The Advancement of Learning Page #8

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

								

learning hath been most traduced.  For those things we do esteem vain
which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or
no use; and those persons we esteem vain which are either credulous or
curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason as
well as in experience there fall out to be these three distempers (as I
may term them) of learning—the first, fantastical learning; the second,
contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations,
vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the last I will begin.
Martin Luther, conducted, no doubt, by a higher Providence, but in
discourse of reason, finding what a province he had undertaken against
the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the Church, and
finding his own solitude, being in nowise aided by the opinions of his
own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times
to his succours to make a party against the present time.  So that the
ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long time
slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved.  This, by
consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite travail in the
languages original, wherein those authors did write, for the better
understanding of those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and
applying their words.  And thereof grew, again, a delight in their manner
of style and phrase, and an admiration of that kind of writing, which was
much furthered and precipitated by the enmity and opposition that the
propounders of those primitive but seeming new opinions had against the
schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings
were altogether in a differing style and form; taking liberty to coin and
frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid circuit
of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may
call it) lawfulness of the phrase or word.  And again, because the great
labour then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say,
Execrabilis ista turba, quæ non novit legem), for the winning and
persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and request
eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access
into the capacity of the vulgar sort; so that these four causes
concurring—the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen,
the exact study of languages, and the efficacy of preaching—did bring in
an affectionate study of eloquence and copy of speech, which then began
to flourish.  This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more
after words than matter—more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the
round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the
clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and
figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of
argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.  Then grew the flowing
and watery vein of Osorius, the Portugal bishop, to be in price.  Then
did Sturmius spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero the Orator
and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, besides his own books of Periods and
Imitation, and the like.  Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their
lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all
young men that were studious unto that delicate and polished kind of
learning.  Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo,
Decem annos consuumpsi in legendo Cicerone; and the echo answered in
Greek, One, Asine.  Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be
utterly despised as barbarous.  In sum, the whole inclination and bent of
those times was rather towards copy than weight.

(3) Here therefore [is] the first distemper of learning, when men study
words and not matter; whereof, though I have represented an example of
late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus in all
time.  And how is it possible but this should have an operation to
discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned
men’s works like the first letter of a patent or limited book, which
though it hath large flourishes, yet it is but a letter?  It seems to me
that Pygmalion’s frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity;
for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of
reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in
love with a picture.

(4) But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to
clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible
and plausible elocution.  For hereof we have great examples in Xenophon,
Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree; and hereof
likewise there is great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition of
truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance because
it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the desire
of further search before we come to a just period.  But then if a man be
to have any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of conference,
counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, then shall he find it
prepared to his hands in those authors which write in that manner.  But
the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he
saw the image of Adonis, Venus’ minion, in a temple, said in disdain,
Nil sacri es; so there is none of Hercules’ followers in learning—that
is, the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth—but will
despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed capable of no
divineness.  And thus much of the first disease or distemper of learning.

(5) The second which followeth is in nature worse than the former: for as
substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain
matter is worse than vain words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension of
St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the
times following; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive to
all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi
nominis scientiæ.  For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected
and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the
other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce
oppositions, and so questions and altercations.  Surely, like as many
substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into
worms;—so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and
dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term
them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and
life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality.  This
kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who

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