In the New Atlantis, a ship’s crew in the South Seas land on a island containing a remarkable institution known as Solomon’s House. This turns out to be a research establishment, where scientists work together to embody Bacon’s utilitarian ideal of science as the extension of men’s power over nature for the betterment of the human race. Their projects include plans for telephones, submarines, and aeroplanes. The president of the institute described its purpose thus^
The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bound of Human Empire, to effecting of all things possible. (B, 480)
Published by Rawley after Bacon’s death in 1627, this work also is incomplete because it was supposed to include an account of the legal and political constitution of the idealized island of Bensalem. It is complete from the perspective of natural philosophy, however, because Bacon has given a full account of Solomon’s House, the scientific society of the island. The New Atlantis is not a direct contribution to one of the parts of the great instauration. Rather, it is a fable used by Bacon in his attempt to popularize the new science by providing a vision of the practical results that would follow from successful inductive and experimental practices.
The structure of the story itself requires little exposition, although some significant elements may be pointed out. First, as a literary work, the title indicates Bacon’s intention to update the fable of Atlantis as described by Plato in Critias and Timaeus. Although the new Atlantis (Bensalem) is quite different from the original, Bacon appears to be expressing a belief in the existence of lost civilizations and lost wisdom, much as Plato had done. Such a belief can be likewise be seen in Bacon’s speculations here about the Americas of the distant past. The fable also imitates Thomas More’s Utopia (to which Bacon alludes), as well as the popular travel literature of Bacon’s day. There is an interesting variation, however, on the typical encounter of European sailors with “savages”: here the sailors themselves are inferior to the citizens of the advanced civilization that they have encountered.
Secondly, the New Atlantis provides commentary on and criticism of some of the social and moral practices of seventeenth-century Europe. A few of them also reflect on episodes from Bacon’s own life. The citizens and officials of Bensalem reject being ‘twice-paid’, for example indicating that taking money for a job in addition to salary (such as in accepting bribes) was seen as dishonorable. Bribery, although common in Bacon’s England, was the offense for which he was impeached. Another personal element is introduced after the account of the Feast of the Family when Joabin criticizes the European custom of a man’s marrying late in life and doing so as a business arrangement, which again is something that Bacon had done. Perhaps these sections represent expressions of regret. Bacon had learned from his own experience that these practices came with a heavy price.
From the standpoint of natural philosophy, the account of Solomon’s House is most significant, and the structure of the fable seems to indicate that it is the focus of the work as well. Solomon’s House is brought up twice prior to its full discussion. First it is introduced as a device to help explain how the island became Christian, and then it figures in the explanation of how the islanders remain unknown and yet possess knowledge of the rest of the world. Finally, the story builds up to the day when one of the Fathers of Solomon’s House visits the city. In the descriptions of his entrance, Bacon indicates the supreme importance of the man by making use of both royal and religious symbolism. The Father arrives with great ceremony as a royal personage might, but he also wears or is accompanied by priestly trappings such as his tippet and crosier. When the narrator meets with him in a private audience a few days later, the narrator bows and kisses the hem of the Father’s tippet, who in turn apparently blesses the narrator.
New Atlantis seems to have been written about 1623, during that period of literary activity which followed Bacon’s political fall. None of Bacon’s writings gives in short space so vivid a picture of his tastes and aspirations as this fragment of the plan of an ideal commonwealth. The generosity and enlightenment, the dignity and splendor, the piety and public spirit, of the inhabitants of Bensalem represent the ideal qualities which Bacon the statesman desired rather than hoped to see characteristic of his own country; and in Solomon’s House we have Bacon the scientist indulging without restriction his prophetic vision of the future of human knowledge. No reader acquainted in any degree with the processes and results of modern scientific inquiry can fail to be struck by the numerous approximations made by Bacon’s imagination to the actual achievements of modern times. The plan and organization of his great college lay down the main lines of the modern research university; and both in pure and applied science he anticipates a strikingly large number of recent inventions and discoveries.
Reputation and Cultural Legacy
If anyone deserves the title “universal genius” or “Renaissance man” (accolades traditionally reserved for those who make significant, original contributions to more than one professional discipline or area of learning), Bacon clearly merits the designation. Like Leonardo and Goethe, he produced important work in both the arts and sciences. Like Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, he combined wide and ample intellectual and literary interests (from practical rhetoric and the study of nature to moral philosophy and educational reform) with a substantial political career. Like his near contemporary Machiavelli, he excelled in a variety of literary genres – from learned treatises to light entertainments – though, also like the great Florentine writer, he thought of himself mainly as a political statesman and practical visionary: a man whose primary goal was less to obtain literary laurels for himself than to mold the agendas and guide the policy decisions of powerful nobles and heads of state.
- The Advancement of Learning, 1605
- Apophthegms, New and Old, 1625
- The Charge of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, the King's Attorney-General, Touching Duels, 1614
- De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1623
- De Sapientia Veterum Liber, 1609
- Essays, 1625
- The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, 1622
- The New Atlantis, 1626
- Novum Organum, 1620
- Sylva Sylvarum, 1627
- Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature, 1604
- The Wisdom of the Ancients, 1619
1. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy www.iep.utm.edu/
2. Bacon Francis “Selected Philosophical Works”
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. www.biography.com
5. Encyclopaedia Brittanica http://www.britannica.com/
6. Kenny Anthony “The Rise of Modern Philosophy”