SOURCE: "The Social Responsibilities of Science in Utopia, New Atlantis and After," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. X, No. 3, June, 1954, pp. 374-98.

In the following excerpt, Adams looks at the New Atlantis as a "plan for the perfection of science and the advancement of human welfare."

In what follows I accept [James] Spedding's conclusion that while the New Atlantis is incomplete, it seems intended for publication as it stands, that in it Bacon included "as if already known, the things he most wanted to know," and that most probably "the unfinished portions would have dealth with the method of scientific investigation rather than with the general problems of society."

In the New Atlantis the "very eye of the kingdom" of Bensalem is Salomon's House, or the College of the Six Day's Works, an elaborately equipped institute for cooperative pure and applied scientific research, intended "for...