The Proficience and Advancement of Learning

The Advancement of Learning,
by Francis Bacon

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Title: The Advancement of Learning
Author: Francis Bacon

Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5500] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 16, 2002]
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Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

INTRODUCTION.

"The TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and
aduancement of Learning, divine and humane. To the King. At London.
Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne
Gate in Holborne. 1605." That was the original title-page of the book
now in the reader's hand--a living book that led the way to a new world
of thought. It was the book in which Bacon, early in the reign of James
the First, prepared the way for a full setting forth of his New Organon,
or instrument of knowledge.
The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle had
written the doctrine of propositions. Study of these treatises was a chief
occupation of young men when they passed from school to college, and
proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the Seven Sciences.
Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College, Cambridge, felt

the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth. He was the son
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and was born at
York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561. His mother
was the Lord Keeper's second wife, one of two sisters, of whom the
other married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir
Nicholas Bacon had six children by his former marriage, and by his
second wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about
two years the elder. The family home was at York Place, and at
Gorhambury, near St. Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its
modern style, Bacon afterwards took his titles of Verulam and St.
Albans.
Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge,
when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve. Francis
remained at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley,
his chaplain in after-years, reports of him that "whilst he was
commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship
hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike of the
philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to
whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of
the way, being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong
for disputatious and contentions, but barren of the production of works
for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his
dying day." Bacon was sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris with the
ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet, to begin his training for the public
service; but his father's death, in February, 1579, before he had
completed the provision he was making for his youngest children,
obliged him to return to London, and, at the age of eighteen, to settle
down at Gray's Inn to the study of law as a profession. He was admitted
to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about that time, at the age of
twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of a New Organon that
should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a little Latin tract,
which he called "Temporis Partus Maximus" ("The Greatest Birth of
Time").
In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as
member for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat

for Taunton.