The Advancement of Learning, Francis Bacon [reading the story of the txt] 📗

simplest and most primitive trades of life; that of the shepherd (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative life), and that of the husbandman, where we see again the favour and election of God went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground.

(8) So in the age before the flood, the holy records within those few memorials which are there entered and registered have vouchsafed to mention and honour the name of the inventors and authors of music and works in metal. In the age after the flood, the first great judgment of God upon the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues; whereby the open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge was chiefly imbarred.

(9) To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God's first pen: he is adorned by the Scriptures with this addition and commendation, "That he was seen in all the learning of the Egyptians," which nation we know was one of the most ancient schools of the world: for so Plato brings in the Egyptian priest saying unto Solon, "You Grecians are ever children; you have no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge." Take a view of the ceremonial law of Moses; you shall find, besides the prefiguration of Christ, the badge or difference of the people of God, the exercise and impression of obedience, and other divine uses and fruits thereof, that some of the most learned Rabbins have travailed profitably and profoundly to observe, some of them a natural, some of them a moral sense, or reduction of many of the ceremonies and ordinances. As in the law of the leprosy, where it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may pass abroad for clean; but if there be any whole flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean;" one of them noteth a principle of nature, that putrefaction is more contagious before maturity than after; and another noteth a position of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners, as those that are half good and half evil. So in this and very many other places in that law, there is to be found, besides the theological sense, much aspersion of philosophy.

(10) So likewise in that excellent hook of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy; as for example, cosmography, and the roundness of the world, Qui extendit aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super nihilum; wherein the pensileness of the earth, the pole of the north, and the finiteness or convexity of heaven are manifestly touched. So again, matter of astronomy: Spiritus ejus ornavit caelos, et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est Coluber tortuoses. And in another place, Nunquid conjungere valebis micantes stellas Pleiadas, aut gyrum Arcturi poteris dissipare? Where the fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distance, is with great elegancy noted. And in another place, Qui facit Arcturum, et Oriona, et Hyadas, et interiora Austri; where again he takes knowledge of the depression of the southern pole, calling it the secrets of the south, because the southern stars were in that climate unseen. Matter of generation: Annon sicut lac mulsisti me, et sicut caseum coagulasti me? &c. Matter of minerals: Habet argentum venarum suarum principia; et auro locus est in quo conflatur, ferrum de terra tollitur, et lapis solutus calore in aes vertitur; and so forwards in that chapter.

(11) So likewise in the person of Solomon the king, we see the gift or endowment of wisdom and learning, both in Solomon's petition and in God's assent thereunto, preferred before all other terrene and temporal felicity. By virtue of which grant or donative of God Solomon became enabled not only to write those excellent parables or aphorisms concerning divine and moral philosophy, but also to compile a natural history of all verdure, from the cedar upon the mountain to the moss upon the wall (which is but a rudiment between putrefaction and an herb), and also of all things that breathe or move. Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game; considering the great commandment of wits and means, whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them.

(12) Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after our Saviour came into the world; for our Saviour himself did first show His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His power to subdue nature by His miracles. And the coming of this Holy Spirit was chiefly figured and expressed in the similitude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula scientiae.

(13) So in the election of those instruments, which it pleased God to use for the plantation of the faith, notwithstanding that at the first He did employ persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by inspiration, more evidently to declare His immediate working, and to abase all human wisdom or knowledge; yet nevertheless that counsel of His was no sooner performed, but in the next vicissitude and succession He did send His divine truth into the world, waited on with other learnings, as with servants or handmaids: for so we see St. Paul, who was only learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen most used in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

(14) So again we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers of the Church were excellently read and studied in all the learning of this heathen; insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julianus (whereby it was interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into schools, lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and accounted a more pernicious engine and machination against the Christian Faith than were all the sanguinary prosecutions of his predecessors; neither could the emulation and jealousy of Gregory, the first of that name, Bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of piety or devotion; but contrariwise received the censure of humour, malignity, and pusillanimity, even amongst holy men; in that he designed to obliterate and extinguish the memory of heathen antiquity and authors. But contrariwise it was the Christian Church, which, amidst the inundations of the Scythians on the one side from the north-west, and the Saracens from the east, did preserve in the sacred lap and bosom thereof the precious relics even of heathen learning, which otherwise had been extinguished, as if no such thing had ever been.

(15) And we see before our eyes, that in the age of ourselves and our fathers, when it pleased God to call the Church of Rome to account for their degenerate manners and ceremonies, and sundry doctrines obnoxious and framed to uphold the same abuses; at one and the same time it was ordained by the Divine Providence that there should attend withal a renovation and new spring of all other knowledges. And on the other side we see the Jesuits, who partly in themselves, and partly by the emulation and provocation of their example, have much quickened and strengthened the state of learning; we see (I say) what notable service and reparation they have done to the Roman see.

(16) Wherefore, to conclude this part, 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. For as the Psalms and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and magnify the great and wonderful works of God, so if we should rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of them as they first offer themselves to our senses, we should do a like injury unto the majesty of God, as if we should judge or construe of the store of some excellent jeweller by that only which is set out toward the street in his shop. The other, because they minister a singular help and preservative against unbelief and error. For 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: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures by the general notions of reason and rules of speech, but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon His works. Thus much therefore for divine testimony and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.

VII. (1) As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice of those things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety of them. First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour amongst the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a veneration and adoration as a God. This unto the Christians is as the forbidden fruit. But we speak now separately of human testimony, according to which--that which the Grecians call apotheosis, and the Latins relatio inter divos--was the supreme honour which man could attribute unto man, specially when it was given, not by a formal decree or act of state (as it was used among the Roman Emperors), but by an inward assent and belief. Which honour, being so high, had also a degree or middle term; for there were reckoned above human honours, honours heroical and divine: in the attribution and distribution of which honours we see antiquity made this difference; that whereas founders and uniters of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of worthies or demigods, such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minus, Romulus, and the like; on the other side, such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves, as was Ceres, Bacchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and others. And justly; for the merit of the former is confined within the circle of an age or a nation, and is like fruitful showers, which though they be profitable and good, yet serve but for that season, and for a latitude of ground where they fall; but the other is, indeed, like the benefits of heaven, which are permanent and universal. The former again is mixed with strife and perturbation, but the latter hath the true character of Divine Presence, coming in aura leni, without noise or agitation.

(2) Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in repressing the inconveniences which grow from man to man, much inferior to the former, of