Review: Bacon's Essays

Bacon's Essays by Francis Bacon

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Bacon's Essay's come from an era and a day of philosophy I can sometimes little relate to. A Bible quote, phrase in Latin, a Greco-Romain anectode can be all that is required for a grand pronouncement. Partly, I feel a yearning for a "Classical education". Mostly I year from a narrator other than [a:Bernard Mayes|2041924|Bernard Mayes|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg], who already ruined [b:The Life of Samuel Johnson|688826|The Life of Samuel Johnson|James Boswell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1177242050s/688826.jpg|990842] for me. Also, from Bacon's dedication and advice on house and gardening let me know Bacon was writing for his day's equivalent of Architectural Digest and The Robb Report readers. Today, he's have his own show on WealthTV, I think.

However, I like the gradiloquent delivery of common sense, such as:

"Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it. In sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action."

And, some of his aphorism still resound with me when even I have heard them before:

"There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

"There are numbers of the like kind; especially if you include dreams, and predictions of astrology. But I have set down these few only, of certain credit, for example. My judgment is, that they ought all to be despised; and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside. Though when I say despised, I mean it as for belief; for otherwise, the spreading, or publishing, of them, is in no sort to be despised. For they have done much mischief; and I see many severe laws made, to suppress them. That that hath given them grace, and some credit, consisteth in three things. First, that men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss; as they do generally also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves into prophecies..."

"If a new sect have not two properties, fear it not; for it will not spread. The one is the supplanting, or the opposing, of authority established; for nothing is more popular than that. The other is the giving license to pleasures, and a voluptuous life... There be three manner of plantations of new sects. By the power of signs and miracles; by the eloquence, and wisdom, of speech and persuasion; and by the sword... Surely there is no better way, to stop the rising of new sects and schisms, than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors by winning and advancing them, than to enrage them by violence and bitterness."



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