Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

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AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 67
ance, and the like. We try also poisons and other medicines
upon them, as well as surgery and physic. " {New Atlantis.
" Of that other defect in anatomy, that it has not been practised
on human bodies, what need to speak? For it is a thing
hateful and inhuman, and has been justly reproved by Celsus. . . .
Wherefore, that utility may be considered, as toell as humanity,
the anatomy of the living subject . . . may well be discharged by
beasts alive," etc. {Be Aug. iv. 2.)
Montagu, Spedding, Abbott, Anton, and others, show that
Bacon was in no way responsible for the torturing of Peacham.
He did not study human nature.
" Human nature and the human passions were not sciences in
which Bacon was versed. He wanted that pliancy and congenial
feeling which identifies itself with the pains and pleasures,
the cares and solicitudes, the frailties and imperfections,
whims and caprices, sympathies, passions, emotions, and affections
which variously agitate and disturb, rouse and irritate,
terrify and calm, enrapture, moderate, suspend, and enchain all
the faculties of our nature, and all
the cravings and desires of
the human heart — for it is only in the delineation of the heart
and its affections that we can expect to discover the soul and
spirit of poetry." (Ess. by S. N. Carvalho, in New York
Herald, Oct. 5, 1874.)
He was a profound student of human nature.
" So, then, the first article of this knowledge is to set down
sound and true distributions and descriptions of the several
characters and tempers of men's natures and dispositions,
specially having regard to those differences which are most radical
in being the fountains and causes of the rest, " etc.
" I cannot
sufficiently marvel that this part of knowledge, touching the
several characters of natures and dispositions, should be omitted
both in morality and policy, considering it is of so great ministery
and suppeditation to them both. {Advancement of Learning,
ii.; Spedding, Works, iii. pp. 432-473.) See, also, Be Augments,
viii. 2 — " of procuring information of persons; their