The Advancement of Learning Page #24

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

								

world).  Registers are collections of public acts, as decrees of council,
judicial proceedings, declarations and letters of estate, orations, and
the like, without a perfect continuance or contexture of the thread of
the narration.

(3) Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam
tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous
diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs,
traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages
of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover
somewhat from the deluge of time.

(4) In these kinds of unperfect histories I do assign no deficience, for
they are tanquam imperfecte mista; and therefore any deficience in them
is but their nature.  As for the corruptions and moths of history, which
are epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished, as all men of
sound judgment have confessed, as those that have fretted and corroded
the sound bodies of many excellent histories, and wrought them into base
and unprofitable dregs.

(5) History, which may be called just and perfect history, is of three
kinds, according to the object which it propoundeth, or pretendeth to
represent: for it either representeth a time, or a person, or an action.
The first we call chronicles, the second lives, and the third narrations
or relations.  Of these, although the first be the most complete and
absolute kind of history, and hath most estimation and glory, yet the
second excelleth it in profit and use, and the third in verity and
sincerity.  For history of times representeth the magnitude of actions,
and the public faces and deportments of persons, and passeth over in
silence the smaller passages and motions of men and matters.  But such
being the workmanship of God, as He doth hang the greatest weight upon
the smallest wires, maxima è minimis, suspendens, it comes therefore
to pass, that such histories do rather set forth the pomp of business
than the true and inward resorts thereof.  But lives, if they be well
written, propounding to themselves a person to represent, in whom
actions, both greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture,
must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively representation.
So again narrations and relations of actions, as the war of Peloponnesus,
the expedition of Cyrus Minor, the conspiracy of Catiline, cannot but be
more purely and exactly true than histories of times, because they may
choose an argument comprehensible within the notice and instructions of
the writer: whereas he that undertaketh the story of a time, specially of
any length, cannot but meet with many blanks and spaces, which he must be
forced to fill up out of his own wit and conjecture.

(6) For the history of times, I mean of civil history, the providence of
God hath made the distribution.  For it hath pleased God to ordain and
illustrate two exemplar states of the world for arms, learning, moral
virtue, policy, and laws; the state of Græcia and the state of Rome; the
histories whereof occupying the middle part of time, have more ancient to
them histories which may by one common name be termed the antiquities of
the world; and after them, histories which may be likewise called by the
name of modern history.

(7) Now to speak of the deficiences.  As to the heathen antiquities of
the world it is in vain to note them for deficient.  Deficient they are
no doubt, consisting most of fables and fragments; but the deficience
cannot be holpen; for antiquity is like fame, caput inter nubila
condit, her head is muffled from our sight.  For the history of the
exemplar states, it is extant in good perfection.  Not but I could wish
there were a perfect course of history for Græcia, from Theseus to
Philopœmen (what time the affairs of Græcia drowned and extinguished in
the affairs of Rome), and for Rome from Romulus to Justinianus, who may
be truly said to be ultimus Romanorum.  In which sequences of story the
text of Thucydides and Xenophon in the one, and the texts of Livius,
Polybius, Sallustius, Cæsar, Appianus, Tacitus, Herodianus in the other,
to be kept entire, without any diminution at all, and only to be supplied
and continued.  But this is a matter of magnificence, rather to be
commended than required; and we speak now of parts of learning
supplemental, and not of supererogation.

(8) But for modern histories, whereof there are some few very worthy, but
the greater part beneath mediocrity, leaving the care of foreign stories
to foreign states, because I will not be curiosus in aliena republica,
I cannot fail to represent to your Majesty the unworthiness of the
history of England in the main continuance thereof, and the partiality
and obliquity of that of Scotland in the latest and largest author that I
have seen: supposing that it would be honour for your Majesty, and a work
very memorable, if this island of Great Britain, as it is now joined in
monarchy for the ages to come, so were joined in one history for the
times passed, after the manner of the sacred history, which draweth down
the story of the ten tribes and of the two tribes as twins together.  And
if it shall seem that the greatness of this work may make it less exactly
performed, there is an excellent period of a much smaller compass of
time, as to the story of England; that is to say, from the uniting of the
Roses to the uniting of the kingdoms; a portion of time wherein, to my
understanding, there hath been the rarest varieties that in like number
of successions of any hereditary monarchy hath been known.  For it
beginneth with the mixed adoption of a crown by arms and title; an entry
by battle, an establishment by marriage; and therefore times answerable,
like waters after a tempest, full of working and swelling, though without
extremity of storm; but well passed through by the wisdom of the pilot,
being one of the most sufficient kings of all the number.  Then followeth
the reign of a king, whose actions, howsoever conducted, had much
intermixture with the affairs of Europe, balancing and inclining them
variably; in whose time also began that great alteration in the state
ecclesiastical, an action which seldom cometh upon the stage.  Then the
reign of a minor; then an offer of a usurpation (though it was but as
febris ephemera).  Then the reign of a queen matched with a foreigner;
then of a queen that lived solitary and unmarried, and yet her government
so masculine, as it had greater impression and operation upon the states
abroad than it any ways received from thence.  And now last, this most
happy and glorious event, that this island of Britain, divided from all
the world, should be united in itself, and that oracle of rest given to
ÆNeas, antiquam exquirite matrem, should now be performed and fulfilled
upon the nations of England and Scotland, being now reunited in the

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