Reflect upon those who have made the most glorious figure or have met with the greatest misfortunes.  Where are they all now?  They are vanished like a little smoke.  The prize is insignificant, and the play not worth the candle.  It is much more becoming to a philosopher to stand clear of affectation, to be honest and moderate upon all occasions, and to follow cheerfully wherever the gods lead on, remembering that nothing is more scandalous than a man who is proud of his humility.

Listen, friend!  You have been a burgher of this great city.  What matter though you have lived in it fewer years or more?  If you have kept the laws of the corporation, the length or shortness of the time makes no difference.  Where is the hardship, then, if Nature, that planted you here, orders your removal?  You cannot say you are sent off by an unjust tyrant No!  You quit the stage as fairly as a player does who has his discharge from the master of the revels.  “But I have only gone through three acts, and not held out to the end of the fifth!” True; but in life three acts may complete the play.  He is the only judge of completeness who first ordered your entrance and now your exit; you are accountable for neither the one nor the other.  Retire therefore, in serenity, as He who dismisses you is serene.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BACON

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

Francis Bacon, English philosopher and Chancellor, was born on January 22, 1561, the son of Lord Keeper Bacon, was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573, and entered Gray’s Inn in 1576.  He had already become profoundly dissatisfied at Cambridge with the Aristotelian philosophy, and the conception of a humble and methodical study of Nature had early become the dominant passion of his life.  Bacon became a member of parliament in 1584, and nine years later distinguished himself by coming forward as the champion of the privileges of the House of Commons against the Lords.  The “Essays” were published in 1597.  Bacon was knighted in 1603, on the accession of James I. In October, 1605, he published the “Advancement of Learning,” a work designed to interest the king in the new philosophy, of which book we here give a summary.  This review of the existing state of knowledge was intended to be made, later, into the first part of the “Instauratio Magna” under the title of “Partitiones Scientiarum.”  For this purpose Bacon was constantly revising it, and eventually he had it translated into Latin, and it was so published, greatly enlarged, in 1623, under the title of “De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.”  The summit of his career was reached in 1621, when he became Viscount St. Albans.  His fall, on a charge of corruptions in the Court of Chancery, took place in the following March, and from this period until his death, on April 9, 1626, he devoted himself to his philosophical and literary works.

First Book