The Advancement of Learning, and New Atlantis

Like all great philosophers, Bacon took long to mature his works. From his youth upwards he had been thinking about philosophy, knowledge, learning. When, at the age of 16, he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, he became dissatisfied with the philosophy of Aristotle, 'for the unfruitfulness of the way '1; and as a young man of 25 he had commenced a philosophy of his own, styled Temporis Partus Maximus. In 1592 (aet. 32) he wrote to Burghley, 'I have taken all knowledge to be my province,' and in that year the 'Praise of Knowledge' in a Triumph' given by Essex before the Court bears the stamp of Bacon's mind and style. In 1597 (aet. 37) appeared his Essays, of which there were only ten in the first edition; while half of those-namely, on Studies, Discourse, Regiment of Health, Factions, and Negotiating were, as it were, notes for the larger work on all learning which was to follow eight years later. After many years, therefore, of preparation, at length in 1605 (aet. 45), in the prime of his life, and in the first sunshine of the patronage of King James I, Bacon published the Advancement of Learning. It is indeed a work which is not merely the expression of a mature mind, but also a kind of summing-up of the Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century.

Large as is its scope, the Advancement was itself destined, if not designed, to form the first part of an even larger scheme-the regeneration of all the

1 Rawley's Life of Bacon.

sciences by a new method of the interpretation of nature. This scheme again Bacon took long to mature. In the Advancement he has got so far as to contemplate a separate work containing Interpretatio Naturae 'concerning the invention of sciences '1; and about the same time he was writing such a work, the Valerius Terminus, Of the Interpretation of Nature (left unfinished, and posthumously published by Stephens in 1734), in which he also contemplates a discourse on Knowledge, roughly in idea corresponding to the Advancement, as an introduction to the Interpretatio Naturae. The Advancement and the Valerius Terminus therefore imply one another, and show that in 1605 Bacon was already meditating both a survey of knowledge and a logic of its method. In the course of the next two years he went on to conceive the whole scheme of regeneration, or Instauratio, as he now began to call it, in a work called Partis Instaurationis Secundae Delineatio et Argumentum (written in 1606-7, but left unfinished, and posthumously published by Gruter in 1653), wherein he distributed the Instauratio into six parts, of which the survey of the sciences was to be the first, and began the treatment of the method of the sciences as the second part. Finally, in 1620 (aet. 60), he published his great work entitled Instauratio Magna. But in reality it was only an instalment; beginning with the division into six parts, called Distributio Operis, Bacon next refers his readers to the Advancement as to some extent representing the first part on the classification of sciences, and then proceeds in the rest of the work to elaborate the second part on the Interpretatio Naturae, or scientific method of induction, under the title by which the work is now best known -Novum Organum.

Bacon did not rest content with referring to the Advancement of Learning as the first part of the Instauratio. He went on to have it translated into

1 Post, p. 136.

Latin under the title De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, which he published in 1623 (aet. 63); and he took advantage of this edition in Latin to amplify the Second Book into eight, as well as to make important alterations. History was now doubly divided into natural and civil, of which literary and ecclesiastical became subdivisions1. Natural philosophy was not only enlarged, but also its operative part was differently subdivided into Mechanica, depending on Physica, and Magia, depending on Metaphysica 2. The voluptuary arts received the welcome addition of painting and music. The soul, again, in the Advancement had been regarded simply as inspired from God; but in the De Augmentis, in accordance with the views of Lucretius and Telesio, a sensible soul is introduced, common to animals and derived from matter, as distinct from the rational soul, inspired into man from heaven. Finally, Bacon took care that his work, in passing from English into 'the universal language', should become as general, and as generally acceptable, as possible. Hence, under History he curtailed his particular treatment of English history; and in translating Divinity into Theologia Inspirata, he prefaced his remarks by a warning that he should say as little as possible about details". For that wise reason, and not from any change in his attitude to Christianity, of which there is no evidence, he abridged his treatment of Christian dogmas so as to avoid controversy. Indeed, the De Augmentis throughout exhibits the curious point that its Protestant author purposely omitted the translation of anything in the Advancement which might be thought likely to offend Roman Catholics. In his letter written to King James on sending the Latin edition, he says: 'I have been also mine own Index Expurgatorius, that it may be read in all places. For

1 De Augmentis, Lib. II. 'Ib., Lib. IV, cap. 2. Ib., Lib. IX.

1 Ib., Lib. III.
Ib., Lib. IV, cap. 3.

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