Five-minute digest
Essays
Summary
Bacon's Essays, or Counsels, Civil and Moral, grew over almost thirty years from a slim volume of ten pieces in 1597 to fifty-eight in the final edition of 1625, the text used here. Bacon borrowed the name essay from Montaigne, but where Montaigne explored himself at leisure, Bacon compressed observation into dense, balanced sentences meant for men of business and government. The early essays are almost strings of aphorisms; later revisions add examples from Roman history, the Bible and recent European politics, and sometimes soften or complicate the first verdicts. The book opens with Of Truth, which begins with jesting Pilate and admits that most people love lies because a mixture of falsehood adds pleasure, before praising the inquiry, knowledge and belief of truth as the sovereign good. Of Death argues that men fear death as children fear the dark, that every strong passion can overcome that fear, and that it is as natural to die as to be born. Many essays deal with private life and the passions: revenge is a kind of wild justice that law should weed out; adversity reveals virtue as crushed spices release their scent; parents' joys and griefs are secret; he who has wife and children has given hostages to fortune; envy is the most importunate passion and has something of witchcraft in it; love is better confined to the stage. A large group treats public life, the essays that made Bacon's reputation as a political moralist: great place, nobility, seditions and troubles, empire, counsel, delays, cunning, innovations, dispatch, faction, judicature and the true greatness of kingdoms, all written from the perspective of a royal servant who knows how courts work and how they fail. Of Simulation and Dissimulation and Of Cunning analyse concealment with unsentimental precision. A third group touches body and mind. Of Regiment of Health advises self-observation as the best physic, gradual change of habit, moderation of passions and a physician who knows the patient. Of Friendship describes the friend as the only remedy that opens the heart, doubling joys and halving griefs. Of Deformity, perhaps prompted by the hunchbacked Robert Cecil, links bodily difference to boldness and ambition. Of Youth and Age, Of Nature in Men and Of Custom and Education consider temperament and habit. Of Studies, among the most famous, ranks books as tasted, swallowed or chewed and digested and prescribes particular studies for particular defects of mind, as exercises are prescribed for bodily ills. Of Gardens and Of Building show Bacon's pleasure in design. The book ends with Of Vicissitude of Things, on the cycles of religions, wars and learning, and an unfinished fragment on fame.
Top Lessons
Observe your own body before trusting general rules
Of Regiment of Health makes a person's own observation of what helps and harms them the best physic, while warning that strength in youth hides debts paid in age. Bacon recommends gradual change of habits and a physician who knows the patient as well as the disease.
A friend is a remedy no apothecary sells
Of Friendship describes the unburdening of the heart to a friend as a cure for the 'stoppings and suffocations' of the mind, and adds that friendship clarifies judgment and gives faithful counsel. Isolation, Bacon says, makes men cannibals of their own hearts.
Read for use, and choose studies to correct the mind
Of Studies separates reading for delight, ornament and ability, and treats different disciplines as exercises for different weaknesses of mind. Mathematics fixes a wandering wit; law trains a mind that cannot connect cases.
Worldly wisdom has a moral cost to be counted
Many essays teach how to handle power, envy and dissimulation, sometimes with cool approval of concealment. Read alongside Bacon's own fall for corruption, they show both the usefulness and the limits of prudence without principle.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer”
“Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves”
“MEN fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other”
“Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible”
“It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other”
“REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out”
“Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed”
“HE THAT hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief”
“you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend”
“for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves”
“a man's own observation, what he finds good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health”
“As for the passions, and studies of the mind; avoid envy, anxious fears; anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated”
“Physicians are, some of them, so pleasing and conformable to the humor of the patient, as they press not the true cure of the disease; and some other are so regular, in proceeding according to art for the disease, as they respect not sufficiently the condition of the patient”
Frequently cited
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”
“Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like”
Medical Lens
Several essays give a compact picture of early modern lay medicine. Of Regiment of Health is a Renaissance guide to self-care: individual observation of what agrees with one's body, gradual change of habits, Celsus's rule of alternating contraries, avoidance of harmful passions, and a balanced choice of physician; its remark that some physicians please the patient while others follow the art without regard to the person remains a teaching point on clinical judgment. Of Friendship uses the materia medica of the day (sarsaparilla, iron, sulphur, castoreum) to argue that confiding in a friend relieves the mind as purges relieve the body. Of Death is an early essay on the experience of dying and the fear of it. Of Deformity's claim that physical difference shapes character reflects period assumptions that should be read critically, not as clinical insight. Bacon's own interest in prolonging life appears more fully in his History of Life and Death (1623).
- Essay I, Of Truth
Illusions and flattering hopes as supports of morale; without them minds would be 'full of melancholy and indisposition'.
- Essay II, Of Death
Fear of death compared to children's fear of the dark; the deathbed's groans and convulsions; passions that overcome the fear of dying; death as natural as birth.
- Essay XXVII, Of Friendship
Friendship as the remedy for 'stoppings and suffocations' of the heart; contemporary remedies for liver, spleen, lungs and brain; those without friends as cannibals of their own hearts; a physician unacquainted with the patient's body may cure the disease and kill the patient.
- Essay XXX, Of Regiment of Health
Self-observation as physic, gradual change, Celsus's alternation of fasting and full eating, waking and sleep; passions to avoid; choosing a physician of middle temper.
- Essay XXXI, Of Suspicion
Suspicions as defects 'not in the heart, but in the brain' that dispose wise men to irresolution and melancholy, remedied by learning more.
- Essays XLII–XLIV, Of Youth and Age, Of Beauty, Of Deformity
Stages of life and bodily appearance as influences on character; deformity as a spur to boldness and ambition.
- Essay L, Of Studies
Exercises for bodily ills (bowling for the stone, walking for the stomach) as a model for studies prescribed for defects of the mind.