The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Atlantis, by Frances Bacon

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Title: The New Atlantis

Author: Frances Bacon

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #2434]
Release Date: December 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE NEW ATLANTIS

BY

SIR FRANCIS BACON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Bacon's literary executor, Dr. Rowley, published "The New Atlantis" in
1627, the year after the author's death. It 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 apace
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. In still another way is
"The New Atlantis" typical of Bacon's attitude. In spite of the
enthusiastic and broad-minded schemes he laid down for the pursuit of
truth, Bacon always had an eye to utility. The advancement of science
which he sought was conceived by him as a means to a practical end the
increase of man's control over nature, and the comfort and convenience
of humanity. For pure metaphysics, or any form of abstract thinking
that yielded no "fruit," he had little interest; and this leaning to