A History of English Literature

complete discussions. But their comprehensiveness of view, sureness of
ideas and phrasing, suggestiveness, and apt illustrations reveal the
pregnancy and practical force of Bacon's thought (though, on the other
hand, he is not altogether free from the superstitions of his time and
after the lapse of three hundred years sometimes seems commonplace). The
whole general tone of the essays, also, shows the man, keen and worldly,
not at all a poet or idealist. How to succeed and make the most of
prosperity might be called the pervading theme of the essays, and subjects
which in themselves suggest spiritual treatment are actually considered in
accordance with a coldly intellectual calculation of worldly advantage.
The essays are scarcely less notable for style than for ideas. With
characteristic intellectual independence Bacon strikes out for himself an
extremely terse and clear manner of expression, doubtless influenced by
such Latin authors as Tacitus, which stands in marked contrast to the
formless diffuseness or artificial elaborateness of most Elizabethan and
Jacobean prose. His unit of structure is always a short clause. The
sentences are sometimes short, sometimes consist of a number of connected
clauses; but they are always essentially loose rather than periodic; so
that the thought is perfectly simple and its movement clear and systematic.
The very numerous allusions to classical history and life are not the
result of affectation, but merely indicate the natural furnishing of the
mind of the educated Renaissance gentleman. The essays, it should be added,
were evidently suggested and more or less influenced by those of the great
French thinker, Montaigne, an earlier contemporary of Bacon. The hold of
medieval scholarly tradition, it is further interesting to note, was still
so strong that in order to insure their permanent preservation Bacon
translated them into Latin--he took for granted that the English in which
he first composed them and in which they will always be known was only a
temporary vulgar tongue.
But Bacon's most important work, as we have already implied, was not in the
field of pure literature but in the general advancement of knowledge,
particularly knowledge of natural science; and of this great service we
must speak briefly. His avowal to Burghley, made as early as 1592, is
famous: 'I have taken all knowledge to be my province.' Briefly stated, his
purposes, constituting an absorbing and noble ambition, were to survey all
the learning of his time, in all lines of thought, natural science, morals,
politics, and the rest, to overthrow the current method of _a priori_
deduction, deduction resting, moreover, on very insufficient and
long-antiquated bases of observation, and to substitute for it as the
method of the future, unlimited fresh observation and experiment and
inductive reasoning. This enormous task was to be mapped out and its
results summarized in a Latin work called 'Magna Instauratio Scientiarum'
(The Great Renewal of Knowledge); but parts of this survey were necessarily
to be left for posterity to formulate, and of the rest Bacon actually
composed only a fraction. What may be called the first part appeared
originally in English in 1605 and is known by the abbreviated title, 'The
Advancement of Learning'; the expanded Latin form has the title, 'De
Augmentis Scientiarum.' Its exhaustive enumeration of the branches of
thought and knowledge, what has been accomplished in each and what may be
hoped for it in the future, is thoroughly fascinating, though even here
Bacon was not capable of passionate enthusiasm. However, the second part of
the work, 'Novum Organum' (The New Method), written in Latin and published
in 1620, is the most important. Most interesting here, perhaps, is the
classification (contrasting with Plato's doctrine of divinely perfect
controlling ideas) of the 'idols' (phantoms) which mislead the human mind.
Of these Bacon finds four sorts: idols of the tribe, which are inherent in
human nature; idols of the cave, the errors of the individual; idols of the