Notes on Francis Bacon’s first letter to the Earl of Rutland

Organisation by paragraph: followed by analysis of each paragraph.

Organisation by paragraph:

1. Introduction: from particular cause (travel) to general subject (cultura animi)

A. Cultura animi
2. Divisio: “The gifts or excellencies of the mind are the same as those are of the body;
2.1 Beauty [tied to variety of behaviour],
2.2 Health [tied to subduing passions], and
2.3 Strength [tied to courage, public spiritedness, activity, magnanimity].”
3. 3.1. how to attain 2.1
3.2 how to attain 2.2
3.3 how to attain 2.3 (clear judgment, custom of good action: preconditions cardinals plus
liberality)

B. from general to particular: what travel can do towards cultura animi

4. Divisio: how travel conduces to cultura animi

4.1 how travel conduces to 2.1
4.2 how travel conduces to 2.2
4.3 how travel conduces to 2.3
4.4 how travel conduces to knowledge, highest good of all, barring good itself.
5. explanations: how travel conduces to medicining of mind
5.1 travel and 2.1 beauty of mind
5.2 travel and 2.2 health of mind
5.3 travel and 2.3 strength of mind
5.4 travel and knowledge [subject of 6-9, transition to C]
: Knowledge as precondition of cardinal virtues, plus liberality and religion

C. knowledge and the good life

6. Divisio of kinds of knowledge [i. civic and ii. religious];
7. first digression: on ii. religious knowledge (and why FB won’t address it)
6.1 Divisio within i. civic knowledge is attained by
(a) study
(b) conference
(c) observation
8. second digression: defence of knowledge v political criticism (best men are not
wisest, wisest not best)
6.1.a the means and benefits of study (learning, memory, ability to ask good questions)
6.1.b the means and benefits of conference (many experts, …)
 6.1.c the nature and benefits of observation
9. the goal of knowledge and virtue, against empty ostentation [final caution]

10. conclusion (plus 11, postscript on 2.2 v 2.3)

***

Analysis by paragraph:

1. Intro: from particular (travel) to general (cultura animi)

“To travel is ordinarily: to see the beauty of many cities, know the
manners of the people of many countries, and learn the language of
many nations.”

Divisio: Some of these [goods] may serve for ornaments, and all of them for
delights [Of Studies]

Ornaments:

The Socratic, inner turn: “the greatest ornament is the inward beauty of the
mind,”

Delights: the Socratic, inner turn:

“The greatest delight is to feel oneself better every day, therefore your
Lordship's end and scope should be that which in moral philosophy we call
culturi animi, the tilling and manuring of your own mind.

A. General cultura animi

2. Divisio: “The gifts or excellencies of the mind are the same as those are
of the body ; (2.1) Beauty, (2.2) Health, and (2.3) Strength.”

2.1 Beauty of mind:

Shown by “graceful and acceptable forms, and sweetness of behaviour; and

they that have that gift cause those to whom they deny anything to go better
contented away, than men of contrary disposition do them to whom they
grant.”
2.2 “Health consisteth in an unmovable constancy and a freedom from
passions, which are indeed the sicknesses of the mind.” Classic Stoicism

2.3 “Strength of mind is that active power which maketh us perform good
things and great things, as well as health and even temper of mind keeps from
those that are evil and base.” Magnanimity: the public-directedness, active
side to virtue or goodness in Bacon

Nearly none have all; some have one; less have two; most have none at all.

3.
3.1 Link beauty of mind: how to attain good forms in the mind: “to make the
mind itself expert”

3.1.1. “The first way to attain experience of forms or behaviour”: but

behaviour as garment, and the mind is what is important, as body to clothing.

3.1.2.The second way is “by imitation”, “and to that end good choice is to be
made of those with whom you converse; therefore your Lordship should affect
their company whom you find to be worthiest …”

3.2 “To attain to health of mind, we must use the same means that we do for
the health of our bodies …”

i.e. “to take observation what diseases we are aptest to fall into, and to
provide against them, for physic hath not more medicines against the diseases
of the body, than reason hath preservatives against the passions of the mind.”

neoStoic sounding: “no way to attain to this even temper of the mind but to be
without passions, and so they sold their goods to ransom themselves from
their evils”.

Proof: fear of death: yet heathens, martyrs, lovers have braved death; thus it is
want of understanding to fear death.

3.3 “ways how a man may attain to the active power … strength of mind”
Harder: beauty may be got by education; health and evenness by observation;

3.3.1 Strength requires basis in nature, if not there, impossible;

Since “for the virtues which are proper unto it are liberality or
magnificence, and fortitude or magnanimity”
But some are by nature covetous or cowardly, like ploughing on rocks.
3.3.2 If natural basis is there, must be ripened by
3.3.3 (a) clearness of judgment and (b) custom of well-doing
a. - Clearness of judgment:
i. produces liberality: “it teacheth men to esteem of the goods of
fortune not for themselves, for so they are but jailors to them, but
for their use, for so they are lords over them …”
- “and it makes us to know that it is beatius dare quam accipere,
[better to give than to receive] the one being a badge of sovereignty,
the other of subjection.”
- ii. Produces courage: “it leadeth us to fortitude, for it teacheth us
that we should not too much prize life which we cannot keep, nor
fear death which we cannot shun …”
- pain and danger be great only by opinion, and that in truth nothing is
fearful but fear itself;
b. custom makes the thing used natural to the user.
b.i. custom and liberality: “those that give with judgment are not only
encouraged to be liberal by the return of thankfulness from those to
whom they give, but find in the very exercise of that virtue a delight to
do good.”
b.ii. “And if custom be strong to confirm any one virtue more than
another, it is the virtue of fortitude”: why?
- this virtue “makes us triumph over the fear which we have conquered,
and anew to challenge danger which happily we have encountered, and
hold more dear the reputation of honour which we have increased.”

End first part of letter: general

- to make yourself an expert man, and what are the general helps
which all men may use which have the said desire
 B. 4. helps in travel for cultura animi: divisio
4.1 (link 2.1, 3.1 beauty of mind) when you see infinite variety of
behaviour and manners of men,
- you may choose and imitate the best;
4.2 (link 2.2, 3.2, health of mind) when you see new delights which you
never knew, and have passions stirred in you which before you never
felt
- you shall both know what disease your mind is aptest to fall into, and
what the things are that breed the disease…
4.3 (link 2.3, 3.3, courage) when you come into armies, or places where
you shall see anything of the wars;
- you shall both confirm your natural courage, and be made more fit for
true fortitude, which is not given to man by nature, but must grow out
of discourse of reason ;

4.4 [new, stands alone] “and lastly, in your travel you shall have great
help to attain to knowledge, which is not only the excellentest thing in
man, but the very excellency of man.”

5.1 on behaviors, these warnings:

5.a (link 2.1, 3.1) “In manners or behaviour, your Lordship must not be
caught with novelty, which is pleasing to young men”;
5.b “nor infected with custom, which makes us keep our own ill graces,
and participate of those we see every day”;
5.c “nor given to affection (a general fault of most of our English
travellers), which is both displeasing and ridiculous.”

5.2 “In discovering your passions and meeting with them”

5.2.a “give not way to yourself nor dispense with yourself in little,
though resolving to conquer yourself in great”;
- “for the same stream that may be stopped with one man's hand at the
spring head, may drown whole armies when it hath run long”, etc.

5.3: fortitude: being in the wars.

 5.3.a “think it better at the first to do a great deal too much than
anything too little”; why?
- “reputation once gotten is easily kept, but an evil impression conceived
at the first is not quickly removed.”

5.4 knowledge: which stands alone: “The last thing that I am to speak of, but
the first that you are to seek, is conceived knowledge”; why?
- knowledge is precondition of cardinal virtues. How?
5.4.1 “without it there can be no fortitude, for all other darings come of
fury, and fury is a passion, and passions ever turn into their contraries;
and therefore the most furious men, when their first blaze is spent, be
commonly the most fearful ;
5.4.2 “without it there can be no liberality, for giving is but want of
audacity to deny, or of discretion to prize” [note this is added to the
cardinals by Bacon];
5.4.3 “without it there can be no justice, for giving to a man that which is
his own is but chance, or want of a corrupter or seducer;
5.4.4 “without it there can be no constancy or patience, for suffering is
but dullness or senselessness” [another Stoic-like addition to the
cardinals];
5.4.5 “without it there can be no temperance, for we shall restrain
ourselves from good as well as from evil, for that they that cannot
discern cannot elect or choose”;
5.4.6 [third addition to cardinals, true religion] “nay without it there can
be no true religion, all other devotion being but blind zeal, which is as
strong in heresy as in truth.” [i.e. knowledge is also the precondition true
religion]

6. divisio: not speak of all kinds of knowledge (“To reckon up all parts of
knowledge, and to show the way to attain to every part, is a work too great for
me at any time, and too long to discourse at this”)
- “therefore I will only speak of such knowledge as your Lordship should have
desire to seek, and shall have means to compass.” [apostrophe]
[- civil v religious knowledge]
 7. [digression] forbearing religious knowledge as above his ken, and
appealing to the Lord’s education.
- “I will only say this ; as the irresolute man can never perform any action
well, so he that is not resolved in soul and conscience, can never be
resolute in anything else.”

6.1. divisio: “that civil knowledge, which will make you do well by yourself, and
do good unto others, must be sought by study (1), by conference (2), and by
observation (3).”

8. digression 2: defence of knowledge against civic/political criticism

“that the greatest clerks are not the wisest men.”
8.1 “… this want of learning hath been in good countries ruined by civil
wars, or in states corrupted through wealth or too great length of peace.
- In the one sort men's wits were employed in their necessary defence, -
- in the other drowned in the study of artes luxuria.
- But in all flourishing states learning hath ever flourished.
- states like bodies: exercise/war needed, at the same time as they
should “be kept from too violent or continual outrages which spend
their best spirits.”
- a proverb hailing from an unhealthy state, when men were
uneducated.
- v. Scientia non habet inimicum prater ignorantem. [Science has no
enemies but the ignorant man].

6.1.a study: “All men that live are drawn either by (a) book or (b) example”
a. and in books your Lordship shall find … rules prescribed by the wisest
men,
b. and examples left by the wisest men that have lived before us.

a.i. - advice: “Therefore knowledge is to be sought by your private

study; and opportunity you shall have to study, if you do not often
remove from place to place, but stay some time and reside in the best.”
a.ii. - advice on course of study, choice of books:
 -“ you must first seek to have the grounds of learning, which are the
liberal arts; for without them you shall neither gather other knowledge
easily, nor make use of that you have”;
- use “studies of delight but sometimes for recreation, and neither
drown yourself in them, nor omit those studies whereof you are to have
continual use.”
- “Above all other books be conversant in the Histories, for they will best
instruct you in matter moral, military, and politic, by which and in which
you must ripen and settle your judgment.”

6.1.a.iii. goal of study: a. to conceive; b. to remember.

a. “to read with somebody that may give you help, … carry over with you
some good general scholar, or make some abode in the universities
abroad …”
b. writing, notes and abridgments of what you read; and “meditation”.

6.2 conference as second help to understanding:

6.2.1- its especial value: “he that hath not studied knows not what to
doubt nor what to ask: but when the little I had learned has taught me
to find out mine own emptiness, I profited more by some expert man in
half a day's conference, than by myself in a month's study.”
6.2.2- converse with experts; many on one subject to gather dissenting
opinions (“by hearing many, you shall, by seeing the reasons of one,
confute the reasons of the other, and be able to judge of the truth ...
your wit shall be whetted with conversing with many great wits, and you
shall have the cream and quintessence of every one of theirs.”);
- 6.2.3 advice: be neither (a.) superstitious, nor (b.) believing all you hear
… , nor (c.) too desirous to contradict.
a. ‘For of the first grows a facility to be led into all kind of error; since
you shall ever think that he that knows all that you know, and somewhat
more, hath infinite knowledge, because you cannot sound or measure
it.”
c. from this “grows such a carping humour, as you shall without reason
censure all men, and want reason to censure yourself.”
 6.2.4 summary/climax: “rather go a hundred miles out of the way to
speak with a wise man, than five to see a fair town.”

6.3. third help to knowledge: observation, v mere seeing. What is it?

6.3.1: “The use of observation is in noting the coherence of
- causes and effects,
- counsels and successes,
and the proportion and likeness between
- nature and nature,
- force and force,
- action and action,
- state and state,
- time past and time present.”

6.3.2 effect: “The observation of proportion or likeness between one

person or one thing and another:
- makes nothing without example, nor nothing new:
- examples may not prove, but they make things plain that are proved;
- “when circumstances agree, and proportion is kept, that which is
probable in one case is probable in a thousand, and that which is reason
once is reason ever.”

9. of the true end of knowledge: “that the true end of knowledge is clearness
and strength of judgment, and not ostentation or ability to discourse”
- critique of empty talkers, rhetoric alone: “but God knows they have gotten
little that have only this discoursing gift; for though, like empty casks, they
sound loud when a man knocks upon their outside, yet if you pierce into them
you shall find them full of nothing but wind.”
- this holds in knowledge, the virtue of knowledge, being prudence, and all
virtues:
i.e. “we should both seek and love virtue for itself, and not for praise; for, as
one said, turpe est proco ancillam sollicitare, est autem virtutis ancilla laus: it is
a shame for him that woos the mistress to court the maid, for praise is the
handmaid of virtue.”
10. conclusion: “I will here break off, for I have both exceeded the convenient
length of a letter, and come short of such a discourse as this subject doth
deserve…”

NB Postscript on Baconian distinction between health and strength of mind:

“the quality of health and strength, as I have set them down, are not only
unlike but mere contrary, for the one binds in the mind and confines it, the
other raises and enlarges it.”
See Bacon’s device “On love”: as greater than courage: the latter protects, the
former expands the soul.