Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

heat.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 357
The revival of learning was indeed the rising of the sun,
the dawn of a new day to the world lying in darkness; yet the
dew should be collected quietly, almost secretly, and safely
stored, before the blaze of a fiery zeal should injure and perhaps
destroy it.
The five rays, with their five pearls (or groups of pearls),
typify the soul of the world, the " divine intellectual spirit,
" awakened, » " uproused » by the sunrise. This soul of the
world has been with the spirits that are in prison— " cabinned,
cribbed, confined," like the soul of Hamlet or of the poet of the
Anthroposophia, who concludes one chapter with verses in
which are these lines
" My sweetest Jesus ! 'twas thy voice : ' If I
Be lifted up, I'll draw all to the sty.'
Yet I am here ! I'm stifled in this clay,
Shut up from Thee and the fresh east of day."
The ejaculation in the third line suggests a further allusion
to clay in the hands of the potter, which must surely have
presented itself to poetic Bible-students such as the Bacon
family certainly were. They must have thought of the pot of
clay as an image of human life, a very "compounded" but a
most brittle and perishable thing.
" Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken,
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the ivheel broken at the
cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it tvas ; and the
spirit shall return unto God that gave it." 1
The clay is but the poor earthy material into which all the
vital spirits of nature are " infused and mixed up with the clay,
for it is most true that of all things in the universe, man is the
most composite. " 2
Falstaff is made to use almost identical words where he speaks
of " This foolish compounded clay — man. " 3
1 Ecclesiastes, xii. Bacon was very partial to these twelve chapters and
brings in allusions to their teaching throughout his works and notes. Compare
his essay or treatise of Youth and Age with As You Like It, ii. 7, and then with
Eceles. xii. 3-5. The first word, Remember, seems to be a pass-word in the old
Rosicrueian books.
2 Essay of Prometheus.
. .
3 2 Henry IV. i 2. " Men are but gilded loam and painted clay." Rich. 11. 1. 1.