BACON’S WORLDLY DESIRES AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

BY

Muhammad Yousaf Gabriel

Oqasaorg@gmail.com

Macaulay has expressed his opinion that Bacon unworthy employed his time in woolsack and the council board, and that if Bacon had employed all his time in study, and that his civil ends had been moderate, he would have fulfilled a large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have led his followers, not only to the verge but, into the heart of the promised land. He would not merely have pointed out, but would have divided the spoil. And above all, he would have left not only a great, but a spotless name.

            Now this is a very difficult postulate, and it is not easy to at once assent to it. Bacon would have been only, what he was. Sir James Jeans in his great work, “The Mysterious Universe”, tells us and very truly that, “ life of the kind we know can only exist under suitable conditions of light and heart; we only exist ourselves because the earth receives exactly the right amount of radiation from the sun; upset the balance in either direction, excess or defect, and life must disappear from the earth. And the essence of the situation is that the balance is very easily upset”.

                                     (The Mysterious Universe page 10)

            Applying this proportion to Bacon’s case, it may be concluded, that “philosophy can emanate from a mind in a suitable atmosphere of particular circumstances. Bacon formed his philosophy because his mind received the exact direction from the conditions in which it found itself. If the situation had been changed, the philosophy in the mind of Bacon, if it had not completely died out, at least its form would have been greatly affected”.

            Had Bacon renounced his worldly ambition, and had he repaired to the university of Cambridge or some monastery, to devote his life to mere study, it appears highly probable that he would have renounced the thought of writing a philosophy of the world, for, the fire of worldly ambition having been quenched, the exclusive philosophy of the world would have appeared to him in a form not so pleasant to any self-abnegating convert, and he therefore might probably have undertaken instead the reform of Christian Church which at that time stood in great necessity of purgation. If, however, the thought of his worldly philosophy was too strongly fixed in his mind, and he inspite of the changed state of his mind, as well of environment had intended to write his philosophy of the world, he might have written five or six or seven volumes instead of the two which he could have written in the atmosphere of his professional drudgery. But what different the addition of volumes would have made to his philosophy, which had been completely and fully treated in those two volumes, which he had produced. And it is hardly probable that his philosophy written in the cloister would have had the same gusto and the same intensity of thought and expression as is to be met with in his two volumes written in a state of mind which could only be likened to alive volcano of worldly ambition, hissing, sizzling, puttering, smoking and belching fire, and recording its agonies as a philosophy. Hungry souls cry, and Bacon’s soul convulsed with sever pangs of hunger for wealth and power, and its terrible cries assumed the forms of worlds which Bacon’s had printed on paper, and lo, it was Bacon’s philosophy of the world.

            All these, however, are mere conjectures. The fact only is that Bacon did produce a philosophy.A philosophy which completely changed this world, and reversed the order of man’s mind.

            The Question arises, why Bacon could not complete his new Atlantis, just as Plato before him had not been able to complete his CRITIAS. Reasons of time or circumstances may be attributed to their failure in completing these works, but it is to be wondered how Bacon would have described his city in his new Atlantis. Merely the house of Solomon, and the brew houses, the perfume houses and the dispensatories would not do. These things did even exist in pre-Bacon and pre-modern days. Bacon would have been executed to describe his city as it appeared as a result of the changes produced by his philosophy of science and progress. How Bacon could have been expected to describe and portray the London of modern times in its mechanical and electrical perspective. Electric lights, motor cars, aeroplanes, factories, ships, railways, trains, trams, and all its distinctively characteristic features of modernity. It is for the prophets of God to see far if in future with surety, and a prophet of God surely Bacon was not.

            The disquieted mind of the West, disgusted with the unbearably hypocritical, tyrannical, world-loving hierarchies, despotic monarchies, tortuous poverty, superstition, ignorance and disease,  Smouldered, yearning impatiently after the luxurious and sumptuous feast of nature, tired of the long Christian fast, sighed, groaned, and bewailed. Millions of souls, in the western Christendom, sighing, moaning, groaning, wailing day and night in misery for relies, till their sighs, and groans mingling and mixing in a continued process, eventually assumed a form of an apparition, that appeared as an elfish child, called Francis Bacon and endowed with precociously mature and strong intellect, delicate health and unusual gravity of carriage.

            It was known that nothing in the heart of this apparition existed but a burning desire of wealth, and power and ostentation, so that all the three, that is the desire of wealth, and of power and of ostentation vied with each other in his heart for precedence. Religion being susceptible of superstition and feared as a handicap to the attainment of worldly wealth and power and ostentation was to be expelled from such a heart, though denied not by the pen or the tongue. The philosophy which emanated from such a heart was essentially to be a philosophy such as the Baconian philosophy is, namely a philosophy of dominion over nature for material exploitation, and wealth accumulation and physical comforts, and renunciation of moral philosophy.A philosophy therefore certainly as an antithesis to the philosophy of revealed religion. No compromise, no reconcilement is thus possible between the philosophy of revealed religion and the philosophy which Bacon formed. Machiavelli (1469-1527) appears to be the model of Bacon in the attainment of his objet that is wealth and power. Anything which appeared as adverse to the attainment of the worldly object was to be sacrificed, even if it were personal honour, moral obligation, or the sacred obligation of friendship and gratitude, or religious values nothing would count when the worldly objects were at stake.

            Bacon, his philosophy, and his followers are all at one with each other in almost every feature. Moral, spiritual and religious values as were considered by the pre-modern people were to be cast away as detrimental to progress. Fruit and utility as was taught by Baconian philosophy was the sole aim and the object of man’s life and exertions. Man's purpose was to accumulate riches of the world, and no honour was in anything except riches, or in those values which helped in gaining the riches, and maintaining the riches and multiplying the riches. Bacon’s heart and his followers' heart and the heart of Bacon’s philosophy, throbbed together for wealth, and burned together for power, and yearned together after ostentation.  Together, and indeed together with their hearts throbbing in unison, will they go into the flames of the atomic hell, the terminus of the road of Bacon’s philosophy of atomism. Greed of wealth was inherent in the very nature of Bacon, and was naturally inherent in the philosophy of Bacon, and the secret hand of providence helped Bacon by throwing him into a career of poverty and obscurity as incentive for a struggle out of the dungeon in which he had found himself fallen, and subsequent entry into the paradise of wealth, power and ostentation.

            Of all the philosophies of life that were ever given, the philosophy of Bacon it is that is exclusively based on this world and its wealth, excepting perhaps the philosophy of Epicurus etc., thus the philosophy of Bacon stands in direct opposition to every other philosophy both of revealed religions, and others given by philosophers like Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. The philosophy of Budha and the philosophy of Hindu religion also basically differ from the philosophy of Bacon.All the philosophies, whether they are based exclusively on spiritualism. e.g. Christian, or whether they have formed a balance between the spiritual and the material e.g. Islamic.Are opposed to Bacon’s philosophy, since the philosophy of Bacon is exclusively based on materialism. People in this world belonging to every religion consider that if the element of religion is inserted in the philosophy of modern progress, the resultant form is quite compatible with their respective religion. If such people, and they comprise the entire population of the world, will not try to clear their misunderstanding, and will not realise the truth that there is not a revealed religion in this world which can go parallel to this abominable creed that is this system of modern progress, time will teach them a lesson in the flames of the atomic hell which they will never forget, and that will be their first and their last lesson in their life, and therein they will be broiled in the fire of atomic bombs and the atomic radiations, and not only they themselves but they shall see their children, their relatives, friends, cattle, pets and all, being broiled in the agonising fires of atomic nature but what we want to point out here is that if this creed of wealth-accumulating and lechery and its consequences are evil in the sight of God, Bacon shall receive a share of every man’s evil and will stand with a huge load of crime and evil on his back on the day of judgement. One philosopher, however, in the history of philosophy who gave a philosophy of the physical pleasure, namely Epicurus in Ancient Greece seen to stand with Bacon in the love of worldly pleasures, but his creed disappeared after a spell of disgraceful existence. Individually, the lust of pleasure may be seen distributed in the world, particularly in this modern age which basically is an age of lust for worldly pleasure and physical comfort. However, this is a quality inherent in human nature, and needs suppression.