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"But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch
He is mere man, and in humility

Neither may know God nor mistake himself;
I point to the immediate consequence
And say, by such confession straight he falls
Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,
Made to know that he can know and not more:
Lower than God who knows all and can all,
Higher than beasts which know and can so far
As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,

Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;
While man knows partly but conceives beside,
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, this converting air
Into a solid he may grasp and use,

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."

56: 29. maintained by a man.

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Compare Tennyson's In

"Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven,

And love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;

"And I am so much more than these

As thou, perchance, art more than 1,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
And I would set their pains at ease.

"So mayst thou watch me where I weep,

As, unto vaster motions bound,

The circuits of thine orbit round

A higher height, a deeper deep."

Compare also Maurice Maeterlinck's Our Friend the Dog: "He occupies in this world [the brute creation] a preeminent posi

tion, enviable among all. He is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible, unexceptionable and definite god. He knows to what to devote the best part of himself. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a perfect, superior, and infinite power in the darkness, amid successive lies, hypotheses, and dreams. That power is there, before him, and he moves in its light."

6

56:30. melior natura. Better nature. See page 57, line 2. 57:11. Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero, greatest of Roman orators, B.c. 106-43. "Quam volumus," etc. Esteem ourselves never so highly, Conscript Fathers, yet we cannot compare with the Spaniards in numbers, the Gauls in bodily strength, the Carthaginians in cunning, the Greeks in art, nor yet with our own Italians and Latins in the homely and native sentiment peculiar to this land and people; but we have surpassed all other peoples and nations in piety and religion, and in our attestation of the one great principle, that all things are subject to the government of the Immortal Gods.'

XVII. OF SUPERSTITION

(1612. Revised and enlarged, 1625)

57:22. contumely. Mockery.

57:24. Plutarch. A celebrated Greek biographer, born in Boeotia, at, Charonea. About A.D. 50-120.

58:3. Saturn. Or, Kronos, a god who, according to the Greek tradition, devoured his children.

58:13. Augustus Cæsar.

58 14. civil. Peaceful.

58:16. primum mobile.

See note on page 5, line 24.

See note on page 47, line 4.

ravisheth. Sweeps around with.

58:19. in a reversed order. Other than in the natural manner

58:21. Council of Trent. A famous general council of the Roman Catholic Church, assembled at Trent by Pope Paul III. in 1545, and not concluding its work, owing to delays and suspensions, until 1563. It discussed and settled many matters of doctrine and reform, as deciding the attitude of the Church toward the principles of Luther and the Reformation. school men. A name applied to the philosophers of the Middle Ages, whose attempt, in their Scholasticism,' was to buttress the principles and practices of the Church with the authority of Aristotle.

66

58:23. eccentrics and epicycles. According to the Ptolemaic system," says Abbott, "the planets were supposed to move in (1) circles whose centres themselves moved in (2). circles. The former circles were called 'on-circles,' or epicycles; the latter, having their centre at a little distance from the earth, were called eccentric ('from-centre ').”

58:24. engines of orbs. described phenomena.

Orbits invented to accord with the

58:25. no such things. Compare Milton's Paradise Lost, Book VIII, itself based on the Ptolemaic astronomy, for artistic

reasons:

"How they will wield

The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

58:29. causes. High Churchmen and Puritans are both indicated here.

59: 16. in avoiding superstition. Another of Bacon's unforgettable proverbs, testifying to the balance of his mind and the justness of his temper.

5919. would. Ought to.

59:21. reformer. These last remarks were added in 1625, and show Bacon's dislike of the Puritan programme. Compare the Introduction.

XVIII. OF TRAVEL

(1625)

Compare with this essay Emerson's remarks on travel in his essay entitled Culture, beginning "I am not much an advocate for travelling." Each writer gravely, Emerson the more directly, strikes a balance.

601. allow. Endorse; approve.

60: 10. diaries. Perhaps a reference to the log-book.

60:17. consistories. Meetings; councils.

60:21. disputations. Formal debates, or polemic theses. 60 25. burses. Bourses; exchanges.

6111. card. Chart.

61: 18. adamant. Magnet; lodestone. 61 20. diet. Eat.

61: 26. with much profit. One is reminded of the worldly wisdom of Polonius as he bids Laertes farewell. — Hamlet, Act I, Sc. 3.

62:1. suck the experience. Gather information concerning other countries by virtue of contact with those who have travelled therein.

62 4. the life. The person in flesh and blood.

62: 16. advised. Discreet; thoughtful.

62: 17. tell stories. A common failing of travellers in all times.

62: 19. prick in. Plant.

XIX. OF EMPIRE

(1612. Revised and enlarged, 1625)

62:24. matter of desire. Subjects of further ambition.

63: 2. Scripture. See Prov. xxv. 3.

639. toys. Trifles.

63:10. order. Society or institution.

63: 12. Nero. Emperor of Rome, A.D. 54-68. Originally a quiet and studious youth, he became the most dissolute and cruel of tyrants. He killed his mother, Agrippina; divorced his wife, Octavia; is reputed to have burned Rome in A.D. 64, that he might be so inspired to celebrate musically the destruction of Troy; cruelly murdered many Christians and political and private enemies; and finally slew himself A.D. 68. 63: 13. Domitian. Emperor of Rome, a.d. 81–96. a second Nero. Assassinated A.D. 96.

He was

63 14. Commodus. Emperor of Rome, A.D. 180-192, a sensual and vicious man.

63:15. Caracalla. Joint emperor of Rome with Geta, his brother, whom he murdered. Gibbon describes him as "the Assassinated A.D. 217.

common enemy of mankind."

63:25. Alexander the Great. Son of Philip of Macedonia, he became a world-conqueror, and died at Babylon, B.C. 323. Diocletian. Emperor of Rome, A.D. 284–305. He lived several years after his abdication of the throne with his colleague, Maximian. He was an able soldier and a fair statesman. Charles V. Abdicated in 1556, and entered upon a life of asceticism. He even had his own obsequies performed before him a month prior to his death.

63:28. is not the thing he was. Compare Essay XI, page 33, line 16.

63:29. temper. Blending of qualities, or of 'contraries.' 64: 1. distemper. Refusal of the 'contraries' to mix.

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