Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

214 FRANCIS BACON
out and track the footsteps of those choice young wits and pens
of the new school, of the Temporis Partus Masculus, and Partis
Secundo Dclineatio, of which Bacon thought and wrote so much,
and to see what various aids these " young schollars " were able
to afford for his great work? One line of work is clearly indicated:
tbey were, under his own instructions, to collect materials
for compiling "histories" on natural philosophy and on inventions
in the mechanical arts — as we should now say, the applied
sciences. One work is specified, as to its contents and nature.
It is to be a "history of marvailes" with "all the popular
errors detected." Such a book was published shortly after
by-
Bacon's death by a young Oxford man, of whom we shall
and-by have occasion to speak. Another history is of " Mechanique;"
it is to be compiled with care and diligence, and a
school of science is to be established for the special study of the
art of invention. " A college, furnished with all necessary
scientific apparatus, workshops and materials for experiments.
Not only so, but Bacon proposes to give pensions to four of his
young men, in order that they might freely devote themselves
to scientific or philosophic research. Some were also to have
" allowances for travelling, " which proves that their field of
research and for the gleaning of materials was not to be confined
only to their own country, but " inquiries and correspondence with
ye universities abroad" were to form an important element in
the scheme.
The works which were the product of this wise and liberal
scheme of Bacou's will not be difficult of identification. They
belong to the class of which the author said that they did not
pretend to originality, but that they were flowers culled from
every man's garden and tied together by a thread of his own.
It is clear that the wits and pens of the " young schollars"
(who, we learn from the Rosicrucian documents, were to be
sixty -three in number) were chartered and secured under the
seal of secresy. The last of the manifestoes in Mr. Waite's
book contains this passage, in which few who have read much
of Bacon will fail to recognise his sentiments, his intentions
nay, his very words: