"Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia."

Janus of Imagination:

Francis Bacon's Theory of Imagination

and

The Wisdom of the Ancients

Write the vision, and make it plaine upon tables, that he may runne ¹ that readeth it.

D P Hurley
1998

Introduction

Iago swore by Janus, and so might Bacon have done, for that god presided over his philosophy as well as his birth. Because Bacon sought to match the process of induction 'to the process of perception of natural phenomena', and because a central part of that process involved a preliminary search for parallels in nature and society, and, furthermore, because Bacon saw science as an operation of collective disclosure and prudential secretion, and looked back beyond the Greeks to find inspiration for a new age, he seems to 'stand like Janus in the field of knowledge'. John C. Briggs writes in Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature:

The doubleness that accompanies the Baconian idea of experience is more than a useful means to an end. It is a discovery of the truth of things.

De Sapientia was written in Latin and translated into English by Sir Arthur Gorges for publication in 1617. It draws on thirty-one fables of 'primæval antiquity' to provide illustrations of Bacon's natural, moral, and political philosophy. In the dedication to the Earl of Salisbury Bacon likens 'parable' to an 'arc' which preserves 'the most precious portions' of antediluvian wisdom (neatly combining his classical subject with a biblical allusion). Yet the wisdom which Bacon uncovers always accords with his own viewpoint, and, as that viewpoint changes, so too does his reading of fables.

Bacon does not shrink from presenting anachronistic readings as is most strikingly seen, for example, in his treatment of the fable of Diomedes, which becomes the matrix for a discussion of religious intolerance and persecution of his own times. In both professing that ancient wisdom was embedded in fables while extracting from those fables his own interpretations Bacon was following a path beaten by numerous Renaissance mythographers. Indeed, as Charles W. Lemmi has shown, he had been following more closely in the footsteps of his predecessors than some readers realised.

The writing of De Sapientia signified the resolution of an internal struggle concerning the status of ancient fable. I suggest that Bacon had come to accept the view that fables did indeed contain ancient wisdom, but that much of that wisdom remained closed to subsequent readers. He believed also that fables had a double function - to illuminate no less than to conceal - and he had decided that it was acceptable for him to employ those fables in order to convey his philosophy to a wider audience.

The progression of Bacon's thought can be traced through his works from his writing of the unpublished Temporis Partus Masculus some time before 1603. The pages of Temporis are few and violent. Bacon vigorously attacks the various schools of thought which stand in the way of scientific progress and he sets his face firmly towards the light of nature. Yet although he seems to reject the use of ancient fable his tone is not so trenchant as elsewhere in the work and betrays signs of the approaching accommodation.

I sketch the outlines of Bacon's struggle with regard to fable, and his Janus-like resolution of that struggle (as expressed in the Preface to De Sapientia) in the last chapter of this dissertation. It seems to me pertinent to approach an analysis of the Preface via an overview of the Janus-like aspects of Bacon's philosophy so that when we arrive we shall recognize from what has gone before the appropriacy of his resolution to his philosophy and see that the two are of a piece, just as the 'sister faces' of Janus grace a single herm.

On our journey through the small portion of the Baconian labyrinth that can be compassed in these few words I shall employ Janus as a useful 'clue', opening to us various aspects of Baconian doubleness, whether it be the doubleness of opposition; or the presentation of opposites to a middle position (a kind of fabulous syllogism); or the presentation of a resemblance between things as it were between 'sister faces'; or even an opening up of the four doors of the temple; or a closing down and secreting of one face behind another. It seems to me convenient also to use some of the fables found in De Sapientia by way of illustration not only of Baconian thought but also of the convenience of fable for the purpose of illustration.

The nature of our subject requires that we not only seek to locate the contemplative, imaginative, Orphic aspect of Bacon's thought, but that we also consider Bacon's view of imagination in terms of what it was and what it could do (for contemplation and action should be united, a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter) so that when we emerge from the labyrinth we may apply the hard won sagacity of experience to the educing of Bacon's argument from the Preface of De Sapientia.

Abstract

Chapter 1 discusses Bacon's adoption of Orpheus as his symbol of philosophy. Orpheus, who on the one hand represents the interpretation of nature and on the other the rhetorical presentation of that process, offers different faces to different audiences. Yet Orpheus himself represents only one aspect of Bacon's method, and cannot deliver the Great Instauration without the virtues of fortitude and labour that belong to Hercules.

Chapter 2 examines Bacon's theory of imagination-the-nuncius who runs between 'Sense' and 'Reason', and imagination-the-free-citizen who serves both as an instrument of divine illumination and as a secreter of truths. The relation of imagination to rhetoric in discovering parallels in nature and society - which then act as heuristic guides to scientific investigation - is also explored and the relation of this 'Sagacious Experience' to the 'Interpretation of Nature' assessed.

Chapter 3 shows how Cassandra's divinatory imagination was traduced by her plainness of speech and assesses the relevance of this to Bacon's hopes for a 'rational divination' of nature.

Chapter 4 considers Bacon's anatomizing of both society and nature. There are secret laws, the forms of nature, which God has planted as a code, which it is man's privilege to discover and put to ameliorative use. The connection between the anatomizing or decoding process and Bacon's biblical exegesis is also glanced at.

Chapter 5 contemplates the development of Bacon's attitude to fable and the insinuative strategy which he employs in De Sapientia and argues that a distinction between his attitude to the wisdom of the ancients and his attitude to the prudential use of fable as a vehicle for his own views should be maintained.