BACON’S ESSAYS REVEAL HIS WIDE

EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE

WORLD:
The essays of Bacon cover a wide range and they certainly provide abundant proof of the vast
experience and worldly wisdom of the man who wrote them. Many of the observations that
Bacon makes in the course of his essays are based directly upon his own experience in his life.
These essays are, indeed, the quintessence of Bacon’s personal experience of life and his
thinking and meditations in relation to those experiences. A critic puts the whole case thus:
“No one can study them with care without discovering that every paper is the fruit of his own
experience distilled through the alembic of his marvelous mind. There is scarcely a single
essay, which, in some sentence or another, does not point its affirmation and conclusions by
some subtle reference, expressed or understood, to his life. It is one of the few volumes,
which may be distinguished as world-books---- books that are more cosmopolitan than
patriotic adapted to not an age but to all time. In it, supreme intellectual force is united to
protean variety of interests and sympathies. All types and temperaments of humanity may
find some affinity to themselves therein. Easy would it have been for Bacon to make his
volume merely a study of English traits, of local men and manners. In that case, however,
none but Englishmen could have adequately entered into its spirit and sentiments. But now
its sphere of influence is well nigh co-terminus with the world’s boundaries, since none can
fail to enjoy where all are able to understand.” Two points emerge from this quotation:
Firstly, that the essays are based upon Bacon’s own experience of life; and, secondly, that
Bacon’s observations regarding human nature are wide-ranging and of universal application.

Bacon did not follow any strict principles in life. His actions were always guided by
desire for self-advancement. The essays provide clear evidence that Bacon does not advocate
any ideal morality and that his wisdom is purely what is known as worldly wisdom, that is,
the kind of wisdom that enables a man to attain worldly success.

Bacon’s essays deal as much with public as with private life discussing great place,
nobility, seditions and troubles, empire, as well as, truth, death, parents and children,
marriage and single life, revenge, love, wisdom and studies. Bacon illustrates his
generalizations through the references to history; mythology; the Bible and his own
experiences.

It is to be noted that the value of Bacon is more in psychology than in any other field
as far as the essays are concerned. He is an unperceivable analyst of human nature and he
sends his probing arrow into every heart. On the stalest subject in the world, we find him
refreshingly original. “He that hath wife and children,” he observes in the essay, Of Marriage
and Single Life, ‘hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great
enterprises, either of virtue or mischief”. Commenting on love, he reminds us that a lover
always uses extravagant language in praise of his beloved. He utters an indisputable
psychological truth in the same essay when he says that the arch flatterer is a man’s self, but
that the lover is an even greater flatterer: “for there was never a proud man thought so
absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved.”

1
 On advantage of friendship, Bacon tells us in the essay, Of Friendship, is “the ease and
discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and
induce.” “Those who have no friends to whom they can open their hearts are cannibals of
their own hearts.”

In the essay, Of Suitors, Bacon makes some very shrewd observations about patrons,
petitioners, and those who undertake suits. The essay is an excellent study of human
psychology. Bacon tells us that many suits are undertaken by wicked persons who do not
intend to have them granted. Sometimes a man’s intention in undertaking a petitioner’s suit
is to frustrate a rival petitioner or to supply information to the government against the
petitioner or to use the suit as a pretext for gaining an advantage for him.

In the essay, Of Travel, Bacon makes useful suggestions. A traveler should get some
knowledge of the language of the country, which he wants to visit. He must be accompanied
by an attendant or tutor who knows that country. Let him carry with him a guidebook to give
him the necessary information about that country. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay
long in one city or town, and so on and so forth.

There are the political essays, which also contain a lot of wisdom derived by Bacon
from his actual observation or from his personal experience. In politics, Bacon shows himself
as a conservative. He says that an excellent recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an
equitable distribution of wealth.

His essay on gardens is regarded as one of his finest because here we get not only a
breath of fresh air but also the fragrance of numerous flowers and fruits.

Conclusively, it can be rightly said that there is no keener observer of life and affairs than
Bacon ever lived. Bacon’s essays are the expression of a lifetime of experience in the world of
men and affairs. His essays reveal his wide experience and knowledge of the world.

WRITTEN & COMPOSED BY:

PROF. A. R. SOMROO

M. A. ENGLISH, M. A. EDUCATION

CELL: 03339971417