The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon

Royal Society has ever occupied in Britain.

James Spedding, the most understanding of all interpreters of Bacon's thought, describes “The New Atlantis’ as ‘a picture of our world as it might be if we did our duty by it’. That is exact. For Bacon, science did not end with books or learned institutions. It was nothing unless it was realized in actual life; and Bacon’s evident intention was to describe such a world. Those who have seen Brecht’s Galileo will understand the difference. Galileo betrayed the truth he knew, and thus gained time to found another branch of science. Had he not done well: Not so in Brecht’s judgment. Galileo had publicly betrayed a cause. For science is not just another book, however good. Science is life. It must be lived or it is nothing. In Francis Bacon’s words, “Science, like religion, is known by its fruits’.

But now let us return to Bacon’s narrative of the discovery of Bensalem. An English ship sets sail into the Pacific from Peru with a supply of victuals for about a year. But when it has sailed West for many months without sighting land, the wind changes and threatens to blow them back to where they came from. From this plight they are rescued by a shift of the wind to the South. After being borne North for a long time, still without finding land, they begin to run out of provisions; they have many sick; they realize what it means to be astray in the greatest wilderness of waters in the world. But they fall to prayer, and are rewarded before long by the sight of land. The details are symbolical. Mankind is sick, hungry, and lost, and will not find a way out of its predicament except by acknowledging a higher power. Soon they approach a small but well-built port, where, after the necessary preliminaries, they are allowed to land. This small port is all they ever see of the great kingdom of Bensalem. They are vouchsafed a glimpse, but no more, of the promised land. But, I suppose, if one wanted to understand the quality of life in a strange land at its average level, a period of residence in a small port should provide a fair sample. Bacon, no doubt, thought of this, and fashioned his tale accordingly. The merits of life in Bensalem are only gradually revealed. Item by item the conviction grows in the minds of the Englishmen that they are in the presence of a civilization materially and morally in advance of

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