hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, 18 and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy 'vinum dæmonum,'19 because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before.

But howsoever 20 these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet Truth, which only doth judge itself,21 teacheth, that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature 22 of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; 23 the last was the light of reason; and His Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of His Spirit. First, He breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then He breathed light into the face of man; and still He breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The poet that beautified the sect,24 that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: 'It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth' (a hill not to be commanded,25 and where the air is always clear and serene), ' and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below: so 26 always that this prospect 27 be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical Truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round 28 deal

ing is the honour of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth 29 it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; 30 and therefore Montaigne 31 saith prettily when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge, saith he, 'If it be well weighed to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man;' surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold that when Christ cometh, He shall not 'find faith32 upon the earth.'

NOTES ON ESSAY I.

I. 'jesting Pilate.' He refers to the passage in the New Testament, John xviii, 38, where, however, it does not appear that Pilate asked the question in a jesting but rather a perplexed and distracted mood. This first sentence was not originally part of the essay, and occupies merely the place of an introduction, or introductory motto.

2. The nominative to the verb is omitted; there be' (some); be is merely an old form of the indicative for are.

3. 'giddiness'-i.e. inconstancy, unsteadiness, frivolity. He is speaking of those persons who neither have, nor care to have, settled opinions and principles by which to rule their conduct; hence the expression immediately following, 'fix a belief.'

'The

4. 'affecting'-i.e. seeking, aiming at, endeavouring to attain. The verb to affect was formerly used in this sense. Cf. 'This proud man affects imperial sway'-DRYDEN. drops of every fluid affect a round figure by the mutual attraction of their parts'-NEWTON. Hence the word passes to its kindred meaning, which it now commonly bears--to pretend to.

Bacon means that there are frivolous and inconstant persons who do not care at all about truth, and who profess to

have no settled opinions or principles, counting them rather as being a bondage, and holding that every man has a right to think as he likes and to do as he likes. This, however, is mere affectation, for no one is really a greater slave than the so-called libertine, and in matters of opinion and belief none are more prejudiced and tyrannical than those who boast of free-will.

5. discoursing wits'-i.e. shallow, discursive men who talk a great deal, and in a rambling way.

6. 'veins'-kindred, class, breed; in the same sentence blood' =vigour, manliness.

7. 'take'-must take; have to take.

8. imposeth'-i.e. imposes obligations upon.

9.

When a man

knows what is right, it imposes an obligation on him to follow it and practise it. He is obliged to live according to his knowledge of the truth, though we cannot say that he is compelled; for obligation is moral necessity, while compulsion is rather physical necessity. 'later schools—probably the Sceptics, founded in Athens about B.C. 300 by Pyrrho. Their great doctrine, that there can be no such thing as certainty in our knowledge, was subsequently adopted by another school called the New Academy, under the name of acatalepsia (i.e. nescience), in antithesis to the ancient catalepsia (i.e. apprehension).

10. 'at a stand'-in doubt or difficulty; at a loss.

II.

'what should be in it'-what can be the reason; why it is. 12. make for pleasure'-tend to give pleasure. The verb to

make for is still often used in the sense of to tend towards, to direct a course towards; e.g. apprehending a tempest, the sailors made for the harbour; the hunted fox made for the cover; the traveller made for London.

In saying that the 'lies' of the poets give us pleasure, he is not speaking of deliberate lying, but of fiction. The essence of a lie is its intention to deceive, irrespective of whether it is literally true or not. Yet some people are foolish enough to charge the inaccuracies and mistakes both of others and of themselves with falsehood; and some have even fancied that the books of light reading called romances or novels are morally bad and injurious, because the stories they narrate never really occurred. If this were so, then most poems and pictures and stories, and all allegories and parables and fables, and a great deal even of our common Îanguage, would be lying, which is most absurd. Although Bacon here seems to put harmless fiction into the same category as cheating and lying, he does not mean to say that they are the same, as is evident from what follows, where he says, 'It is not the lie that passeth through the mind that doth the hurt.'

13. masks, and mummeries, and triumphs.' All these were common sportive entertainments. In masques or masquerades the entertainment consisted of dancing and other diversions of performers, whose faces were disguised in masks; mummeries were much the same, but originally the performers in them made sport by gestures alone without speaking; triumphs were magnificent and imposing processions, or pompous shows of pageantry celebrated in honour of some person or event.

14. 'stately'-adverb for statelily; cf. daintily, immediately following.

15. 'showeth'-appeareth, seemeth. So in Tennyson, 'The world like one great garden showed;' and in Dryden, 'Just such she shows before a rising storm.' Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, makes Hotspur say of the fop on the battle-field that 'his chin new-rcap'd showed like a stubble-land at harvest home.' 'Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,

16.

Which shows like grief itself'—Richard II.

In this sense the verb to show is intransitive; but it is now generally used transitively and causatively for to make to appear, as a few lines before in this essay.

will not rise'—i.e. in the estimation of the world.

A

17. diamond or carbuncle.' Diamond is really the same word as adamant (Latin adamas, adamantis), but in a corrupted form. The substance was so called from its extreme hardness. carbuncle is a precious stone of a deep red colour, with a mixture of scarlet; it is so called from its resemblance to a burning coal (Latin carbunculus, which is diminutive of carbo).

18. 'imaginations as one would'—the trying to persuade ourselves of things which we wish to be true. 19. vinum dæmonum'—the_wine of devils. It is uncertain to which of the fathers Bacon here alludes; perhaps to St Jerome, who in one of his letters to Damasus says, Dæmonum cibus est carmina poetarum.' There is, however, a passage in St Augustine's Confessions, i, 16, ' Vinum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus propinatum.'

6

6

6

20. howsoever'-used in a sense now obsolete for although, as in Shakespeare, The man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him.'

21. Truth, which only doth judge itself'-i.e. Truth itself is the sole authority which can judge of Truth; only those who are true can possibly know what Truth is. A man cannot examine Truth from an external stand-point, and form an opinion respecting it with a view to embracing it, if he should feel satisfied as to its claims: with reference to things that are matters of proof and evidence this course can be taken; but Truth is a matter of experience, and we must first

B

be true before we can form any opinion about it. It is an important ethical principle that the practice of what is right must precede all theories as to the nature of right. Virtue is its own sole judge. No reasonable man would ever think of refraining from action until he had arrived at some satisfactory conclusion as to the origin and nature of duty. The true ethical answer to the question, 'What is duty?' is, 'Go and do your duty, and you will find out.' The same principle is referred to in the New Testament, John vii, 17: If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.'

In our minds the word truth is now generally used with ethical associations; but Bacon, in this essay, applies it indifferently to fiction, speculation, philosophic inquiry, and morals.

22. 'creature-created thing; creation. This word was not formerly limited in its reference, as now, to animal life. 'He asked water, a creature so common and needful, that it was against the law of nature to deny him'-FULLER.

'On earth join, all ye creatures, to extol

Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end'-MILTON.

So also in the well-known grace before meat we say, 'Thy creatures bless !'

23. 'light of the sense'-actual light, light affecting the eye, light that can be perceived by the sense of seeing. He is referring to the account given in Gen. i, 1-3. In analogy with the light of sense, Bacon places 'the light of reason'-i.e. intelligence and mental powers with which God endowed man when created. Gen. ii, 7.

In the next sentence, Bacon implies that all the progress which men have made from the beginning, everything they have discovered and invented, all the advances they have made in acquirement, and research, and civilisation, have come from God, and are really a continuance and exhibition of His power. God's work was first creative; His subsequent work (Sabbath work') is directive (the illumination of His Spirit').

24. The poet that beautified the sect.' The poet he refers to is Lucretius; the sect the Epicureans.

He

Epicurus was the founder of one of the later sects of Greek philosophers, who were called after him Epicureans. was born B.C. 342, and taught his system at Athens. His fundamental doctrine in morals was that the highest good which man should seek to attain to is pleasure: he taught that prudence was the highest virtue, and that the only value of moral goodness is that it conduces to pleasure. He denied the immortality of the soul, and in physics adopted the atomic theory that the world was composed of atoms which