Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

170 FRANCIS BACON
In short, Bacon shows that the sciences, whether of natural
philosophy, physics, or chemistry, were in a parlous state, full
of barren doctrines, empty theories, and bootless inquisitions;
that if ever they were to be revived and made to bring forth
fruits
for the food of man, they must be " proyned" about the
roots, nourished and watered, lopped of an infinite number of
excrescences and useless branches, and grafted anew.
So with all the allied sciences of husbandry, horticulture,
distillation, fermentation, germination, putrefaction, etc., we
have but to consider the " experiments, " proposed or explained,
in the Sylva Sylvarum (for the special use, as we believe, of
Bacon's learned brotherhood or " Illuminati " ), to realise the
fact that the world {even the learned world) was indeed very
ignorant, and that these scientific studies were part of the great
" birth of time,'' the Renaissance, the seeds and weak beginnings
which time should bring to ripeness. Many of these
observations are repeated in the Anatomy of Melancholy, which
seems to be another "collection," this time the sweepings of
Bacon's commonplace books on subjects medical and metaphysical
; a detailed examination of the mutual relations between
mind and body, which are briefly treated of in the Advancement
of Learning, and other places.
The History of Winds supplies particulars for all the poetic
allusions to meteorological or nautical matters which are met
with in the plays, poems, and emblem books of the time. Here
it will be seen how weirdly and exquisitely these studies of
meteorological facts are interwoven with metaphysical subtleties,
such as are met with in Macbeth and The Tempest.
Meteorology and the " sane astrology " which Bacon finds to be
a desideratum, mix themselves up with the science of medicine
— in his time "forsaken by philosophy, " "a weak thing, not
much better than an empirical art," " a science more practised
than laboured, more laboured than advanced; the labours spent
on it being rather in a circle than in progression."
As for the art ofprolonging life, he " sets it down as deficient,
and writes a book (apparently with a double meaning) on the
subject. The History of Life and Death is bound up with the