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Elective English–II

Notes and political leaders today. Like nearly all public figures, he was controversial. His chaplain
and first biographer William Rawley declared him “the glory of his age and nation” and
portrayed him as an angel of enlightenment and social vision. His admirers in the Royal
Society (an organization that traced its own inspiration and lineage to the Lord Chancellor’s
writings) viewed him as nothing less than the daring originator of a new intellectual era. The
poet Abraham Cowley called him a “Moses” and portrayed him as an exalted leader who
virtually all by himself had set learning on a bold, firm, and entirely new path:
Bacon at last, a mighty Man, arose
Whom a wise King and Nature chose
Lord Chancellour of both their Lawes. . . .

The barren Wilderness he past,
Did on the very Border stand
Of the great promis’d Land,
And from the Mountains Top of his Exalted Wit,

Saw it himself and shew’d us it. . . .
Similarly adulatory if more prosaic assessments were offered by learned contemporaries or
near contemporaries from Descartes and Gassendi to Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle. Leibniz
was particularly generous and observed that, compared to Bacon’s philosophical range and
lofty vision, even a great genius like Descartes “creeps on the ground.” On the other hand,
Spinoza, another close contemporary, dismissed Bacon’s work (especially his inductive theories)
completely and in effect denied that the supposedly grand philosophical revolution decreed
by Bacon, and welcomed by his partisans, had ever occurred.
The response of the later Enlightenment was similarly divided, with a majority of thinkers
lavishly praising Bacon while a dissenting minority castigated or even ridiculed him. The
French encyclopedists Jean d’Alembert and Denis Diderot sounded the keynote of this 18th-
century re-assessment, essentially hailing Bacon as a founding father of the modern era and
emblazoning his name on the front page of the Encyclopedia. In a similar gesture, Kant dedicated
his Critique of Pure Reason to Bacon and likewise saluted him as an early architect of modernity.
Hegel, on the other hand, took a dimmer view. In his “Lectures on the History of Philosophy”
he congratulated Bacon on his worldly sophistication and shrewdness of mind, but ultimately
judged him to be a person of depraved character and a mere “coiner of mottoes.” In his view,
the Lord Chancellor was a decidedly low-minded (read typically English and utilitarian) philosopher
whose instruction was fit mainly for “civil servants and shopkeepers.”
Probably the fullest and most perceptive Enlightenment account of Bacon’s achievement and
place in history was Voltaire’s laudatory essay in his Letters on the English. After referring to
Bacon as the father of experimental philosophy, he went on to assess his literary merits,
judging him to be an elegant, instructive and witty writer, though too much given to “fustian.”
Bacon’s reputation and legacy remain controversial even today. While no historian of science
or philosophy doubts his immense importance both as a proselytizer on behalf of the empirical
method and as an advocate of sweeping intellectual reform, opinion varies widely as to the
actual social value and moral significance of the ideas that he represented and effectively
bequeathed to us. The issue basically comes down to one’s estimate of or sympathy for the
entire Enlightenment/Utilitarian project. Those who for the most part share Bacon’s view that
nature exists mainly for human use and benefit, and who furthermore endorse their opinion
that scientific inquiry should aim first and foremost at the amelioration of the human condition
and the “relief of man’s estate,” generally applaud him as a great social visionary. On the

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