Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 161
never dangerous but where it is to the purpose of knowing good
and evil in order that man may choose the evil. A desire which
rises into a desire rather to
follow one's own will than to obey,
contains, he says, a manifest " defection " or imperfection.
He is also of opinion that " the pretended succession of wits,
such as it is, has been ill-placed, and that too much absolute
reliance was put upon the philosophy of one or two men to
the exclusion of others. Also that the system of handling philosophy
by parts, and not as a whole, was very injurious, and
a great impediment to knowledge. He deprecates " the slipping-off
particular sciences from the root and stock of universal
knowledge," quoting the opinion of Cicero, that eloquence is
not merely " a shop of good words and elegancies, 1 but a treasury
and receipt of all knowledges; " and the example of Socrates,
who, instead of teaching " an universal sapience and knowledge,
both of words and matter, divorced them, and withdrew philos-
which thereby became a barren
ophy, leaving rhetoric to itself,
and unnoble science.
Bacon argues that a specialist in any branch of science,
" whether he be an oculist in physic, or perfect in some one
tittle of the law, may prove ready and subtile, but not deep or
sufficient, even in the one special subject which is his province ;
because it is a matter of common discourse of the chain of sciences,
how they are linked together,'" inasmuch as the Grecians,
who had terms at will, have fitted it of a name of circle learning.
Although Bacon speaks of this chain of sciences as a matter
of common discourse, it seems to have been so only in the circle
of his own friends. To forge such links and to weld such a chain
was, it would seem, one part of his method, and the conventional
design which represents this linking together of universal knowl -
edge, both earthly and heavenly, is to be seen on a vast number
of the title-pages and ornamental designs of the books which
emanated from Bacon's great society for the advancement of
learning. As a rule these chains will be found in combination
with a figure of Pan, or universal nature, with the head of Truth,
1 Compare Bacon's own Promus of Formularies and Elegancies.
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