Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

60 FRANCIS BACON
His statements about himself not to be credited.
" We have this account only from himself, and it is to be regarded
with great suspicion." (Campbell, p. 53.)
His statements, even against himself, always candid and accurate.
" Never was a man franker in committing to paper his defects
and infirmities." (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 317.) Dr. Abbott
enters at some length into Bacon's " habit of thinking with a
pen in his hand," and reviews the Essays as being documentary
evidence of Bacon's own mental experiences. " Perhaps no
man ever made such a confidant of paper as he did," and, note,
he compares him to Montaigne. (See Essays, pp. xvii-xxi.)
He was cold, calculating, without any strong affections or feelings.
" His fault . . . coldness of heart . . . not malignant, but
wanted warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment."
(Macaulay, p. 321.) " It was as the ministers or tools of science
that Bacon regarded his friends ;
... it was an affection of a
subdued kind, kept well under control, and duly subordinated
to the interests of the Kingdom of Man. Bacon could not
easily love friends or hate enemies, though he himself was loved
by many of his inferiors with the true love of friendship. . . . He
liked almost everybody with whom he was brought into close
intercourse, . . . but lie loved and could love no one. " (Abbott's
int. to Essays, xxviii.) "Instinct and emotion were in him
unduly subordinated to reason. ... No one of ordinary moral
instinct would accept Bacon's oft-repeated precept of Bias —
'
Love as if you were sometime to hate, and hate as if you were
sometime to love.' " (Abbott's Francis Bacon, 326.)
Affectionate— A firmfriend — Peculiarly sensitive to kindnesses.
" But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it
extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a
gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there
is no love; ... it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true