Bacon's Essays Are Based on Wide Knowledge of the World

BACON’S ESSAYS REVEAL HIS WIDE EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD: The essays of Bacon cover a wide range and they certainly provide abundant proof of the vast experience and worldly wisdom of the man who wrote them. Many of the observations that Bacon makes in the course of his essays are based directly upon his own experience in his life. These essays are, indeed, the quintessence of Bacon’s personal experience of life and his thinking and meditations in relation to those experiences. A critic puts the whole case thus: “No one can study them with care without discovering that every paper is the fruit of his own experience distilled through the alembic of his marvelous mind. There is scarcely a single essay, which, in some sentence or another, does not point its affirmation and conclusions by some subtle reference, expressed or understood, to his life. It is one of the few volumes, which may be distinguished as world-books---- books that are more cosmopolitan than patriotic adapted to not an age but to all time. In it, supreme intellectual force is united to protean variety of interests and sympathies. All types and temperaments of humanity may find some affinity to themselves therein. Easy would it have been for Bacon to make his volume merely a study of English traits, of local men and manners. In that case, however, none but Englishmen could have adequately entered into its spirit and sentiments. But now its sphere of influence is well nigh co-terminus with the world’s boundaries, since none can fail to enjoy where all are able to understand.” Two points emerge from this quotation: Firstly, that the essays are based upon Bacon’s own experience of life; and, secondly, that Bacon’s observations regarding human nature are wide-ranging and of universal application. Bacon did not follow any strict principles in life. His actions were always guided by desire for self-advancement. The essays provide clear evidence that Bacon does not advocate any ideal morality and that his wisdom is purely what is known as worldly wisdom, that is, the kind of wisdom that enables a man to attain worldly success. Bacon’s essays deal as much with public as with private life discussing great place, nobility, seditions and troubles, empire, as well as, truth, death, parents and children, marriage and single life, revenge, love, wisdom and studies. Bacon illustrates his generalizations through the references to history; mythology; the Bible and his own experiences. It is to be noted that the value of Bacon is more in psychology than in any other field as far as the essays are concerned. He is an unperceivable analyst of human nature and he sends his probing arrow into every heart. On the stalest subject in the world, we find him refreshingly original. “He that hath wife and children,” he observes in the essay, Of Marriage and Single Life, ‘hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief”. Commenting on love, he reminds us that a lover always uses extravagant language in praise of his beloved. He utters an indisputable psychological truth in the same essay when he says that the arch flatterer is a man’s self, but that the lover is an even greater flatterer: “for there was never a proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved.”

1

On advantage of friendship, Bacon tells us in the essay, Of Friendship, is “the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.” “Those who have no friends to whom they can open their hearts are cannibals of their own hearts.” In the essay, Of Suitors, Bacon makes some very shrewd observations about patrons, petitioners, and those who undertake suits. The essay is an excellent study of human psychology. Bacon tells us that many suits are undertaken by wicked persons who do not intend to have them granted. Sometimes a man’s intention in undertaking a petitioner’s suit is to frustrate a rival petitioner or to supply information to the government against the petitioner or to use the suit as a pretext for gaining an advantage for him. In the essay, Of Travel, Bacon makes useful suggestions. A traveler should get some knowledge of the language of the country, which he wants to visit. He must be accompanied by an attendant or tutor who knows that country. Let him carry with him a guidebook to give him the necessary information about that country. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay long in one city or town, and so on and so forth. There are the political essays, which also contain a lot of wisdom derived by Bacon from his actual observation or from his personal experience. In politics, Bacon shows himself as a conservative. He says that an excellent recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth. His essay on gardens is regarded as one of his finest because here we get not only a breath of fresh air but also the fragrance of numerous flowers and fruits. Conclusively, it can be rightly said that there is no keener observer of life and affairs than Bacon ever lived. Bacon’s essays are the expression of a lifetime of experience in the world of men and affairs. His essays reveal his wide experience and knowledge of the world.

WRITTEN & COMPOSED BY: PROF. A. R. SOMROO M. A. ENGLISH, M. A. EDUCATION CELL: 03339971417

2