The Advancement of Learning, Book I

As men who climb a hill behold
The plain beneath them all unrolled,
And thence with searching eye survey
The crowds that pass along the way,
So those on wisdom's mount who stand
A lofty vantage ground command.
They thence can scan the world below
Immersed in error, sin, and woe;
Can mark how mortals vainly grieve,
The true reject, the false receive,
The good forsake, the bad embrace,

The substance flee, the shadows chase.

But none who have not gained that height

Can good and ill discern aright.

72 31.

Decayed. Brought to decay.
Statuaes. The old spelling.
Leese of

Wrong. Injury.

They generate. Cf. Milton's Areopagitica: 'Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.' Still. Ever.

73 6. Some of the philosophers. 'Bacon is referring here to the doctrine of Aristotle and his followers. Plato had taught the immortality of the individual soul. This Aristotle denied. All the lower functions of the soul, he said, are destroyed by death; but the highest function of the soul, viz., the creative intellect, is indestructible. Therefore though after death the individual ceases to exist, yet the creative intellect is not destroyed, but is resumed into the universal mind' (Selby).

73 12. Affection. Wright thinks the true reading is probably affections; cf. 1. 15.

73 17.

73 19.

73 20.

In the beginning. Cf. 44 8 ff., 51 14 ff.

73 26. Æsop's cock. Phædrus 3. 12. Bacon adduces it again in Essay 13, and in The True Greatness of Britain. Wright compares Commines, Bk. 5, chap. 2.

73 27. Midas. Ovid, Met. 11. 153 ff.

73 30. Paris. Cf. Euripides, Trojan Women 924 ff., and see Tennyson's Oenone.

73 31. Agrippina. The mother of Nero, Agrippina II, is meant. Tacitus, Annals 14. 9: Occidat dum imperet. On this awful sentence De Quincey remarks (Cæsars, Chap. 5): 'There is a remarkable story told of Agrippina, that, upon some occasions, when a wizard announced to her, as truths which he had read in the heavens, the two fatal necessities impending over her son, -one that he should ascend to empire, the other that he should murder herself, she replied in these stern and memorable words - Occidat dum imperet. Upon which a continental writer comments thus: "Never before or since have three such words issued from the lips of woman"; and in truth, one knows not which most to abominate or admire - the aspiring princess or the loving mother. Meantime, in these few words lies naked to the day, in its whole hideous deformity, the very essence of Romanism and the imperatorial power, and one might here consider the mother of Nero as the impersonation of that monstrous condition.'

73 33. Ulysses. Homer, Od. 5. 218; Plutarch, Gryll. 1; Cicero, De Oratore 1. 44. Cf. Essay 8.

74 6.

Wisdom is justified of her children. Matt. 11. 19.

Agrippina 73 31.

Cæsar, see Augustus Cæsar, Julius

Cæsar.

Agrippa (Herod Agrippa II) 56 28. Cæsars 17 12.

Albertus Magnus 35 11.

Alexander the Great 11 18, 38 29,

591 ff., 60 10 ff., 61 2 ff., 62 8 ff.,
63 2, 64 6, 65 31, 66 33, 67 23,
72 25.

Alexander Severus 13 6, 57 20.
Antipater 60 30, 11 25 ff.

Antoninus 57 17 ff., 59 35.

Antoninus Pius 56 15.
Anytus 11 3.

Apollo 52 7, 54 7, 73 28.
Apollonius 55 28.
Archimedes 37 2.
Aristippus 26 30 ff.

Aristotle 11 19, 31 23, 35 16, 371 ff.,
40 31, 41 8, 59 8 ff., 60 20, 61 3,

63 3.

Artaxerxes 66 2.

Ascham 29 21.

Atalanta 43 7.

Atticus 14 27, 22 12.

Cain 46 6.

Callisthenes 59 10, 61 7 ff.
Car 29 21.

Caracalla 57 18.
Cardan 35 11.

Carneades 10 22.
Cassander 60 29.

Cassius 209.

Castor 18 1.

Cato the Censor 10 21, 16 33.
Cato the Younger 14 32, 21 24,
22 11 ff.

Ceres 52 7.

Cicero 11 20, 14 26, 17 16, 21 24,
22 10 ff., 29 19 ff., 30 14, 41 5, 63 31.
Clement VII 14 24.
Columbus 39 3.

Commodus 53 29, 57 18.

Constantine the Great 56 2.

Craterus 62 7.

Cyrus the Younger 66 2 ff., 72 25.

Augustus Cæsar 2 23, 57 22, 70 6, Darius 59 18, 62 15.

714.

Democritus 37 1, 60 20.

143

Demosthenes 16 10, 21 24, 23 3, 29 22. | Julius Cæsar 3 19, 11 19, 199, 227,

Diogenes 26 24, 60 4 ff.

Diomedes 60 27.

592 ff., 62 25, 63 4, 64 20 ff., 65 4 ff.,

71 4, 72 25.

Dionysius (of Syracuse) 26 30 ff., Junia 20 10.

Jupiter 9 31, 38 19.

Jupiter (planet) 43 1.

Livy 17 14, 191, 38 31.

Lucian 26 2, 38 18.

Lucius Commodus Verus 56 33.
Lucretia 26 12.

Lucretius 71 29.

Luther 28 6.

Machiavelli 18 22.

57 3 ff.
Martial 57 2.

Falinus (properly Phalinus) 667 ff. Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus) 3 21,

Faustina 26 11.

Gilbert 41 3.

Mercury 52 7.

Gordian 13 4.

Gregory the Great 49 30, 55 4.

Guicciardini 14 25.

Hadrian 27 5, 56 5.

Hecuba 26 11.

Helena 26 11.

Heliogabalus 57 19.

Henry, Duke of Guise 62 28.

Hephaestion 62 7.

Heraclitus S 18, 40 17.

Hercules 30 25 ff., 52 3.

Hermes (Trismegistus) 4 1.

Hermogenes 29 19.

Hippocrates 37 1.

72 20.

Metellus 65 11 ff.

Midas 73 27.

Minos 52 3.

Misitheus 13 5.

Moses 46 21 ff.

Muses 44 2, 73 28.

Nero 13 2, 23 9.
Nerva 54 11 ff.

Orpheus 52 22.
Osorius 29 17.

Pan 73 29.

Paris 73 30.

Homer 54 19, 59 16 ff., 60 26, 71 3, Parmenio 61 31, 62 16 ff.

Ixion 14 31.

James I (addressed as Your Maj-

esty) 11 ff., 23 ff., 32 ff., 44 ff.,
17 35, 57 31.

Jason the Thessalian 66 31.
Job 9 12, 47 12.

Julian the Apostate 49 24, 57 7.

Paul 5 14, 7 23, 31 4, 49 18, 56 29.

Phalinus, see Falinus.

Pharnabazus 21 10.

Philip of Macedon 55 19.

Phocion 14 29.

Pius V 13 11 ff.

Plato 2 4, 8 31, 22 2, 25 22, 30 15,

37 1, 40 30, 46 25.

Pliny the Elder 35 11.
Pliny the Younger 55 12.

Socrates 11 4, 17 17 ff., 25 23, 41 31, Virgil 10 30, 17 6 ff., 57 2, 62 34,

Silenus 57 10 ff.

Sixtus, see Sextus.

43 10, 66 1.

48 8 ff., 64 7.

Solomon 59, 62, 7 20, 81, 1920,

68 16, 70 5.

Xenophon 11 24, 30 14, 65 35, 66 2 ff.

« Previous Continue »