawkins, FBRT, 1999