have no settled opinions or principles, counting them rather as being a bondage, and holding that every man has a right to think as he likes and to do as he likes. This, however, is mere affectation, for no one is really a greater slave than the so-called libertine, and in matters of opinion and belief none are more prejudiced and tyrannical than those who boast of free-will. 5. 'discoursing wits'-i.e. shallow, discursive men who talk a great deal, and in a rambling way. 6. 'veins'-kindred, class, breed; in the same sentence 'blood' =vigour, manliness. 7. 'take'-must take; have to take. 8. 'imposeth'-i.e. imposes obligations upon. When a man knows what is right, it imposes an obligation on him to follow it and practise it. He is obliged to live according to his knowledge of the truth, though we cannot say that he is compelled; for obligation is moral necessity, while compulsion is rather physical necessity. 9. 'later schools'-probably the Sceptics, founded in Athens about B.C. 300 by Pyrrho. Their great doctrine, that there can be no such thing as certainty in our knowledge, was subsequently adopted by another school called the New Academy, under the name of acatalepsia (i.e. nescience), in antithesis to the ancient catalepsia (i.e. apprehension). 10. at a stand-in doubt or difficulty; at a loss. II. 'what should be in it'-what can be the reason; why it is. 12. make for pleasure'-tend to give pleasure. The verb to make for is still often used in the sense of to tend towards, to direct a course towards; e.g. apprehending a tempest, the sailors made for the harbour; the hunted fox made for the cover; the traveller made for London. In saying that the 'lies' of the poets give us pleasure, he is not speaking of deliberate lying, but of fiction. The essence of a lie is its intention to deceive, irrespective of whether it is literally true or not. Yet some people are foolish enough to charge the inaccuracies and mistakes both of others and of themselves with falsehood; and some have even fancied that the books of light reading called romances or novels are morally bad and injurious, because the stories they narrate never really occurred. If this were so, then most poems and pictures and stories, and all allegories and parables and fables, and a great deal even of our common language, would be lying, which is most absurd. Although Bacon here seems to put harmless fiction into the same category as cheating and lying, he does not mean to say that they are the same, as is evident from what follows, where he says, 'It is not the lie that passeth through the mind that doth the hurt.' 13. masks, and mummeries, and triumphs.' All these were common sportive entertainments. In masques or masquerades the entertainment consisted of dancing and other diversions of performers, whose faces were disguised in masks; mummeries were much the same, but originally the performers in them made sport by gestures alone without speaking; triumphs were magnificent and imposing processions, or pompous shows of pageantry celebrated in honour of some person or event. 14. 'stately'-adverb for statelily; cf. daintily, immediately following. 15. 'showeth'-appeareth, seemeth. So in Tennyson, 'The world like one great garden showed;' and in Dryden, 'Just such she shows before a rising storm.' Shakespeare, Henry IV, makes Hotspur say of the fop on the battle-field that 'his chin new-rcap'd showed like a stubble-land at harvest home.' 'Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, Which shows like grief itself'-Richard II. 17. In this sense the verb to show is intransitive; but it is now generally used transitively and causatively for to make to appear, as a few lines before in this essay. 16. will not rise'-i.e. in the estimation of the world. 'diamond or carbuncle.' Diamond is really the same word as adamant (Latin adamas, adamantis), but in a corrupted form. The substance was so called from its extreme hardness. A carbuncle is a precious stone of a deep red colour, with a mixture of scarlet; it is so called from its resemblance to a burning coal (Latin carbunculus, which is diminutive of carbo). 18. 'imaginations as one would'—the trying to persuade ourselves of things which we wish to be true. 19. vinum dæmonum'-the wine of devils. It is uncertain to which of the fathers Bacon here alludes; perhaps to St Jerome, who in one of his letters to Damasus says, Dæmonum cibus est carmina poetarum. There is, however, a passage in St Augustine's Confessions, i, 16, Vinum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus propinatum.' 20. 'howsoever'-used in a sense now obsolete for although, as in Shakespeare, The man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him.' 21. Truth, which only doth judge itself'—i.e. Truth itself is the sole authority which can judge of Truth; only those who are true can possibly know what Truth is. A man cannot examine Truth from an external stand-point, and form an opinion respecting it with a view to embracing it, if he should feel satisfied as to its claims: with reference to things that are matters of proof and evidence this course can be taken; but Truth is a matter of experience, and we must first B be true before we can form any opinion about it. It is an important ethical principle that the practice of what is right must precede all theories as to the nature of right. Virtue is its own sole judge. No reasonable man would ever think of refraining from action until he had arrived at some satisfactory conclusion as to the origin and nature of duty. The true ethical answer to the question, 'What is duty?' is, 'Go and do your duty, and you will find out.' The same principle is referred to in the New Testament, John vii, 17: 'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' In our minds the word truth is now generally used with ethical associations; but Bacon, in this essay, applies it indifferently to fiction, speculation, philosophic inquiry, and morals. 'He 22. 'creature'-created thing; creation. This word was not formerly limited in its reference, as now, to animal life. asked water, a creature so common and needful, that it was against the law of nature to deny him'-FUller. 'On earth join, all ye creatures, to extol Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end'-MILTON. So also in the well-known grace before meat we say, 'Thy creatures bless!' 23. 'light of the sense'-actual light, light affecting the eye, light that can be perceived by the sense of seeing. He is referring to the account given in Gen. i, 1-3. In analogy with the light of sense, Bacon places 'the light of reason'-i.e. intelligence and mental powers with which God endowed man when created. Gen. ii, 7. In the next sentence, Bacon implies that all the progress which men have made from the beginning, everything they have discovered and invented, all the advances they have made in acquirement, and research, and civilisation, have come from God, and are really a continuance and exhibition of His power. God's work was first creative; His subsequent work (Sabbath work') is directive ('the illumination of His Spirit'). The poet he refers to is 24. The poet that beautified the sect.' Lucretius; the sect the Epicureans. Epicurus was the founder of one of the later sects of Greek philosophers, who were called after him Epicureans. He was born B. C. 342, and taught his system at Athens. His fundamental doctrine in morals was that the highest good which man should seek to attain to is pleasure: he taught that prudence was the highest virtue, and that the only value of moral goodness is that it conduces to pleasure. He denied the immortality of the soul, and in physics adopted the atomic theory that the world was composed of atoms which had met in empty space, had united, and disposed themselves into the light or heavy masses, of which our senses take cognisance. Epicurus himself seems to have led a pure and upright life; but although by making sensation his standard of happiness, he certainly did not mean to encourage sensuality, his system too easily lent itself to the justification of a sensual life, and hence has come into great disrepute. Epicurus died B.C. 270. The Epicurean doctrines were afterwards revived by a Roman school of philosophy. Lucretius (born B. C. 95, committed suicide B.C. 55), in a famous poem entitled De Rerum Natura, gives an exposition of the Epicurean theory of physics and morals. 25. commanded'-overlooked; looked down upon so as to be within the sphere of influence or attack-e.g.' The fortress commanded all the bridges in the town.' 26. '80'-so that, provided that, on condition that, 'Evil into the mind of God or man May come and go, so unapproved, and leave No spot or blame behind'-Milton's Paradise Lost. 27. 'prospect'-looking forth; looking out upon the battle-field. 28. 'round'-plain, straightforward. 29. So also in Shakespeare. 'I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver'-Othello. 'Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him To show his griefs: let her be round with him'-Hamlet. 'embaseth'-debases, makes base. The prefix em or en is causative, as in embitter, embolden, embank, emboss, and endear, enthral, enlighten, enlarge. The same particle is sometimes used as a suffix with causative force-darken, lighten, strengthen, weaken. 30. false and perfidious.' The latter adjective is much stronger than the former. A perfidious man is one who not only acts falsely, but acts falsely after having pledged his faith to be true. 31. 'Montaigne.' Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, a famous French essayist and scholar, was born of noble family at the château of Montaigne in Perigord, A.D. 1553; died 1592. His Essais are remarkable for clearness and simplicity of style, sound good sense and learning, but are pervaded with a philosophical scepticism that has greatly influenced the French character and subsequent literature. The passage Bacon refers to stands thus in the original : 'C'est un vilain vice que le mentir, et qu'un ancien peinct bien honteusement, quand il dict que 'c'est donner tesmoignage de mespriser Dieu, et quand et quand de craindre les hommes:' il n'est pas possible d'en representer plus richement l'horreur, la vilité, et le desreglement; car que peult on imaginer plus vilain que d'estre couard à l'endroict des hommes, et brave à l'endroict de Dieu?'-Essais, livre ii, ch. xviii. 32. 'faith'-quoted here (from Luke xviii, 8) by Bacon in the sense of truth or truthfulness. This use of the word, now obsolete, occurs in the common asseverations, in faith, in good faith; and in the passage, 'They are a very froward generation; children in whom is no faith-Deut. xxxii, 20. 1. The difficulty and labour of finding out truth. (a.) Truth would expose too many shams. (b.) Falsehood gives a pleasure to imaginations. III. Yet truth is the 'sovereign good of human nature,' being— 1. The perpetual creation and gift of God. 2. The only secure resting-place for men, as Lucretius says. IV. 'Truth of civil business' (i.e. moral truth): 1. Universally allowed to be honourable; 2. As lying is a disgrace (Montaigne), 3. And will be the last peal to call down Divine judgment. II. OF DEATH. (1612, enlarged 1625.) MEN fear Death as children fear to go in1 the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of Death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak.2 Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of Death are, when the |