The Advancement of Learning Page #12

The Advancement of Learning, published by Francis Bacon in 1605, is a foundational text in the history of science and philosophy. In this work, Bacon advocates for empirical research and the systematic organization of knowledge, laying the groundwork for the scientific method. The book critiques existing scholarly practices and proposes a new approach to learning based on observation and experimentation. It marks a significant shift towards modern scientific inquiry.

• Essay

								


Neither is my meaning, as was spoken of Socrates, to call philosophy down
from heaven to converse upon the earth—that is, to leave natural
philosophy aside, and to apply knowledge only to manners and policy.  But
as both heaven and earth do conspire and contribute to the use and
benefit of man, so the end ought to be, from both philosophies to
separate and reject vain speculations, and whatsoever is empty and void,
and to preserve and augment whatsoever is solid and fruitful; that
knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity only, or as
a bond-woman, to acquire and gain to her master’s use; but as a spouse,
for generation, fruit, and comfort.

(12) Thus have I described and opened, as by a kind of dissection, those
peccant humours (the principal of them) which have not only given
impediment to the proficience of learning, but have given also occasion
to the traducement thereof: wherein, if I have been too plain, it must be
remembered, fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa oscula malignantis.
This I think I have gained, that I ought to be the better believed in
that which I shall say pertaining to commendation; because I have
proceeded so freely in that which concerneth censure.  And yet I have no
purpose to enter into a laudative of learning, or to make a hymn to the
Muses (though I am of opinion that it is long since their rites were duly
celebrated), but my intent is, without varnish or amplification justly to
weigh the dignity of knowledge in the balance with other things, and to
take the true value thereof by testimonies and arguments, divine and
human.

VI. (1) First, therefore, let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the
archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God,
as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety;
wherein we may not seek it by the name of learning, for all learning is
knowledge acquired, and all knowledge in God is original, and therefore
we must look for it by another name, that of wisdom or sapience, as the
Scriptures call it.

(2) It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double
emanation of virtue from God; the one referring more properly to power,
the other to wisdom; the one expressed in making the subsistence of the
matter, and the other in disposing the beauty of the form.  This being
supposed, it is to be observed that for anything which appeareth in the
history of the creation, the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth
was made in a moment, and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass
was the work of six days; such a note of difference it pleased God to put
upon the works of power, and the works of wisdom; wherewith concurreth,
that in the former it is not set down that God said, “Let there be heaven
and earth,” as it is set down of the works following; but actually, that
God made heaven and earth: the one carrying the style of a manufacture,
and the other of a law, decree, or counsel.

(3) To proceed, to that which is next in order from God, to spirits: we
find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy of that
supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, the first place or degree is
given to the angels of love, which are termed seraphim; the second to the
angels of light, which are termed cherubim; and the third, and so
following places, to thrones, principalities, and the rest, which are all
angels of power and ministry; so as this angels of knowledge and
illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.

(4) To descend from spirits and intellectual forms to sensible and
material forms, we read the first form that was created was light, which
hath a relation and correspondence in nature and corporal things to
knowledge in spirits and incorporal things.

(5) So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God did rest
and contemplate His own works was blessed above all the days wherein He
did effect and accomplish them.

(6) After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us that man was
placed in the garden to work therein; which work, so appointed to him,
could be no other than work of contemplation; that is, when the end of
work is but for exercise and experiment, not for necessity; for there
being then no reluctation of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man’s
employment must of consequence have been matter of delight in the
experiment, and not matter of labour for the use.  Again, the first acts
which man performed in Paradise consisted of the two summary parts of
knowledge; the view of creatures, and the imposition of names.  As for
the knowledge which induced the fall, it was, as was touched before, not
the natural knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowledge of good and
evil; wherein the supposition was, that God’s commandments or
prohibitions were not the originals of good and evil, but that they had
other beginnings, which man aspired to know, to the end to make a total
defection from God and to depend wholly upon himself.

(7) To pass on: in the first event or occurrence after the fall of man,
we see (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not violating at all
the truth of this story or letter) an image of the two estates, the
contemplative state and the active state, figured in the two persons of
Abel and Cain, and in the two simplest and most primitive trades of life;
that of the shepherd (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in a place, and
lying in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative life), and
that of the husbandman, where we see again the favour and election of God
went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground.

(8) So in the age before the flood, the holy records within those few
memorials which are there entered and registered have vouchsafed to
mention and honour the name of the inventors and authors of music and
works in metal.  In the age after the flood, the first great judgment of
God upon the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues; whereby the
open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge was chiefly
imbarred.

(9) To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God’s first pen: he is adorned
by the Scriptures with this addition and commendation, “That he was seen
in all the learning of the Egyptians,” which nation we know was one of
the most ancient schools of the world: for so Plato brings in the
Egyptian priest saying unto Solon, “You Grecians are ever children; you
have no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge.”  Take a view
of the ceremonial law of Moses; you shall find, besides the prefiguration
of Christ, the badge or difference of the people of God, the exercise and
impression of obedience, and other divine uses and fruits thereof, that
some of the most learned Rabbins have travailed profitably and profoundly
to observe, some of them a natural, some of them a moral sense, or

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