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The Non-Political Past in Bacon's Theory of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Arthur B. Ferguson
Arthur B. Ferguson*
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

Surveying the state of historical knowledge in his day, Francis Bacon noted with concern that, in contrast to ecclesiastical history and political history, both of which were already “extant,” the history of learning and the arts was “wanting.” Without it, he said, the history of the world is like the statue of Polyphemus without the eye: “that feature being left out which most marks the spirit and life of the person.” Whereupon he proceeded to give the history of learning and the arts a place of its own in the scheme of historical knowledge, and for the first time in English writing. All of which is surely well known; but its significance in relation both to the historical thought of the later Renaissance and to that of Bacon himself has not received quite the attention it deserves. This is not, of course, surprising. Serious as he believed the lack of such a history to be, Bacon himself continued to follow the common Renaissance prejudice in favor of political history — his “Civil History, properly so-called, whereof the dignity and authority are preeminent among human writings.” And in his own relatively brief forays into the formal writing of history he reverted to a more or less sophisticated brand of “politic” history. What has tended to be overlooked is the close relationship his theory of a history of learning and the arts bears to his entire project for the reorientation of learning and, in particular, to the historical critique he in fact made of traditional scholarship. His theoretical category remained, it is true, just a bit too narrow to accommodate the breadth of his own historical reflection. History, to him, still meant a formal literary genre. Taken together, however, his theory and practice should reveal something of importance about his historical perspective, to say nothing of that of his age.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , November 1974 , pp. 4 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1974

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References

1. De Augmentis Scientiarum, The Works of Francis Bacon, eds., Spedding, James, Ellis, R. L., and Heath, D. D., 14 vols. (London, 1857–1874), VIII, 418Google Scholar. All references will be from this edition of Bacon's works unless otherwise indicated.

2. Ibid., p. 421.

3. This version is SirElyot's, Thomas: The Boke named the Gouernour, ed. Croft, H. H. S. (2 vols., London, 1880), I, 82Google Scholar.

4. For a brief survey of the literature from this particular point of view, see Ferguson, A. B., “Circumstances and the Sense of History in Tudor England: the Coming of the Historical Revolution”, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, III, ed. Headley, J. M. (Chapel Hill, 1968), pp. 170–205Google Scholar. More intensive studies bearing on the subject may be found in Levy, F. J., Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, 1967)Google Scholar, Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar, Kendrick, T. D., British Antiquity (London, 1950)Google Scholar, Jones, R. F., The Triumph of the English Language (Stanford, 1953)Google Scholar, Ferguson, , The Articulate Citizen and the English Renaissance (Durham, N. C., 1965)Google Scholar.

5. Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, (1570), English Works, ed. Wright, W. A. (Cambridge, 1904), especially pp. 286–300Google Scholar; A Report and Discourse … of the affaires and state of Germany … (1570), English Works, especially pp. 126 ffGoogle Scholar.

6. Thomas Blundeville, The true order and Methode of uryting and reading Hystories (1574), ed. Dick, H. G., Huntington Library Quarterly, III, (January, 1940), 149–70Google Scholar, an adaptation of two treatises by Patrizzi and Acontius. On the political preoccupation of Italian historians, see Gilbert, Felix, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-century Florence (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar.

7. It may be, as F. S. Fussner suggests, that Bacon did not think of History as a discipline at all, but as part of a broader scheme for the reorientation of learning. The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought, 1580-1640 (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; see ch. X for a discussion of Bacon's philosophy of history.

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10. Cf. Sidney's somewhat parallel argument in The Defence of Poesie.

11. Bacon, Francis, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII (1622), ed. Levy, F. J. (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

12. See below pp 13 ff.

13. De Augmentis, VIII, 453–54Google Scholar. On the psychological aspect of Bacon's work, see Nadel, G. H., “History as Psychology in Francis Bacon's Theory of History”, History and Theory, V No. 3 (1966), 275–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Bacon, De Augmentis, VIII, 409Google Scholar.

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16. Bacon, De Augmentis, VIII, 418–19Google Scholar.

17. Ibid., VIII, 413-15; Parasceve, VIII, 363-64. For the place of music and the representative arts in Bacon's scheme for a natural history, see Parasceve, VIII, 378Google Scholar.

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20. For the Society of Antiquaries and scholarship thereon, see Levy, Tudor Historical Thought, ch. IV.

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23. Bacon, De Augmentis, VIII, 419–20Google Scholar; cf. Advancement, VI, 183.84Google Scholar.

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25. Ibid., VI, 119-20.

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35. Those tendencies were nevertheless capable of being conditioned by the processes of time: the “Idols of the Market-Place” have “crept into the understanding through the alliance of words and names.” Novum Organum, VIII, 86Google Scholar.

36. Farrington, , Philosophy, p. 40Google Scholar.

37. Bacon, Refutation, p. 109; cf. Novum Organum, VIII, 101ffGoogle Scholar.

38. Bacon, Refutation, p. 109.

39. Ibid., p. 112.

40. Ibid., pp. 122 ff.

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42. Bacon, Advancement, VI, 146 ff, 391–92Google Scholar; De Augmentis, VIII, 103-05, 109-11, 127–28Google Scholar. See also Rabb, T. K., “Francis Bacon and the Reform of Society”, Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe, ed. Rabb, T. K. and Seigel, J. E. (Princeton, 1969), pp. 169–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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44. Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum (1609). On the importance of this work, see Anderson, F. H., Francis Bacon, His Career and Thought (Los Angeles, 1962), p. 57Google Scholar; Rossi, Bacon, ch. iii; Farrington, , Philosophy, pp. 48–50Google Scholar. Cf. Lemmi , C. W., The Classical Dieties in Bacon (Baltimore, 1933)Google Scholar.

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47. Ibid., 220-21.

48. One need only cite the examples of Spencer and Sidney. See Caspari, Fritz, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar.

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50. On Hooker, see Ferguson, “Richard Hooker” ibid. On Raleigh, see Works, ed. W. Oldys and T. Birch, 7 vols. (London, 1829), Pref., I, i, 11-15, II, xix, 6.

51. Masculine Birth of Time, p. 59; cf. Farrington, p. 18.

52. See Jones, Triumph of English.

53. See Ferguson, A. B., “The Historical Thought of Samuel Daniel: A Study in Renaissance Ambivalence”, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXII, (April-June, 1971), 185–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.