"Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia."

Describing Machiavel

Machiavelli as He Is in the Works of Francis Bacon

"O come in equivocator."

D P Hurley
1998

Introduction

Whereas Shanti Padhi, in his book Serpent and Columbine, refers to Bacon as a Machiavel of style' and speaks of finding in him 'a splendid oscillation in contrary directions', Victoria Kahn sees him as working 'an extension of rhetorical method into new areas of investigation' and claims that Bacon's appreciation of Machiavelli's pragmatism is inseparable from an appreciation of his rhetorical method'. Machiavelli's influence on political discourse was not to 'supplant rhetoric with a more realistic view of politics' but to make politics 'more deeply rhetorical than it had been in the earlier humanist tradition'. Indeed, according to Kahn, Machiavelli 'invested rhetorical resourcefulness and its ethical instability with clear conceptual lineaments, giving the double face of rhetorical politics a single name, so that its name came to signify two-facedness'. Thus, what Padhi sees as oscillation on Bacon's part between separate viewpoints is seen by Kahn to be the articulation of a single Machiavellian discourse which is deliberately and necessarily equivocal.

That Bacon has an affinity with Machiavelli I do not dispute. I do think, however, that this affinity needs to be re-examined starting from a consideration of how Bacon actually cited Machiavelli, presented him to the reader, and commented on him. I believe that the evidence will indicate shortcomings in the arguments of those who, instead of interpreting Bacon's reading of Machiavelli as a qualified reading, 'find him sliding deeper and deeper into positions of moral compromise and Machiavellian quicksands'. In short, I agree with Felix Raab that 'Bacon certainly had ethical standards, which he makes explicit and which differed from those of Machiavelli'. It is these differences which qualify his reading of Machiavelli, and which are manifest in the aims of his project; the expansion of knowledge 'for the relief and improvement of man'.

It is the purpose of this essay to begin that process of re-examination, approaching the subject via Padhi's claims in the hope that this method will avoid that diffusion of which, according to Montaigne, Lucan spoke:

Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densae
Occurant silvae spatio diffusus inani...

In examining Padhi's claims I will draw on the Advancement of Learning from which he quotes. Those sections that Padhi discusses happen to concern citations from The Prince. After I have dealt with Padhi and The Prince I will consider parallels between Machiavelli's method and that of Bacon before considering the other places in the Advancement of Learning and the Essays in which Bacon cites the Discourses. In conclusion I will consider some of the implications of my findings in relation to Kahn's argument.

If, as Kahn claims, appreciation of Machiavellian pragmatism and appreciation of his rhetorical method are inseparable, then a qualified appreciation of the former might be expected to manifest itself in a qualified appreciation of the latter. If, however, no such manifestation occurs, then it might be that Andrew Barnaby's criticism of Kahn's argument has some value:

She does not distinguish... between 'Machiavellianism' as an available language of political thought ... and Machiavelli's writings as texts that were read and subsequently rewritten... to help resolve conceptual problems within later political debates.

Bacon either refers to Machiavelli or quotes him directly, and in so doing either names him or does not name him. Space does not permit me to delineate every place where Bacon refers to Machiavelli. Bacon inserted old material into new works so that similar references to Machiavelli can be found in different works. For example, Machiavelli's discussion of the ancient saying that '"money was the sinews of war"' appears in Of The True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain and reoccurs in the Advancement of Learning, De Augmentis Scientiarum, and in the Essays. All earlier references to Machiavelli that are cited in Spedding's indexes reoccur in these three works. Of the ten references to Machiavelli that I have traced in the Advancement of Learning, six reoccur in De Augmentis Scientiarum. There are only two references to Machiavelli that I have found in De Augmentis Scientiarum which are not repeated elsewhere. Any direct reference to Machiavelli which does not find its way into either or both of these two works occurs in the Essays. I can therefore cover most ground if I concentrate mainly on the Advancement of Learning and on the Essays.

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