Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 99
" Of the degrees by which the suggestion ripened into a project,
the project into an undertaking, and the undertaking unfolded
itself into distinct proportions and the full grandeur of
its total dimensions, I can say nothing. But that the thought
first occurred to him at Cambridge, therefore before he had completed
his fifteenth year, we know upon the best authority — his
own statement to Dr. Rawley. I believe it ought to be regarded
as the most important event of his life;
greater influence
course."
the event which had a
than any other upon his character and future
This passage seems, at first sight, rather to contradict the
former, which says that the thought came to Bacon when first
he went to Cambridge. But the discrepancy appears to have
been caused by the difficulty experienced, as well by biographer
as reader, in conceiving that such thoughts, such practical
schemes, could have been the product of a child's mind.
All evidence which we shall have to bring forward goes to
confirm the original statement, that Francis conceived his plan
of reformation soon after going up to the university; that he
matured and organised a system of working it by means of a
secret society, before he was fifteen years old, by which time
he had already written much which he afterwards disdained as
poor stuff, but which was published, and which has all found a
respectable or distinguished place in literature.
It is not difficult to imagine what would have been the effect
upon such a mind as this of grafting on to the teaching received
in a strict Puritan home the study, by turns, of every kind of
ancient and pagan philosophy. And it is clear that Francis Bacon
plunged with delight into these occult branches of learning, his
poetic mind finding a strong attraction in the figurative language
and curious erudition of the old alchemists and mystics. Did
such studies for awhile unsettle his religious ideas, and prepare
him to shake off the bands of a narrow sectarianism? If so,
they certainly never shook his faith in God, or in the Bible as
the expression of " God's will. "« Such researches only increased
his anxiety and aspiration after light and truth. He never wrote
without some reference to the Divine Wisdom and Goodness,