Against pleasing hypotheses
Bacon had grown tired of hypotheses, which he thought spring from tradition, groundless likes and dislikes, or desire, and so the problem of the idols returns. He disliked the habit of choosing, knowingly or not, the facts that confirm a view while distorting or ignoring contrary evidence. To avoid this error he proposed a demanding inductive method: gather all the facts bearing on a problem, analyze, compare, classify and link them, apply the true way of exclusion and rejection, and discard hypotheses one after another until the form, the law and nature underlying a phenomenon appears. Knowing the form brings gradual mastery over events, and science will gradually change the environment and probably man himself.
Bacon thought the final aim was to apply the scientific method to a searching analysis and renewal of human character. He wanted instincts and feelings studied, and compared their relation to our thinking to that of winds to the sea. Here, above all, the difficulty lies not only in seeking knowledge but in conveying it. If we are willing to appoint thoughtful people as teachers and reward them with honor, we can change mankind through an education free of superstition. Bacon regarded the Jesuits as good teachers and said he wished they were on our side. He also criticized pamphleteering, approved of drama in schools, and urged more science in school programs. Science and education so gained, as in the New Atlantis, would be no mere tool but the guide and goal of the state. The bold lord chancellor concludes that in this contest he stakes everything on the victory of art over nature.
The philosophy of a statesman
Here we feel a powerful mind, one man in a century who is expert in both philosophy and politics. It is interesting to know what this philosopher thought about politics and what this politician thought about philosophy.
Bacon had no system in philosophy and, apart from logic, never set down his thoughts in order. The course of his thought is clear, but its form shows a man who had to leave the calm of philosophy again and again to handle a lawsuit, fight in Parliament, or advise a king who would not learn. So we must read his views from incidental remarks and literary pieces, including the Essays (1597, 1612 and 1625). With the pride of an author he dedicated the essays to Buckingham, writing that he thought the work would last as long as books last. His style in letters is so full of ornament and complexity that his wife admitted she could not understand his obscure writings. In the essays he took more trouble, trained his pen to directness, and gained such power of expression that only a few pages in English prose can rival his for brilliant comparisons and perfection of form. It is as if Tacitus had turned philosopher and tried to write clearly.
Matter, mind and religion
Bacon's wisdom is worldly. He leaves metaphysics to mystics and hasty people, and even his great ambition seldom dealt with the part rather than the whole. Yet he sometimes seems to enter materialist and determinist philosophy, for he says that in nature there are truly only individual bodies performing individual acts according to fixed law, and that inquiry into nature does best when it begins with physics and ends with mathematics. But nature here may simply mean the outer world. Bacon preferred the skeptical pre-Socratic philosophers to Plato and Aristotle and praised the materialism of Democritus. Yet he draws a sharp line between body and spirit. As a materialist who stresses the structure of the body, he anticipates Bergson's ideas about intellect when he says that human understanding is corrupted by observing what happens in the mechanical arts, so that people imagine something similar in nature as a whole. He rejects Descartes's mechanical biology before Descartes proposed it.
With cautious vagueness he seasons his philosophy with religion. In the book's rendering he says he would grant that all the legends of Jesus and the Talmud's tales are true, yet not say that the body of this world has no soul. He explains atheism in famous passages he repeated twice. The causes of atheism, he writes, lie in divisions in religion, and in their variety, since every major division adds to the zeal of both sides, while many divisions lead to atheism. Another cause is scandal among priests; another, the coming of learned and cultured times, especially when joined with peace and prosperity, because troubles and misfortunes turn people more toward religion.
Bacon says plainly that all science must be bounded by religion. According to Rawley, his chaplain, when in good health he often attended church. Still, like his great predecessor William of Ockham, he separated truth in theology from truth in philosophy: religions may hold beliefs that science and philosophy do not accept, but philosophy must rest on reason alone, and science must seek non-spiritual explanations in terms of the physical law of cause and effect.
Ethics, love and marriage
Despite his love for science, Bacon made it subordinate to morality, and said that if the pursuit of science involves no doing of good, humanity would gain nothing from it. He also said that goodness is better than all the virtues and greatness of the soul. But when he speaks of the merits of Christianity, his enthusiasm cools. One should take a middle way in goodness, because evil people may take advantage of the wholly good. A little dissembling is needed for success, even when it does not serve civilization. Love is madness, and marriage a fetter. A man with wife and children has given hostages to fortune, since they impede great enterprises. The best works, and those of greatest public benefit, have come from unmarried or childless men. Like Elizabeth and Gregory VII, Bacon favored celibacy for the clergy, saying a single life suits them because charity, when it must fill a pond, seldom sprinkles the ground. (Note his taste for metaphor and brevity, in the book's words a trait of the Anglo-Saxon mind.) Friendship is better than love, and married men are not steady companions. Bacon spoke of love and marriage as if he had sacrificed tender feeling to ambition, and could have governed a country better than his own household.
War, empire and wealth
In his political philosophy circumstances matter more than general principle. He had the courage to praise Machiavelli, and plainly held that states themselves are not bound to the moral rules they preach to their people. Like Nietzsche, he held that a good war justifies any cause, and said one should not accept the view of some theologians that fighting is right only in response to injury or provocation. In any case, he said, a just and honorable war is needed to purge a nation. For empire and greatness, it is quite necessary that a nation regard military service as its chief honor and profession. A strong navy guarantees respect from neighbors, and mastery of the seas is the epitome of monarchy. In a country's youth the martial spirit flourishes, in its middle years science, and then both persist for a time; in its old age commerce and merchants prosper. Townspeople are poor soldiers, farmers are better, and small landowners better than both. Hence, like More, Bacon condemns enclosure (the fencing of land by great proprietors for sheep, to profit from wool), which reduces the number of landowners.
He also saw concentration of wealth as the chief cause of unrest and rebellion. The first means of preventing it, he wrote, is to remove by every means the material cause, which is want and poverty. For this one must open trade, balance commerce, advance industry, banish idleness, curb excessive private spending by sumptuary laws, improve the land, regulate the prices of goods for sale, and lighten taxes. Above all, one must follow a policy that keeps the nation's treasure from gathering in a few hands. Money, he said, is like manure: it is of use only when spread.