A Systematic Inquiry into the Reformation of Knowledge and the Vision of a Scientific Commonwealth
To the King
The work opens with a formal address to King James I, whom Bacon positions as both a patron and a model of the learning he intends to advance. This dedicatory epistle locates itself at the threshold of the entire project, establishing the political and intellectual authority under which Bacon writes.
Bacon declares that he has “collected into a volume” his thoughts on the state of learning, presenting them to the king not as a finished system but as “a memorial of my duty and service.” He describes the work as having three parts: the first examines the excellence of learning against its detractors; the second surveys the present state of learning and identifies its deficiencies; the third proposes remedies for those deficiencies. Bacon immediately frames his task as a royal service, noting that King James himself is “a prince of so great wisdom and learning” that the work stands in need of no other recommendation.
The key passage establishes the book’s central posture:
“And certainly it is true, and so it was ever, that knowledge is not the serpent’s envy, nor the tree of knowledge, but the light of knowledge is the light of God’s works and the light of God’s law.”
Bacon here defends learning against the theological objection that the pursuit of knowledge was the original sin of Adam. He argues that what was forbidden was not knowledge itself but “the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself and to depend no more upon God’s commandments.” The light of knowledge, properly directed, illuminates divine creation rather than usurping divine authority. This framing matters profoundly within the work: Bacon will spend the entire first book dismantling objections to learning by showing that knowledge, rightly pursued, is a religious duty, not a transgression.
Book One, Part I — The Praise and Dignity of Learning
Bacon opens the body of the work by declaring his intention to “make a general and faithful survey” of the state of knowledge, beginning with the excellence and dignity of learning. He organizes this praise into two main arguments: first, that learning is honorable in itself and beneficial to mankind; second, that the objections raised against it are unfounded.
The first argument proceeds by considering the ends of learning. Bacon insists that the true end of knowledge is not “the pleasure of the mind, or the contention of disputations, or the glory of reputation, or the profit of lucre” but rather “the benefit and use of life.” He traces this through examples from ancient civilizations: the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks all honored learning as the foundation of law, medicine, and statecraft. Learning civilizes men, turning them from barbarism toward order; it is “the greatest of all things” because it perfects the mind, which is the highest part of human nature.
Bacon then addresses the objection that learning leads to idleness or disputation without action. He concedes that some scholars have abused learning, wrapping themselves in useless subtleties, but argues that this is a corruption of learning, not its nature. The true scholar uses knowledge as “a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.” This phrase — “the relief of man’s estate” — will echo throughout the work as Bacon’s central definition of the practical purpose of knowledge.
Book One, Part II — Objections Against Learning Answered
Having established the dignity of learning, Bacon now turns to the specific objections raised against it, which he groups into three categories: objections from divinity, from policy (statecraft), and from custom and common experience.
The objections from divinity are the most serious. The first is that learning leads to heresy, as learned men tend to question received doctrines. The second is that learning produces pride and a spirit of contradiction. The third is that the Scriptures themselves seem to condemn worldly wisdom — as in St. Paul’s warning that “knowledge puffeth up.”
Bacon answers each in turn. To the charge of heresy, he responds that ignorance, not learning, is the true mother of superstition and error. The primitive church had learned fathers — Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose — who used knowledge to defend the faith. Heresy arises not from learning but from “a corrupt and depraved will” that abuses what it knows. To the charge of pride, Bacon makes a crucial distinction: “It is not the quantity of knowledge, but the quality of the knowledge that causeth pride.” Knowledge of God’s works, pursued with humility, leads to greater humility, as the scholar sees more and more of what he does not know.
“Knowledge is not the serpent’s skin, which it casteth off, but the serpent’s eye, which it ever keepeth.”
This image — the serpent keeping its eye after casting its skin — captures Bacon’s argument that learning, far from being a fallen condition, is the very faculty by which humans perceive truth. The serpent’s eye represents discretion and discernment, which are gifts of God, not marks of sin. The passage thus transforms the symbol of the Fall into an emblem of lawful knowledge.
The objections from policy are that learning makes men effeminate (too soft for warfare), unfit for action (lost in speculation), and rebellious (questioning authority). Bacon answers by pointing to the greatest military empires — Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Ottoman sultans — all of whom were patrons of learning. Learning, he argues, does not weaken courage but directs it; it does not disable action but informs it. As for rebellion, “the best and noblest works of human wisdom” are those that establish order — laws, constitutions, systems of government — and these come from learned men.
The objections from custom are that learning produces melancholy, poverty, and neglect of practical affairs. Bacon dismisses these as the complaints of the ignorant, who mistake the scholar’s contentment with his study for melancholy, and his indifference to worldly wealth for poverty. He quotes the saying that “learning is an enemy to fortune” and argues that this is only true in a corrupt age; in a well-ordered commonwealth, learning is the surest path to honor and prosperity.
Book One, Part III — The Dignity of Learning Proved by Its Fruits
Having cleared the ground of objections, Bacon now advances positive arguments for the dignity of learning by examining its fruits and effects. He organizes this section around the idea that learning perfects the three faculties of the soul: memory, imagination, and reason.
Memory is perfected by history, which preserves the deeds and words of the past for the instruction of the present. Imagination is perfected by poetry, which presents images of virtue and vice more vividly than real life. Reason is perfected by philosophy, which examines the causes and principles of all things. Each of these disciplines, Bacon argues, serves not only the individual scholar but the commonwealth: history teaches prudence, poetry inspires virtue, philosophy enlightens law and governance.
Bacon then presents a striking argument about the relationship between learning and power. He observes that the most powerful nations in history — Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Arab caliphates — were also the most learned. This is not accidental: “Learning is the greatest and most excellent of all things in the world, for it is the guide of human life, the light of the mind, the rule of virtue, and the fountain of all human happiness.” A state that neglects learning will inevitably decline into barbarism and weakness.
The section culminates in a defense of learning against the charge that it is useless speculation. Bacon insists that even the most abstract knowledge has practical value: “There is no knowledge, though it be of things far removed from the senses, but it hath some secret passage to the use of life.” The astronomer who studies the stars may seem idle, but his knowledge enables navigation and agriculture. The metaphysician who examines the nature of being itself provides the foundations for all other sciences. Utility is not always immediate, but it is always present.
Book One, Part IV — The Causes of the Neglect of Learning
Bacon now shifts from defense to diagnosis, asking why learning has been so neglected and undervalued. He identifies five principal causes: the errors of learned men themselves, the jealousy of ignorance, the disparagement of learning by powerful men, the corruption of learning by false methods, and the failure to reward learning properly.
The errors of learned men are many. Some are too subtle and curious, pursuing useless questions. Others are too contentious, turning every inquiry into a disputation. Still others are too credulous, accepting authority without examination. But the greatest error, Bacon argues, is that scholars have separated learning from practice, constructing elaborate systems that have no connection to the real world. This is the root of the contempt in which learning is held: “Men see that learning is not able to do what it promises, and therefore they despise it.”
The jealousy of ignorance is a natural human tendency. Those who are unlearned resent those who are learned, and they find comfort in attacking what they cannot understand. Bacon quotes the common taunt: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; therefore have none at all.” He responds that this is the logic of the sluggard, who will not work because he cannot do all the work at once.
“It is a shame for a man to be ignorant of the things that belong to his own calling, but it is a double shame for him to be ignorant of those things that belong to the welfare of his country and the dignity of his profession.”
This passage captures Bacon’s insistence that learning is a public duty, not a private luxury. The neglect of learning is not merely an intellectual failing but a moral and political one. A ruler who despises learning is unfit to rule; a scholar who hoards learning is unfit to teach.
The corruption of learning by false methods is the most important cause, and Bacon will return to it at length. The two great corruptions are scholasticism, which he characterizes as endless disputation over meaningless distinctions, and humanism, which he characterizes as mere eloquence without substance. Both have turned learning into a game of words rather than a search for truth. The proper method, which Bacon will propose in Book Two, is the interpretation of nature — the systematic investigation of things themselves, not of the opinions of other men about things.
Book One, Part V — The True End of Learning: The Relief of Man’s Estate
Bacon concludes Book One by returning to the theme of charity and use. He argues that the true measure of learning is not how much it pleases the scholar but how much it benefits mankind. This is the “relief of man’s estate” — the phrase that will become the motto of the entire work.
He criticizes those who pursue knowledge for contemplation alone, calling them “spiders that weave their webs out of their own substance.” He also criticizes those who pursue knowledge for gain or glory, calling them “merchants of learning” who traffic in other men’s discoveries. The true end of learning is fruit and use — the application of knowledge to the relief of human suffering, the increase of human power, and the improvement of human life.
“The true and lawful end of the sciences is that human life be enriched by new inventions and new powers.”
This passage is the linchpin of Bacon’s entire project. He is not interested in knowledge for its own sake, nor in knowledge for the sake of argument, nor in knowledge for the sake of reputation. He is interested in knowledge as power — the power to heal disease, to extend life, to harness nature, to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor. Every scientific inquiry, every philosophical speculation, every historical study must be judged by this standard: does it contribute to the relief of man’s estate?
Book One ends with a call to action. Bacon urges his readers — especially the king and the learned men of England — to undertake a great reformation of learning. This reformation will require new institutions, new methods, and new attitudes. It will require abandoning the old authorities and turning directly to nature. And it will require a commitment to charity — the love of humanity that alone can sustain the long and difficult work of scientific inquiry.
Book Two, Part VI — The Partition of Sciences: Reason and the Divine
We are now in Book Two, where Bacon sets out his own systematic classification of all human knowledge, beginning with the faculties of the human mind that correspond to the major divisions of learning.
Bacon opens Book Two by declaring that the most natural partition of human learning follows the three faculties of the understanding: memory, imagination, and reason. To memory corresponds history, to imagination corresponds poesy, and to reason corresponds philosophy. “For history is properly concerned with the memory, poesy with the imagination, philosophy with the reason.” This tripartite division is not arbitrary — it flows from the very structure of the human mind, and Bacon insists that any classification of knowledge must be grounded in the nature of the knowing subject. He then immediately adds that there is also a fourth branch of learning: divine learning, or theology, which proceeds from God’s revelation rather than from human faculties.
The first major division is history, which Bacon further divides into natural history and civil history. Natural history treats the phenomena of the natural world — the motions of the heavens, the generation of living things, the properties of minerals and metals, the operations of the arts and crafts. Civil history treats the actions of human beings — political events, laws, institutions, customs. But Bacon insists that natural history has been neglected in favor of civil history, and that this neglect has been disastrous for philosophy. “For natural history is the foundation of philosophy, and the most excellent part of learning,” yet it has been “pursued with less diligence than it deserves.” He calls for a new kind of natural history — not a collection of marvels and curiosities, but a systematic history of nature as it is, nature as it is constrained and shaped by human art (mechanical arts, agriculture, medicine), and nature as it deviates into monsters and wonders. All three are necessary for understanding nature’s laws.
Bacon then turns to divine history — the history of God’s dealings with humanity as recorded in Scripture — and ecclesiastical history, which traces the fortunes of the Church. He briefly notes that these are best left to divines and theologians, though he observes that ecclesiastical history has often been corrupted by partisan interests. He then moves to civil history, which he divides into memorials (bare records of events), antiquities (fragments of the past recovered from ruins), and perfect history. Perfect history itself has three forms: chronicles (the narrative of times in order), lives (biographies of individuals), and relations (narratives of particular actions or events). “Lives are the most profitable of all,” Bacon writes, because they show the characters of men as they truly were, not as they are dressed up in rhetoric or distorted by faction.
“The works of God and the works of men are the true matter of history; the contemplation of the one, and the administration of the other, are the proper business of the human mind.”
Bacon’s classification here does two things at once. It organizes all existing knowledge into a coherent map, showing where each discipline belongs and how it relates to the others. But it also reveals what is missing — the vast territories of inquiry that have been neglected or left fallow. The tripartite division of memory, imagination, and reason gives the reader a framework for understanding Bacon’s entire project: he is not merely cataloguing what is known, but diagnosing what needs to be known, and prescribing the methods by which it can be discovered.
Book Two, Part VII — Poesy and Its Uses
Having completed his treatment of history, Bacon now turns to poesy — the second great faculty of the mind, corresponding to the imagination.
Poesy, Bacon says, is a kind of feigned history — a representation of events that never actually happened, but which the imagination presents as if they had. “Poesy is a part of learning in measure of words for the most part restrained, but in all other points extremely free and licensed.” The poet is not bound by the actual course of events, as the historian is, nor by the rigors of logical demonstration, as the philosopher is. The imagination can create worlds that never were, can join what nature has separated, can separate what nature has joined. This freedom, far from being a defect, is the source of poesy’s power.
Bacon divides poesy into three kinds: narrative poesy (epic and romance), dramatic poesy (tragedy and comedy), and parabolical poesy (fables and allegories). Narrative poesy imitates history, presenting a sequence of actions and events. Dramatic poesy, as in the theatre, presents actions as if they were happening before our eyes. But it is parabolical poesy that Bacon considers most significant, for it serves a purpose that neither history nor philosophy can achieve. “Parabolical poesy is of a higher nature than the others, and is used to represent the mysteries of religion, or the secrets of policy and philosophy, under the veil of fables and allegories.”
The value of poesy, Bacon argues, lies in its power to satisfy the mind in ways that actual history cannot. History presents things as they are — often confused, incomplete, unsatisfying. But poesy presents things as they ought to be — with poetic justice, with heroic virtue rewarded and vice punished, with order and meaning imposed on the chaos of events. “Poesy doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.” This is not mere wish-fulfillment; it is a kind of moral education that prepares the mind to recognize virtue and admire excellence. The imagination, properly cultivated, becomes an ally of reason, not its enemy.
Bacon also defends the use of fables and myths in philosophy and religion. The ancient philosophers, he notes, often concealed their deepest doctrines in myths — the myth of Orpheus, the myth of Prometheus, the myth of Sphinx. These fables are not childish stories; they are “parables of deeper wisdom,” containing insights that cannot be expressed in plain philosophical language. Bacon himself will later write a book of such interpretations, *The Wisdom of the Ancients*, but here he simply notes that parabolical poesy has a legitimate place in the pursuit of knowledge, particularly when the truths to be communicated are too subtle or too dangerous to be stated directly.
Book Two, Part VIII — Philosophy: The Supreme Science
We now arrive at the third and most important division of learning: philosophy, which corresponds to the faculty of reason, and which Bacon considers the supreme human science.
Philosophy, Bacon declares, is the knowledge of God, of nature, and of man — and the relations among them. “Philosophy hath three objects — God, Nature, and Man; and three correspondent rays — the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Nature, and the knowledge of Man.” These three objects are not isolated; they form a system, and the highest philosophy is that which traces the connections between them. But Bacon immediately issues a warning: human knowledge of God is limited, and the attempt to know God through natural reason alone leads to dangerous errors. True divine philosophy or natural theology can only go so far — it can demonstrate that God exists, that He is powerful and wise, but it cannot reveal His will or His mysteries. Those are the province of revealed theology, which Bacon treats as a separate branch of learning, grounded in Scripture and faith.
The main body of philosophy, however, is natural philosophy — the knowledge of nature in all its aspects. Bacon divides natural philosophy into speculative and operative branches. The speculative branch seeks to understand nature’s laws and causes; the operative branch seeks to apply that understanding to produce works and effects. “The true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers.” Speculation without operation is barren; operation without speculation is blind. The two must be joined in a marriage — a holy wedlock of the mind and the universe, as Bacon calls it elsewhere.
Within speculative natural philosophy, Bacon distinguishes between physics (the study of efficient and material causes), metaphysics (the study of formal and final causes), and mathematics (the study of quantity and measure). Physics deals with the changing, material world — the motions, qualities, and transformations of bodies. Metaphysics deals with the forms of things — the timeless, unchanging essences that underlie the flux of phenomena. Bacon insists that the search for forms is the highest task of philosophy, for “the forms of things are the true and ultimate objects of the understanding.” But he also insists that these forms are not Platonic ideas existing in a separate realm; they are embedded in matter and can be discovered only through patient investigation of nature. The form of heat, for example, is nothing other than a certain motion of the minute particles of bodies — a kind of expansive, agitated motion that can be measured and controlled.
Book Two, Part IX — The Human Sciences: Logic, Ethics, and Politics
From the knowledge of nature, Bacon now turns to the knowledge of man — the third object of philosophy, and the one most immediately relevant to human life.
The knowledge of man is divided into two parts: the knowledge of the human body and the knowledge of the human soul. The body is studied by medicine, cosmetics (in the old sense of preserving bodily health and beauty), athletics (the art of increasing bodily strength and agility), and voluptuary arts (the arts of pleasure and delight). Bacon gives medicine particular attention, lamenting that it has been corrupted by two errors: the reliance on authority (ancient physicians like Galen) rather than observation, and the neglect of anatomy in favor of theoretical speculation. He calls for a new kind of medicine based on comparative anatomy — the dissection of healthy as well as diseased bodies, and the study of animals to understand human physiology. “Medicine is a science which hath been more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced.”
The knowledge of the human soul, Bacon says, is the most important and the most neglected branch of philosophy. The soul has two faculties: understanding and will. The understanding is governed by logic (the art of reasoning), while the will is governed by ethics (the art of living well). But Bacon warns that both logic and ethics have been pursued in the wrong way. Logic has become a mere game of syllogisms, detached from the real processes of discovery and judgment. Ethics has become a tedious moralizing about virtue and vice, without any understanding of the actual motives and passions that drive human behavior.
Bacon proposes a new logic — what he will later call the Novum Organum — that will serve as an instrument for discovering new truths, not merely for arranging old ones. This new logic will begin with observation and experiment, proceed by tables of investigation and induction, and culminate in the discovery of forms. It will be a logic of discovery, not a logic of proof. And it will be accompanied by a new ethics that begins with the study of the passions — the desires, fears, loves, hates, and hopes that drive human action. “The human mind is not like a wax tablet on which impressions are made, but like a mirror that distorts the rays it receives.” Ethics must understand these distortions — the idols of the mind — before it can prescribe remedies.
“For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.”
Bacon concludes this section with a brief treatment of politics — the art of governing human communities. He distinguishes between the knowledge of government (the art of ruling a commonwealth), the knowledge of conversation (the art of managing social relations), and the knowledge of negotiation (the art of conducting business and diplomacy). But he admits that politics is the least developed of all the sciences, because it depends on a deep understanding of human nature that has yet to be achieved. “The greatest error of all is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge.” That end, Bacon insists again, is not pleasure, nor fame, nor power, but the relief of man’s estate — the practical improvement of human life through the application of discovered truth.
Book Two, Part X — The History of Nature and the Defects of Learning
We are now in the second book, where Bacon turns from the division of sciences to a diagnostic survey of what has gone wrong in the pursuit of knowledge, identifying the specific errors and omissions that have crippled human learning.
Bacon begins this section by asserting that the greatest obstacle to the advancement of learning is not any external enemy but the misplacement of the final end of knowledge. He writes that men have sought knowledge for “the benefit and use of life” less than for “ostentation, or for the sake of the discourse itself.” This corruption, he argues, has led scholars to pursue learning that is “curious and exquisite” rather than “solid and useful.” He offers a powerful metaphor: knowledge ought to be like a “spouse” that brings forth “a happy race and progeny” — that is, practical inventions and improvements — but instead it has been treated as a “courtesan” only for pleasure and display. The root problem is that “men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation.” All these are false ends. The only true end is “the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.”
Having diagnosed the corruption of purpose, Bacon then catalogues the specific defects of learning under three heads: the defects of divine learning, the defects of natural philosophy, and the defects of civil history. Under divine learning, he laments that theology has been “sophisticated” by the mixture of philosophy and human traditions, so that “the pure and uncorrupted doctrine of the Scriptures” has been overlaid with Aristotle and the schoolmen. He calls for a return to the literal and historical sense of Scripture, purged of allegorical fancies and metaphysical speculations. Under natural philosophy, he identifies the critical defect: “The greatest and most radical error of natural philosophy is this, that it has been pursued by itself, and has not been joined with observation and the senses.” Philosophers have spun systems out of their own heads instead of consulting nature. “The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others,” he notes approvingly, “did better join the contemplation of nature with the observation of sense and the use of experiment.” Yet even that tradition was lost. Under civil history, Bacon points to the absence of a true history of learning — an account of “the state of learning in the several ages of the world” — which would show “what sciences have flourished, what have decayed, what have been revived, and what have been abused, and by what causes and occasions.”
What Bacon is doing here is clearing the ground for his own proposed reforms. By naming specific defects — the misdirection of purpose, the divorce of philosophy from experiment, the neglect of historical self-awareness — he establishes a diagnosis that his later prescriptions are meant to cure. The reader can begin to see the outline of the “great instauration” that Bacon will propose: a knowledge that is practical, experimental, and self-correcting, grounded in the senses and aimed at the relief of human suffering.
Book Two, Part XI — The Art of Discovery and the Idols of the Mind
Bacon now moves from cataloguing defects to proposing remedies, and here he introduces what is arguably the most famous and original part of his entire system: the theory of the Idols of the Mind and the new method of discovery that will overcome them.
Bacon begins by asserting that “the art of discovery” has never been properly developed. He declares that “the logic now in use” — that is, Aristotelian syllogistic logic — “can no more be used to discover truth in natural philosophy than a pair of compasses can be used to measure the circumference of a circle.” The syllogism, he argues, proceeds from propositions to conclusions, but it never examines the propositions themselves. Those propositions are derived from common notions that are themselves “vague and ill-defined” — and so the entire edifice is built on sand. What is needed is a new logic, which he calls the Interpretation of Nature, that begins not with abstract propositions but with “the senses and particulars” and rises gradually, step by step, to “the most general axioms.” This is the path of induction, but not the naive induction that merely enumerates examples. Bacon’s induction is a rigorous method of “exclusion and rejection” that sifts the data of experience to find the true forms of things.
The greatest obstacle to this new method, however, is not the inadequacy of existing logic but the corruption of the human mind itself. Bacon names four classes of Idols — false images or illusions that “beset the human understanding” and distort its perception of reality. The first are the Idols of the Tribe, which arise from human nature itself: the tendency of the mind to “suppose a greater degree of order and equality in things than is actually there,” to be swayed by the “affections and passions,” and to “receive an impression from the senses that is distorted by the medium through which it passes.” The second are the Idols of the Cave, which arise from the individual nature of each person: “Every man has his own den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature” — the particular prejudices, education, and temperament that color his judgments. The third are the Idols of the Marketplace, which arise from the intercourse of men through language: “Words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw everything into confusion” because they are applied to things imprecisely and lead to endless disputes about mere names. The fourth are the Idols of the Theatre, which arise from the false systems of philosophy that have been “received and believed as if they were real worlds” — entire theoretical edifices that are nothing but “so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation.”
“For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.”
This passage captures the heart of Bacon’s critique. The old learning — the spider spinning webs from its own substance — is endlessly ingenious but sterile. The new learning — the bee gathering and transforming the raw material of nature — is humble, disciplined, and fruitful. Bacon’s theory of the Idols is the essential preface to his method: before we can discover anything, we must first clear away the false images that have taken possession of our minds. Only then can we approach nature with “clear and unprejudiced senses,” ready to receive what it actually says rather than what we expect it to say.
Book Two, Part XII — The Preparatives for the New Method: Natural and Experimental History
Bacon now turns from the negative work of purging the mind to the positive work of gathering the materials on which the new method will operate. This section describes the preparatives for the Interpretation of Nature, and the most fundamental of these is the construction of a proper Natural and Experimental History.
Bacon insists that all sound natural philosophy must be built upon “a history of nature, well and faithfully collected and described.” He distinguishes three kinds of natural history: the history of nature in course (the ordinary workings of nature left to itself), the history of nature erring or varying (the monstrous and unusual productions of nature), and the history of nature altered or wrought (the products of human art and experiment). The third kind, he says, is the most important for the advancement of learning because “the nature of things is better discovered through the vexations of art than through their own natural course.” In other words, we learn more about nature when we actively interrogate, manipulate, and press it through experiment than when we merely observe it passively. “The secret of nature,” Bacon writes, “reveals itself more readily under the vexations of art than when it goes its own way.”
Bacon then provides extensive instructions for how this natural history should be compiled. It must be vast and comprehensive — “a complete and thorough collection of all the phenomena and observations that have been made in any branch of natural science.” It must be accurate and truthful, with no suppression of negative instances or inconvenient facts. It must be well-ordered and methodized, so that the materials can be easily consulted and compared. And it must be cooperative — the work of many hands over many years, not of a single philosopher in his study. “This work,” Bacon admits, “is a great and laborious undertaking,” but “it is the only way to make natural philosophy a solid and substantial science.” He compares the state of existing natural history to a “chance collection of herbs” gathered by “a man who does not know what he is looking for,” whereas what is needed is “a systematic and deliberate search” guided by a clear method.
The implication of this section is profound: Bacon is arguing that the entire intellectual enterprise of his time has been proceeding backwards. Philosophers have tried to deduce the nature of things from first principles without first consulting the facts. Bacon insists that the facts must come first — and not just any facts, but a comprehensive, organized, experimental collection of them. The labor of gathering this history is immense and inglorious, but it is the indispensable foundation of all future science. The new method cannot even begin until this ground is prepared. This is why Bacon will spend the rest of his life trying to compile such a history himself, and why he insists that the advancement of learning is not a matter of genius or inspiration but of patient, collective, methodical labor.
Book Two, Part XIII — The Method of Induction: Tables of Discovery and the True Form
We now reach the technical heart of Bacon’s new logic: the Method of Induction itself, the procedure by which the human mind, guided by the collected natural history, can ascend from particular observations to general truths — and specifically to the discovery of Forms, the true essences or causes of natural phenomena.
Bacon begins by describing the “three stages of the process” of induction. The first stage is the presentation of instances to the understanding — that is, the arrangement of the collected natural history into orderly Tables of Discovery. Bacon explains these tables in detail. The first is the Table of Essence and Presence, which collects all instances in which the nature under investigation (for example, heat) is present, in as many different contexts as possible. The second is the Table of Deviation or Absence in Proximity, which collects instances in which the nature is absent, especially those that are most similar to instances where it is present. The third is the Table of Degrees or Comparison, which collects instances in which the nature appears in different degrees, from the most intense to the weakest. “These three tables,” Bacon writes, “furnish the material for the induction to work upon. The induction itself begins with the exclusion or rejection of those natures which are not found in any instance where the given nature is present, or are found in any instance where the given nature is absent, or are found to increase when the given nature decreases, or to decrease when it increases.”
This process of exclusion and rejection is the critical step. By systematically eliminating what cannot be the cause, the understanding narrows down the possible candidates until only one remains. Bacon is explicit that this is not a mechanical or automatic process: “The work of exclusion is the foundation of true induction, but it is only the foundation. After the rejection of the natures that are not the true form, there remains the task of interpreting the affirmative instances — the task of discovering the true form itself.” He calls this final step the “first vintage” or “first harvest” of the induction — a provisional conclusion that must then be tested and refined through further experiments.
“For the true and perfect induction, it is necessary that the understanding be freed from all prejudice and prepossession, and approach the work with a mind as blank as a tablet of wax. The induction itself must be conducted with the utmost care and caution, proceeding step by step from the lowest axioms to the middle axioms, and from the middle axioms to the highest, never skipping a stage.”
Bacon’s method is thus a controlled ascent from the particular to the general, governed by explicit rules and guided by the systematic elimination of false candidates. It is the opposite of the “anticipation of nature” that characterizes the old logic — the wild leap from a few observations to sweeping generalizations. The true scientist must “follow nature” rather than “anticipate” it, submitting his mind to the discipline of the tables and the method of exclusion. This is the great methodological revolution that Bacon is proposing: a discovery procedure that is public, replicable, and cumulative, not dependent on the genius of individuals but on the faithful application of a rule-governed process. The discovery of the Form of heat, or of any other nature, becomes a matter of careful investigation rather than inspired guesswork.
THE NEW ATLANTIS — A Fable of the New Science
We are now in the final portion of the volume, entering Bacon’s fictional work, *The New Atlantis*, a utopian narrative that presents a concrete vision of what a society organized around scientific inquiry would look like. This section functions as a dramatic illustration of the principles argued in *The Advancement of Learning* — a demonstration, in story form, of the “relief of man’s estate” that Bacon had called for in the earlier treatise.
“We sailed from Peru (where we had continued by the space of one whole year), for China and Japan, by the South Sea; taking with us victuals for twelve months; and had good winds from the east, though soft and weak, for five months’ space and more.”
The narrative opens with a European ship, bound for Asia, that is driven by storms into unknown waters. After much hardship, the crew discovers an island civilization called Bensalem, unknown to Europe. The sailors are taken ashore and given hospitality by the inhabitants, who speak Spanish (a sign of prior contact) but who have deliberately kept themselves hidden from the rest of the world. The narrator, a European traveler, describes the customs and institutions of this remarkable society. The Bensalemites are Christians — they possess the Bible, which they received by a miraculous pillar of light — but their true distinguishing feature is their devotion to organized scientific research. The narrator learns that for some 1,900 years, Bensalem has been governed by a scientific institution called Salomon’s House, or the College of the Six Days’ Works. This is the “very eye” of the kingdom, the institution that directs all knowledge production and technological development. The entire island is organized around the work of this college, which sends out merchants of light to other countries to collect knowledge, conducts experiments, and applies discoveries to the improvement of human life.
The Father of Salomon’s House
We move from the narrator’s general observations to the climactic moment of the work: an audience with the highest scientific authority on Bensalem. This section presents, directly, the institutional embodiment of Bacon’s vision for organized science. The narrator is granted a meeting with one of the Fathers of Salomon’s House, a man of great age and dignity, who explains the workings of the institution in detail.
“The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”
The Father begins by stating the dual purpose of Salomon’s House: first, to understand the causes and hidden processes of nature; second, to extend human power over the natural world. This is the exact program Bacon had called for in *The Advancement of Learning* — the marriage of knowledge of causes with power over effects. The Father then describes the various roles within the college. There are Merchants of Light, who travel secretly to other countries and bring back books, instruments, and reports of new discoveries. There are Depredators, who collect the experiments described in these books. There are Mystery-Men, who collect the experiments of all mechanical arts and sciences. There are Pioneers or Miners, who try new experiments of their own design. There are Compilers, who organize the data from these experiments into tables and summaries. There are Dowry-Men or Benefactors, who look for practical applications of the discoveries. There are Lamps, who design new experiments that probe deeper into nature. There are Inoculators, who execute these experiments and report the results. Finally, there are Interpreters of Nature, who rise to the highest level and use all this collected data to discover laws, axioms, and forms. The entire institution is a division of intellectual labor, moving from the gathering of raw data through systematic experimentation to the final interpretation that yields universal knowledge. The Father then describes the vast infrastructure that supports this work: deep caves for refrigeration and imitation of minerals; high towers for observation of weather and astronomy; lakes that imitate the sea; baths for health cures; gardens with forced-growing and hybridization of plants; orchards for grafting; animal enclosures for dissection and cross-breeding; furnaces of all temperatures; optical houses for microscopes and telescopes; sound-houses for hearing and acoustics; perfume-houses for smells; engine-houses for machines of war and motion; and mathematical houses for instruments of calculation.
The Miracles of Salomon’s House
We now enter the Father’s catalog of the actual achievements of Salomon’s House, which serves as a vivid demonstration of what the new science, properly organized, can produce. This section is Bacon’s inventory of technological possibilities, many of which anticipate actual later inventions.
“We have also houses of deceits of the senses; where we represent all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions; and their fallacies. And surely you will easily believe that we that have so many things truly natural which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses if we would disguise those things and labour to make them seem more miraculous.”
The Father describes artificial minerals and cements; plants that grow without seed; dwarfing and giantism of trees; grafts that produce fruits of different flavors; fermentation that improves wines; bread made from other grains; meats preserved for long periods; drinks that induce sleep or wakefulness; medicines that prolong life; surgical operations that cure diseases; the imitation of birds in flight; submarines for underwater travel; belts that help swimming; clocks that run perpetually; perpetual motion devices; cyphers and codes that are unbreakable; and even “perspective-houses” where images are projected and illusions created. The tone is one of calm authority — these are not fantasies but actual working technologies in Bensalem. Yet the Father also adds a striking qualification: his last-mentioned category is “houses of deceits of the senses,” where the college deliberately creates illusions and wonders. The purpose, he explains, is not to deceive the people but to understand the difference between natural marvels and artificial tricks, so that the Bensalemites are never fooled by false miracles. The entire catalog is organized around the principle that knowledge is power — every natural process that is understood can be harnessed for human benefit. The Father concludes by noting that Salomon’s House has these inventions and many more. When the narrator asks whether they reveal all their discoveries to the state, the Father explains that they do reveal some, but keep others secret. The college has its own arcane knowledge, which it shares only when the times are ready. This final note adds a layer of political wisdom: even the most benevolent scientific institution must exercise prudence in how it releases its discoveries.
The Blessing and the Vision
We reach the final scene of *The New Atlantis*, which functions as a benediction upon the entire enterprise of the new science. The Father of Salomon’s House dismisses the narrator with a blessing, but not before revealing one more essential element of the institution’s practice.
“And when he had said this, he stood up; and I, as I had been taught, kneeled down; and he laid his right hand upon my head, saying: ‘God bless thee, my son; and God bless this relation which I have made. I give thee leave to publish it for the good of other nations; for we here are in God’s bosom, a land unknown.’ And so he gave me his blessing.”
The Father blesses the narrator and grants him permission to publish the account of Bensalem for the good of other nations. This is a crucial narrative device: the very text we are reading is that published account, and thus the work itself becomes a vehicle for spreading the knowledge of Bensalem’s institutions to Europe. The blessing carries the weight of the entire Baconian project — that the secrets of organized science should be shared, not hoarded, for the relief of the human condition. The Father’s final words — “we here are in God’s bosom, a land unknown” — locate Bensalem as both a real place and a symbolic one. It is hidden from the rest of the world, but its existence is now revealed to the reader. The implication is clear: what Bensalem has achieved over 1,900 years, Europe might achieve in a much shorter time, if only it will adopt the same methods and institutions. The narrative ends abruptly at this point — Bacon never completed *The New Atlantis*, and the work concludes with the blessing and the promise of publication. Yet the fragment is complete in its essential message: the utopian vision of a society organized around coordinated, cumulative, and applied scientific research is not merely a dream but a blueprint. The “College of the Six Days’ Works” — named after the six days of creation, when God made the world — is the human counterpart to divine creation: a systematic effort to understand and recreate the works of nature through disciplined inquiry. The work thus ends not with a conclusion but with a commission: the reader is now the one who must carry the knowledge of Bensalem into the world.
