Importance of Francis Bacon
“The very nerve of genius, the marrow of persuasion, the golden stream of eloquence, the precious gem of concealed literature...”
R. C., T. C., Elegy 9, Manes Verulamiani (1626)
Why do we think that knowledge of Francis Bacon and his work is important? What relevance has it today?
1. Bacon’s philosophical scheme, The Great Instauration or Six Days Work, is still not fully understood and practised in the way intended. To do so could bring enormous benefits to the world and help create a 'New Atlantis' or Golden Age. See below: “What is the importance of Sir Francis Bacon nowadays?”
2. Bacon not only headed the Rosy Cross Fraternity (Rosicrucians) but his Great Instauration is based on ancient wisdom and biblical and cabalistic principles. A study and knowledge of this is a major gateway into the true but veiled ever-living Wisdom Tradition. The aim is to discover truth.
3. Both Divinity and Poetry (Drama) play major roles in the Great Instauration. Shakespeare is not only an important part of this but the Shakespeare Authorship enigma was set up to train us in what Bacon calls the Art of Discovery, so that eventually we might discover and know the Author of All.
4. Bacon was a man of mystery and secrets, both of necessity and also of choice. Partly because of this, and partly because he had to act the role of a martyr to truth like the first St Alban before him, his name and memory has been slandered. This hurt needs to be redressed. The truth needs to be known, as does all truth.
5. The very name of Francis Bacon signals exactly the Mystery tradition of which he was an exemplar – the great Mystery tradition of Europe and the Near East, summed up by the myth of Europa and the Bull after which Europe was named.
Mysteries are plays in which the mystery of life is discovered and known by experience. We are all actors on the stage of the world, as Shakespeare points out, and the landscape of Europe is the stage for the European Myth and Mystery, which is also the Christian Mystery, properly understood. This European mystery, and Europe itself, is of fundamental importance as the midsummer sun moves into the zodiacal sign of Taurus in the heavens, marking the beginning of a new Great Age.
What is the importance of Sir Francis Bacon nowadays?
Bacon’s Great Instauration, or Six Days Work
The most important legacy of all that Bacon gave us is his Great Instauration – or Six Days Work, as he also called it, naming its six parts or stages after the Six Days of Creation as described in Genesis chapter 1 of the Holy Bible.
Bacon named his project thus because of his understanding of the science underlying the Mosaic text of Genesis, helped no doubt by his ability to read Hebrew. Bacon also carried out experiments to see for himself how those laws operate. As a result, he designed his Great Instauration accordingly.
The Six Stages of Work
Bacon’s titles for the six stages are given in the ‘Distributio Operis’ (‘Plan of Work’) of his Instauratio Magna (‘Great Instauration’) published in 1620. Translated into English by Robert Ellis and published in James Spedding’s Works of Francis Bacon (1858), Vol. IV, they are given as follows: -
-
- The Division of the Sciences.
- The New Organon; or Directions concerning the Interpretation of Nature.
- The Phenomena of the Universe; or a Natural and Experimental History for the foundation of Philosophy.
- The Ladder of the Intellect.
- The Forerunners; or Anticipations of the New Philosophy.
- The New Philosophy; or Active Science.
These six stages of work can also be summarised as: -
-
- A general survey and inventory of the existing state of human knowledge, identifying areas of human knowledge that are well covered and those in which mankind is deficient, together with a plan of action for improving matters in a harmonious, all-embracing way.
- The discovery, acquirement and development of a true scientific methodology, devoid of the faults and restrictions of the old methods.
- The collection of a natural history of factual evidence embracing “The Phenomena of the Universe; that is to say, experience of every kind” – natural phenomena, human behaviour and divine operations in Nature, physical and metaphysical – organised in tables “for a foundation to build philosophy upon”.
- The methodical process of carefully scrutinising each table of history, developing preliminary ideas, axioms or speculations, and then inventing experiments to test out the ideas (axioms), followed by a revised history, the forming of better or more advanced axioms, until such ideas and experimentation can be proven and the underlying laws truly known.
- A storehouse for useful conclusions or axioms, but which are not yet proved by the New Method (i.e. speculations).
- The storehouse of final axioms or truths concerning the laws of the universe, divine, human and natural, as proven by the New Method, by the test of time and by the maxim “truth prints goodness.” This forms what Bacon calls the “Summary Philosophy” or universal science.
Bacon provided the De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (‘Of the Dignity and Advancement of Science’) for the first part, and Novum Organum (‘New Method’ or ‘New Organum’) for the second part, but he said that he saw that these would be updated as time went on and the work progressed. The other parts are always being updated.
The Six Days’ Work and Seventh Day of Rest
Bacon planned his Great Instauration in imitation of the Divine Work, the Work of the Six Days of Creation that culminate in the Seventh Day of Rest, as defined in the Bible.[i]
He also understood that the Seven Days of Creation constitute an eternal archetype for a cyclic occurrence – a time cycle, great or small, in which takes place a process of life with certain definable stages.
The Six Days’ Work of the Great Instauration, and its Seventh Day, is therefore also cyclic, just like life itself, with each cycle building upon the previous one, so that knowledge and ability steadily increases in cycle after cycle, and with smaller cycles within greater cycles.
The Great Instauration is based on Bacon’s understanding of the Bible, coupled with his life experiences and experiments, the wisdom with which he was inspired, and knowledge of the ancient wisdom, such as that of the Orphic, Platonic, Neoplatonic, Alchemical, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Christian, Freemasonic and Rosicrucian traditions.
Bacon understood that knowledge was one of the gifts given to mankind at the very beginning, such as evidenced in Adam’s naming of the creatures, and that it was not knowledge as such which caused the Fall from Paradise, but pride or arrogance.
“For so we see, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell; I will ascend and be like the Most High:[ii] by aspiring to be like God in knowledge, man transgressed and fell: Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil:[iii] but by aspiring to a similitude of God in goodness or love, neither man nor angel ever transgressed, or shall transgress. For unto that imitation we are called: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you; that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise on the good and the bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.” [iv] [v]
“As for the knowledge which induced the Fall, it was, as was touched upon before, not the natural knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowledge of good and evil; wherein the supposition was, that God’s commandments or prohibitions were not the originals of good and evil, but that they had other beginnings, which man aspired to know; to the end to make a total defection from God and depend wholly upon himself.” [vi]
Bacon urges us to regain our God-given right over nature, as defined in the Bible:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” [vii]
However, Bacon interpreted the Hebrew word וְיִרְדּוּ֩ – which is rendered in the Latin Vulgate Bible as praesit, meaning ‘preside over’, ‘rule’, ‘dominate’, and translated in the King James’ AV Bible as “have dominion over” – with the deeper meaning of ‘look after’, ‘care for’, ‘cherish’. Bacon linked it with the role given by God to Adam, which was to look after the Garden of Eden as its gardener (Genesis 2:15): “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Such a gardener is both master of the garden and also its servant.
“Now the empire of man over things is founded on the Arts and Sciences only; for Nature is only governed by obedience. … Only let man regain his right over Nature, which belongs to him by the gift of God; let there be given to him the power: right reason and sound religion will teach him how to apply it.” [viii]
“In sum, I would advise all in general, that they would take into serious consideration the true and genuine ends of knowledge; that they seek it not either for pleasure, or contention, or contempt of others, or for profit, or fame, or for honour and promotion, or such like adulterate or inferior ends; but for the merit and emolument of life; and that they regulate and perfect the same in charity. For the desire of power was the fall of angels, the desire of knowledge the fall of man; but in charity there is no excess, neither man nor angels ever incurred danger by it.” [ix]
The Great Commandments
By sound religion Bacon is referring essentially to the two Great Commandments as expounded by Jesus: -
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [x]
In other words, love the Universal Being whose nature is goodness or love, and love all individual beings created by that love. Our knowledge of this essential love, which knowledge is derived from the practice of loving, is truth; thus Bacon says: -
“The essential form of knowledge… is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.” [xi]
“The mind is the man, and knowledge mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind itself is but an accident to knowledge; for knowledge is a double of that which is. The truth of being and the truth of knowing is all one.” [xii]
The truth of being is wisdom, which Bacon also refers to as Divinity, whilst knowledge of that wisdom is the true goal of philosophy: -
“First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of Learning; for all Learning is Knowledge acquired, and all Knowledge in God is original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it.” [xiii]
Philosophy is the handmaiden of Divinity, the Mistress
Bacon sees that Philosophy should be both a lover and the servant of Divinity, and that this is a genuine service to and worship of God.
“And if it be said that the cure of men's minds belongeth to Sacred Divinity, it is most true: but yet Moral Philosophy may be preferred unto her as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards the mistress,[xiv] and yet no doubt many things are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress's will; so ought Moral Philosophy to give constant attention to the doctrines of Divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.” [xv]
The Book of God’s Word and the Book of God’s Works
Bacon identifies two “Books” to study and get to know – the Book of God’s Word and the Book of God’s Works. He identifies the first as revealing the Will of God, and the second as expressing God’s Power; and he considers that the latter is a key to the former: -
“Wherefore... let it be observed, that there be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and illustration, which Philosophy and human learning do perform to Faith and Religion: The one, because they are an effectual inducement to the exaltation of the glory of God…. The other, because they minister a singular help and preservative against unbelief and error: for as our Saviour saith, You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the Power of God; laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error; first, the Scriptures, revealing the Will of God; and then the creatures expressing His Power; whereof the latter is a key unto the former...” [xvi]
“To conclude therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the Book of God's Word, or in the Book of God's Works – Divinity or Philosophy. But rather, let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling [pride]; to use and not to ostentation; and again that they do not unwisely mingle or confound those learnings together.” [xvii]
The Great Instauration of the Pyramid of Philosophy
The Pyramid of Philosophy symbolises Bacon’s “temple” that he is building in the mind of man – or, rather, starting to build; because, as he says, it requires many people and many future generations to erect and complete the building, if ever it can be completed.
“I am not raising a capitol or pyramid to the pride of man, but laying a foundation in the human understanding for a holy temple after the model of the world. That model therefore I follow. For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence; and things mean and splendid exist alike.” [xviii]
Through his imagery, Bacon associates his temple with Solomon’s Temple, or rather with the rebuilt Solomon’s Temple, hence the name of “Instauration”. The name is derived from the Latin word used in the Vulgate Bible when describing the renovation, rebuilding and spiritual re-edification of Solomon’s Temple during the reign of King Josiah of Judah in the 7th century BC, and again later with an almost complete rebuild in the time of Zerubbabel, who led the first group of Jews from captivity in Babylon and back to Jerusalem in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, in the 6th century BC.
The latter event is almost certainly the most relevant, as Solomon’s Temple was essentially rebuilt as Zerubbabel’s Temple but on the original foundations of Solomon’s Temple, and it is this event which is used as a symbolic mystery in the Holy Royal Arch Degree of most chapters of Freemasonry – and Francis Bacon was the founder and First Grand Master of Speculative Freemasonry. This is why he was given the title “Viscount St Alban”, named after the saint, not the place, St Albans. The original saint, the 3rd century Romano-Celtic Saint Alban, was the founder and First Grand Master of [Craft] Freemasonry in England (Britain), according to the foundation legend of Freemasonry.
The Pyramid of Philosophy, which includes science once the laws of the universe are known, has History as its foundation or base, and Philosophy as its superstructure. The apex of the Pyramid signifies knowledge of the summary (i.e. universal) law of Nature, which law Bacon identified as love in action, or divine charity – “the work which God maketh from the beginning to the end.” [xix]
“For knowledges are as pyramids, whereof History is the basis. So of Natural Philosophy, the basis is Natural History; the stage next the basis is Physique; the stage next the vertical point [apex] is Metaphysique. As for the vertical point, The work that God maketh from the beginning to the end,[xx] the Summary Law of Nature, we know not whether man's enquiry can attain unto it.” [xxi]
Physics and Metaphysics are both divided into two levels. Physics is the enquiry into the material and efficient causes or laws. Metaphysics is the enquiry into the formal and final causes or laws.
“For as we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes and productions of effects, so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.” [xxii]
Natural, Human and Divine Philosophy
Bacon writes about and provides examples of Natural Philosophy to illustrate building the Pyramid of Philosophy, but this is only part of the whole; for, besides Natural Philosophy, the Pyramid of Philosophy is also composed of Divine Philosophy and Human Philosophy.
“In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.” [xxiii]
Natural philosophy gives rise to natural science.
Human philosophy concerns the psychology of human nature, with its process of life and its vices and virtues. Bacon established Speculative Freemasonry so as to train people in morality, using experimental ritual and ceremony, discipline and learning, so that virtue might replace vice, and friendship and charity (i.e. love in action) might be the result. Bacon hints at this philosophy when he says:
“We should investigate those appetites and inclinations of things by which all that variety of effects and changes which we see in the works of nature and art is made up and brought about. And we should try to enchain Nature, like Proteus; for the right discovery and distinction of the kinds of motions are the true bonds of Proteus. For according as motions, that is, incentives and restraints, can be spurred on or tied up, so follows conversion and transformation of matter itself.” [xxiv]
Divine philosophy, which Bacon also called Inspired Theology or Divinity, concerns understanding and knowing the divine wisdom that is inspired into human hearts, or spoken by the prophets, or recorded in the Holy Scriptures and other wisdom teachings. Bacon keeps quiet about this “sub rosa” subject, writing that “The Divisions of Inspired Theology are omitted” as the opening sentence of Chapter 1, Book 9, the finale of the 1623 De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (“Of the Dignity and Advancement of Science”).
History, Poetry and Philosophy
The Pyramid of Philosophy has History as its foundation and Philosophy as its superstructure. But somewhere in all this is also included Poetry; for Bacon tells us that the Pyramid of Philosophy and Science is, in total, composed of History, Poetry and Philosophy. These he refers to as the three parts of mankind’s understanding: History relates to our memory, Poetry to our imagination, and Philosophy to our reason.[xxv] However, Poetry (Poesy) is kept secret, although Bacon does provide examples, natural, human and divine, all of which are veiled in terms of authorship.
The following passage from Bacon’s 1605 publication, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, indicates Poetry’s vital importance:
“.... poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things.” [xxvi]
Just from this one quote alone, it can be seen that Poetry is of vital importance. In fact, it constitutes Part 4 of the Great Instauration. Bacon describes Part 4 as “the Ladder of the Intellect” – a ladder by means of which the builders build the Pyramid of Philosophy, and a winding staircase such as that in Solomon’s Temple, which was used by Freemasons for their ascending degrees of initiation.
Poetry relates to imagination, which Bacon considered to be a key faculty of the human being. He describes imagination as the messenger (Latin, nuncius) between sense and reason, and then again as the messenger between reason and action.
“The knowledge which respecteth the faculties of the mind of man is of two kinds; the one respecting his Understanding and Reason, and the other his Will, Appetite, and Affection; whereof the former produceth Position or Decree, the latter Action or Execution. It is true that the Imagination is an agent or nuncius in both provinces, both the judicial and the ministerial. For Sense sendeth over to Imagination before Reason hath judged: and Reason sendeth over to Imagination before the decree can be acted: for Imagination preceedeth Voluntary Motion. Saving that this Janus of Imagination hath differing faces: for the face towards Reason hath the print of Truth, but the face towards Action hath the print of Good; which nevertheless are faces.” [xxvii]
In summary, Poetry is Part 4 of the Great Instauration, being the means by which the tables of History, collected from observations of nature (divine, human and natural), are raised to the reasoning mind, producing ideas or speculations, and then again in inventing the experiments that put the ideas into action. Laboratories, theatres, lodges and temples – and, on a larger scale, the world – are the places where the poetic experiments take place, with every experiment a play, or every play an experiment. As Shakespeare says so aptly:
“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players…” [xxviii]
Notes
[i] Genesis 1:2-31, 2:1-3.
[ii] Isaiah xiv, 14.
[iii] Genesis iii, 5.
[iv] Matthew 5:44-45.
[v] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[vi] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[vii] Genesis 1:26.
[viii] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), Bk I, Aph.129.
[ix] Francis Bacon, Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning (1640), The Preface.
[x] Matthew 22:37-40.
[xi] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk I.
[xii] Francis Bacon, In Praise of Knowledge (1592).
[xiii] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk I.
[xiv] Psalm 132:2.
[xv] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[xvi] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk I.
[xvii] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk I.
[xviii] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), Bk I, Aph.120 (transl. Spedding & Ellis).
[xix] Ecclesiastes 3:11.
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
[xx] Ecclesiastes 3:11.
[xxi] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[xxii] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[xxiii] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[xxiv] Francis Bacon, Cogitationes de Natura Rerum, iii.
[xxv] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk II.
[xxvi] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk. II.
[xxvii] Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), Bk. II.
[xxviii] Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, spoken by Jaques.
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