The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon

was at hand. Within a week one of the Fathers of Solomon’s House was due to visit their city, a thing that had not occurred for twelve years. It must be remembered that Bensalem was a great kingdom. Its territories consisted of an island-continent with a coastline of five thousand six hundred miles, together with smaller islands lying off-shore. We have no information how many other cities it contained, but they cannot have been few. Besides, the fellows or fathers of Solomon’s House were but thirty-six in all, and they had many duties. Of these one is thus described: ‘We have circuits or visits of divers principal cities of the kingdom; where, as it cometh to pass, we do publish such new profitable inventions as we think good. And we do also declare natural divinations of diseases, plagues, swarms of hurtful creatures, scarcity, tempests, earthquakes, great inundations, comets, temperatures of the year, and divers other things; and we give counsel thereupon what the people shall do for the prevention and remedy of them.’ We are not told for which of these many purposes the Father had come to visit the port where the English sailors had come ashore. But we can understand that it was a great privilege for them to be admitted in a body to his presence and for a private audience to be granted to the one of their choice. We also understand what Bacon meant by applied science. Bensalem was a welfare state.

The coming of the Father to the city was in state. He arrived, gorgeously attired, in a horse-litter, preceded by fifty young men in white satin coats and white silk stockings, with blue velvet shoes and hats; while behind his chariot went all the officers and principals of the companies of the city. Bacon loved a bit of pageantry. But these splendours are to honour the office not the man himself. He is described simply as ‘a man of middle stature and age, comely of person, and with an aspect as if he pitied men’; and when the English visitors are admitted to his presence he is found seated, indeed, on a throne richly adorned, but on a level with themselves. The contrast between the glory of the office and the humility and humanity of the man is intentional. Bacon wanted for science a central place in the constitution of the kingdom; but the ideal scientist must himself be humble and

compassionate.

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