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Transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING




INTRODUCTION.



“The TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon.  Of the proficience andaduancement of Learning, divine and humane.  To the King. At London.  Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at hisshop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605.”  That was theoriginal title-page of the book now in the reader’s hand - a livingbook that led the way to a new world of thought.  It was the bookin which Bacon, early in the reign of James the First, prepared theway for a full setting forth of his New Organon, or instrument of knowledge.

The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle hadwritten the doctrine of propositions.  Study of these treatiseswas a chief occupation of young men when they passed from school tocollege, and proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the SevenSciences.  Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College,Cambridge, felt the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper,and was born at York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561. His mother was the Lord Keeper’s second wife, one of two sisters,of whom the other married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir Nicholas Bacon had six children by his former marriage, and by hissecond wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about twoyears the elder.  The family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury,near St. Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its modern style,Bacon afterwards took his titles of Verulam and St. Albans.

Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge,when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve.  Francisremained at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley,his chaplain in after-years, reports of him that “whilst he wascommorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordshiphath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislikeof the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author,to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulnessof the way, being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strongfor disputatious and contentions, but barren of the production of worksfor the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to hisdying day.”  Bacon was sent as a youth of sixteen to Pariswith the ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet, to begin his training for thepublic service; but his father’s death, in February, 1579, beforehe had completed the provision he was making for his youngest children,obliged him to return to London, and, at the age of eighteen, to settledown at Gray’s Inn to the study of law as a profession. He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about that time,at the age of twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of a NewOrganon that should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a littleLatin tract, which he called “Temporis Partus Maximus” (“TheGreatest Birth of Time”).

In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as memberfor Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire.  In October, 1586, he sat forTaunton.  He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was oneof those who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots. In October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk ofthe Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth £1,600 or £2,000a year; but for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608. It had not yet fallen to him when he wrote his “Two Books of theAdvancement of Learning.”  In the Parliament that met inFebruary, 1593, Bacon sat as member for Middlesex.  He raised difficultiesof procedure in the way of the grant of a treble subsidy, by just objectionto the joining of the Lords with the Commons in a money grant, and adesire to extend the time allowed for payment from three years to six;it was, in fact, extended to four years.  The Queen was offended. Francis Bacon and his brother Antony had attached themselves to theyoung Earl of Essex, who was their friend and patron.  The officeof Attorney-General became vacant.  Essex asked the Queen to appointFrancis Bacon.  The Queen gave the office to Sir Edward Coke, whowas already Solicitor-General, and by nine years Bacon’s senior. The office of Solicitor-General thus became vacant, and that was soughtfor Francis Bacon.  The Queen, after delay and hesitation, gaveit, in November, 1595, to Serjeant Fleming.  The Earl of Essexconsoled his friend by giving him “a piece of land” - TwickenhamPark - which Bacon afterwards sold for £1,800 - equal, say, to£12,000 in present buying power.  In 1597 Bacon was returnedto Parliament as member for Ipswich, and in that year he was hopingto marry the rich widow of Sir William Hatton, Essex helping; but thelady married, in the next year, Sir Edward Coke.  It was in 1597that Bacon published the First Edition of his Essays.  That wasa little book containing only ten essays in English, with twelve “MeditationesSacræ,” which were essays in Latin on religious subjects. From 1597 onward to the end of his life, Bacon’s Essays were subjectto continuous addition and revision.  The author’s Second