*ia PREFACE 



2) Conjugate and civil knowledge (pp. 190- 

 219). 



(1) Conversation or Behaviour (p. 191). 



(2) Negotiation or Business, including also 



Architecture of Fortune (p. 192). 



(3) Government (p. 217). 



11, Divinity, sacred and inspired [as distinct 

 from Divine philosophy or Natural theology] 

 (pp. 221-34). 



Like all great philosophers. Bacon took long to 

 mature his works. From his youth upwards he had 

 been thinking about philosophy, knowledge, learning. 

 When, at the age of 16, he was an undergraduate at 

 Cambridge, he became dissatisfied with the philosophy 

 of Aristotle, ' for the unfruitfulness of the way ' ^ ; and 

 as a young man of 25 he had commenced a philosophy 

 of his own, styled Temporis Partus Maximtis. In 1592 

 (aet. 32) he wrote to Burghley, ' I have taken all 

 knowledge to be my province,' and in that year the 

 ' Praise of Knowledge ' in a ' Triumph ' given by 

 Essex before the Court bears the stamp of Bacons 

 mind and style. In 1597 (aet. 37j appeared his Essays, 

 of which there were only ten in the first edition ; 

 while half of those — namely, on Studies, Discourse, 

 Regiment of Health, Factions, and Negotiating— were, 

 as it were, notes for the larger work on all learning 

 which was to follow eight years later. After many 

 years, therefore, of preparation, at length in 1605 

 (aet. 45), in the prime of his life, and in the first 

 sunshine of the patronage of King James I, Bacon 

 published the Advancement of Learning. It is indeed 

 a work which is not merely the expression of a 

 mature mind, but also a kind of summing-up of the 

 Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century. 



Large as is its scope, the Advancement was itself 

 destined, if not designed, to form the first part of an 

 even larger scheme — the regeneration of all the 



* Rawley's Life of Bacon. 



