Bacon Delia Salter
The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded
Both Cit. The gods give you joy, Sir, heartily! [Exeunt.]
Cor. Most sweet voices! —
Better it is to die, better to starve,
…Rather than fool it so,
Let the high office and the honour go
To one that would do thus. – I am half through;
The one part suffer'd, the other will I do.
[Enter three other Citizens.]
Here come more voices, —
Your Voices: for your voices I have fought:
Watch'd for your voices; for your voices, bear
Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six,
I have seen and heard of; for your voices,
Done many things, some less, some more: your voices:
Indeed, I would be consul.
Fifth Cit. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest
man's voice.
Sixth Cit. Therefore let him be consul: The gods give him joy, and
make him good friend to the people.
All. Amen, Amen. – God save thee, noble consul! [Exeunt Citizens.]
Cor. WORTHY VOICES!
[Re-enter Menenius, with the tribunes Brutus, and Sicinius.]
Men. You have stood your limitation; and the tribunes Endue you with the people's voice: Remains, That in the official marks invested, you Anon do meet the senate.
Cor. Is this done?
Sic. The custom of request you have discharged: The people do admit you; and are summon'd To meet anon, upon your approbation.
Cor. Where? At the senate-house?
Sic. There Coriolanus.
Cor. May I change these garments?
Sic. You may, Sir.
Cor. That I'll straight do, and knowing myself again, Repair to the senate house.
Men. I'll keep you company. – Will you along.
Bru. We stay here for the people.
Sic. Fare you well.
[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]
He has it now; and by his looks, methinks,
'Tis warm at his heart.
Bru. With a proud heart he wore His humble weeds:
Will you dismiss the people?
[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the review, the critical review, is that which must follow, for this is not the same people we had on the stage when the play began. They are the same in person, perhaps; but it is no longer a mob, armed with clubs, clamouring for bread, rushing forth to kill their chiefs, and have corn at their own price. It is a people conscious of their political power and dignity, an organised people; it is a people with a constituted head, capable of instructing them in the doctrine of political duties and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this review of the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned Tribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom, this great, popular veto, this deliberate 'rejection' of the popular affirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, 'a negative instance.']
[Re-enter Citizens.]
Sic. How now, my masters? HAVE YOU CHOSE THIS MAN?
First Cit. He has our voices, Sir.
Bru. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.
Second Cit. Amen, Sir: To my poor unworthy notice, He mocked us when he begg'd our voices.
Third Cit. Certainly
He flouted us downright.
First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.
Second Cit. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says, He used us scornfully: he should have show'd us His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.
Sic. Why, so he did, I am sure.
Cit. No; no man saw 'em. [Several speak.]
Third Cit. He said he had wounds which he could show in private;
And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,
'I would be consul,' says he,' AGED CUSTOM,
BUT BY YOUR VOICES, WILL NOT SO PERMIT ME;
Your voices THEREFORE:' When we granted that,
Here was, – 'I thank you for your voices, – thank you, —
Your most sweet voices: —now you have left your voices,
I have no further with you:' – Was not this mockery?
Sic. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't?
Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness
To yield your voices?
Bru. Could you not have told him
As you were lesson'd – when he had no power,
But was a petty servant to the state,
He was your enemy; ever spake against
Your LIBERTIES, and the CHARTERS that you bear
I' THE BODY of the WEAL: and now arriving
A place of potency, and sway o' the state,
If he should still malignantly remain
Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might
Be CURSES to YOURSELVES.
Sic. Thus to have said
As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit,
And tried his inclination; from him plucked,
Either his gracious promise, which you might,
As cause had called you up, have HELD HIM TO;
Or else it would have galled his surly nature,
Which easily endures, not article
Tying him to aught; – so putting him to rage,
You should have ta'en advantage of his choler,
And so left him unelected.
[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old Roman statesmen to give, and not so very unlike those which English Commons found occasion to put in execution not long after.]
Bru. Did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt, When he did need your loves; and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When, he hath power to crush? Why had your bodies No heart among you, or had you tongues To cry against THE RECTORSHIP of —judgment?
Sic. Have you Ere now, deny'd the asker, and now again, On him that did not ask, but mock, [with a pretence of asking,] bestow Your sued for tongues?
Third Cit. HE'S NOT CONFIRMED, we may deny him YET.
Second Cit. And will deny him:
I'll have five hundred voices of that sound.
First Cit. I, twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.
Bru. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends, They have chose a consul that will from them Take their liberties, MAKE THEM OF NO MORE VOICE THAN DOGS, that are as often BEAT for barking, As KEPT TO DO SO.
Sic. Let them assemble,
And on a safer judgment, ALL REVOKE
Your IGNORANT ELECTION.
Bru. Lay
A fault on us, your tribunes; that WE LABOURED
NO IMPEDIMENT BETWEEN, but that you must
Cast your election on him.
Sic. Say, you chose him
More after our commandment, than as guided
By your own true affections, and that your minds,
Pre-occupied with what you rather must do,
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.
Bru. Ay, SPARE us NOT. Say WE READ LECTURES TO YOU,
How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued, and what stock he springs of;
The noble house o' the Marcians, from whence came,
That Ancus Martius, Numa's daughter's son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our best water brought by conduits hither;
And Censoriuus, darling of the people,
And nobly named so, being censor twice,
Was his great ancestor.
[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at all. His reading and writing comes by nature.]
Sic. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought, To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy, and REVOKE Your sudden approbation.
Bru.. Say you ne'er had done't, – Harp on that still, – but by our putting on, And presently when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol.
Citizens. [Several speak.] We will so. Almost all
Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens.]
Bru. Let them go on.
This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater;
If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger.
Sic. To the Capitol:
Come, we'll be there before the stream o' the people,
And this shall seem, as partly'tis, their own
Which WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.
[See the Play of Henry the Seventh, Founder of the Elizabethan
Tyranny, by the same author.]
We have witnessed the popular election on the scientific boards: we have seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil confirmation of the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have seen it in the senate-chamber and in the market-place, and we saw it in 'the smothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and on 'the leads and ridges': we have seen and heard it, not in the shower and thunder that the commons made with their caps and voices only, but in the scarfs, and gloves, and handkerchiefs, which 'the ladies, and maids, and matrons threw.' We have seen each single contribution to this great public act put in by the Poet's selected representative of classes. 'The kitchen malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck, clambering the wall to eye him,' spake for hers; 'the seld-shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to record the vote of his; 'the veiled dame, exposing the war of white and damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of Phebus' burning kisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distribution of the tribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; 'the prattling nurse' who will give her baby that is 'crying itself into a rapture there, while she chats him' her reminiscence of this scene by and by, was there to give the nurses' approbation.
For this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up and count, when he comes to review at last, 'in a better hour,' these spontaneous public acts – these momentous acts that seal up the future, and bind the unborn generations of the advancing kind with the cramp of their fetters. Not less careful than this is the analysis when he undertakes to track to its historic source one of those practical axioms, one of those received beliefs, which he finds determining the human conduct, limiting the human history, moulding the characters of men, determining beforehand what they shall be. This is the process when he undertakes, to get one of these rude, instinctive, spontaneous affirmations – one of those idols of the market or of the Tribe – reviewed and criticised by the heads of the Tribe, at least, 'in a better hour,' – criticised and rejected. 'Proceeding by negatives and exclusion first': this is the form in which this Tribune puts on record his scientific veto of that 'ignorant election.'
And in this so carefully selected and condensed combination of historical spectacles – in this so new, this so magnificently illustrated political history – there is another historic moment to be brought out now; and in this same form of 'visible history,' one not less important than those already exhibited.
In the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement, the great historic spectacle of a people 'REVOKING THEIR IGNORANT ELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of those same remarkable leaders, whose voice had been wanting (as they are careful to inform us) till then in the business of the state; leaders who contrive at last to inform the people, in plain terms, that they 'are at point to lose their liberties,' that 'Marcius will have all from them,' and who apologise for their conduct afterwards by saying, that 'he affected one sole throne, without assistance'; for the time had come when the Tribune could repeat the Poet's whisper, 'The one side shall have bale.'
This so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited here in all its actual historical detail. It is produced by one who is able to include in his dramatic programme the whole sweep of its eventualities, the whole range of its particulars, because he has made himself acquainted with the forces, he has ascended, by scientifically inclusive definition, to the 'powers' that are to be 'operant' in it; and he who has that 'charactery' of nature, may indeed 'lay the future open.' We talk of prophecy; but there is nothing in literature to compare at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction. There is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars, in its comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.
But this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make before that revolutionary movement, which in its weak beginnings in his time lay intreasured, should proceed any further – this preliminary speech, with its so vivid political illustration, is not yet finished. The true doctrine of an instructed scientific election and government, that 'vintage' of politics – that vintage of scientific definitions and axioms which he is getting out of this new kind of history – that new vintage of the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted history, will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with the popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that it begins with affirmation– but that is the method for gods, and not men – men must begin with negations; they must have tables of review of instances, tables of negation, tables of rejection; and divide nature, not with fire, but with the mind, that divine fire. 'If the mind attempt this affirmation from the first,' he says, 'which it always will when left to itself there will spring up phantoms, mere theories, and ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring daily correction. These will be better or worse, according to the power and strength of the understanding which creates them. But it is only for God to recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of contemplation; men can only proceed first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection.' And though he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed with the nature of HEAT, at the moment in which he first produces these new scientific instruments, which he calls tables of review, and explains their 'facilities,' he tells us plainly, that they are adapted to other subjects, and that those affirmations which are most essential to the welfare of man, will in due time come off from them, practical axioms on matters of universal and incessant practical concern, that will not want daily correction, that will not want revolutionary correction, to fit them to the exigency.
The question here is not of 'heat,' but of SOVEREIGNTY; it is the question of the consulship, regarded from the ground of the tribuneship. It is not Coriolanus that this tribune is spending so much breath on. The instincts, which unanalytic, barbaric ages, enthrone and mistake for greatness and nobility, are tried and rejected here; and the business of the play is, to get them excluded from the chair of state. The philosopher will have those instincts which men, in their 'particular and private natures,' share with the lower orders of animals, searched out, and put in their place in human affairs, which is not, as he takes it, THE HEAD – the head of the COMMON-weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all against him – he is partial to him, rather; it is not Coriolanus but the instincts that are on trial here, and the man – the so-called man– of instinct, who has no principle of state and sovereignty, no principle of true _man_liness and nobility in his soul; and the trial is not yet completed. The author would be glad to have that revolution which he has inserted in the heart of this play deferred, if that were possible, though he knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a saving of trouble if it could be deferred until some true and scientifically prepared notions, some practical axioms, which would not need in their turn fierce historical correction – revolutionary correction – could be imparted to the common mind.
But we must follow him in this process of division and exclusion a little further, before we come in our plot to the revolution. That revolution which he foresees as imminent and inevitable, he has put on paper here: but there is another lurking within, for which we are not yet ripe. This locked-up tribune will have to get abroad; he will have to get his limits enlarged, and find his way into some new departments, before ever that can begin.
CHAPTER VI
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS
'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.'
Advancement of Learning.
'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'
Novum Organum.
As to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them – in an age, too, when Parliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for contumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state– in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on a day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew; – as to the method of the philosophical investigations which were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently specific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets. As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing in nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern Solomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not – that it was beyond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh, by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world, and promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make it illustrious in future ages.
There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its applications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did with it himself – that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as it happened.
So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and greatest innovation in its practice – so totally unaccustomed were men then to look for anything like power in the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding – so impossible was it for this single book to remove that previous impression – that the Author of the Novum Organum could even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent allusions to the comprehensive nature – the essentially comprehensive nature – of 'the Machine' whose application to these certain instances he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of it.
Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.
Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the human use – when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the NOVUM ORGANUM with the key of 'Times' does not need to be told – can see for himself – that in his description of the method he has already contrived to make the application, the universal practical application.
In his PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, the mind of man is brought out already from its SPECIFIC narrowness, from its own abstract logical conceits and arrogant prenotions, into that collision with fact – the broader fact, the universal fact – and subjected to that discipline from it which is the intention of this logic. It is a 'machine' which is meant to serve to Man as a 'New' Mind– the scientific mind, which is in harmony with nature – a mind informed and enlarged with the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments of his welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is a Machine in which the senses, those hitherto despised instruments in philosophy, by means of a scientific rule and oversight, and with the aid of scientific instruments, are made available for philosophic purposes. It is a Machine in which that organization whereby the universal nature impresses itself on us – reports itself to us – striking its incessant telegraphs on us, whether we read them or not, is for the first time brought to the philosopher's aid; and it is a Machine, also, by which speculation, that hitherto despised instrument in practice, is for the first time, brought to the aid of the man of practice. It is doubly 'New': it is a Machine in which speculation becomes practical – it is a Machine in which practice becomes scientific.
[Fool. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his face?
Lear. No.
Fool. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.]
In 'THE PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' the universal matter of fact is already taken up and disposed of in grand masses, under these headships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous, but scientific manner. The Nature of Things is all there; for this is a Logic which bows the mind of man to the law of the universal nature, and informs and enlarges it with that. It is not a Logic merely in the old sense of that term. The old Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew out of it, are the things which this Machine is going to puff away, with the mere whiff and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse for ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been limited, but a philosophy. A logic in which the general 'notions of nature' which are causes, powers, simple powers, elemental powers, true differences, are substituted for those spontaneous, rude, uncorrected, specific notions, —pre-notions of men, which have in that form, as they stand thus, no correlative in nature, and are therefore impotent – not true terms and forms, but air-words, air-lines, merely. It is a logic which includes the Mind of NATURE, and her laws; and not one which is limited to the mind of Man, and so fitted to its incapacity as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate him in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by rule, and set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.
The universal history, all of it that the mind of man is constituted to grasp, is here in the general, under these PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, in the luminous order of the Inventor of this science, blazing throughout with his genius, and the mind that has abolished its prenotions, and renounced its rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies, and has taken this scientific Organum instead; has armed itself with the Nature of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all specifications and particulars.
The author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic arrangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in this great work of his, the work in which he openly introduces HIS INNOVATION, – as that – will fall off by and by, when there is no longer any need of them. They are but the natural guards with which great Nature, working in the instinct of the philosophic genius, protects her choicest growth, – the husk of that grain which must have times, and a time to grow in, – the bark which the sap must stop to build, ere its delicate works within are safe. They are like the sheaths with which she hides through frost and wind and shower, until their hour has come, her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning, her struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial triumphs.
In the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this complicated network of superficial divisions, the man of humour, who is always not far off and ready to assist in the priestly ministrations as he sees occasion, gently directs our attention to those more simple and natural divisions of the subject, and those more immediately practical terms, which it might be possible to use, under certain circumstances, in speaking of the same subjects, into which, however, these are easily resolvable, as soon as the right point of observation is taken. Through all this haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the outline of those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly produced – under their scholastic names, indeed, – in his book of the Advancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly continue, in a work produced professedly, as a practical instrument fit for application to immediate use, and where the true application is constantly entering the vitals of subjects too delicate to be openly glanced at then.
But he gives us to understand, however, that he has made the application of this method to practice, in a much more specific, detailed manner, in another place, that he has brought it down from those more general forms of the Novum Organum, into 'the nobler' departments, 'the more chosen' departments of that universal field of human practice, which the Novum Organum takes up in its great outline, and boldly and clearly claims in the general, though when it comes to specific applications and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike, or appear to strike, into that one track of practice, which was the only one left open to it then, – which it keeps still as rigidly as if it had no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk of 'universality,' and carried it with his own hand into the minutest points and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres, those living articulations in which the grand natural divisions he indicates here, naturally terminate; the divisions which the philosopher who 'makes the Art and Practic part of life, the mistress to his Theoric,' must of course follow. He tells us that he has applied it to PARTICULAR ARTS, to those departments of the human experience and practice in which the need of a rule is most felt, and where things have been suffered to go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous manner, and that his axioms of practice in these departments have been so scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they will be apt to know their way to particulars again; – that their specifications are at the same time so comprehensive and so minute, that he considers them fit for immediate use, or at least so far forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process being, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his professedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly practical scientific work.
But these so important applications of his philosophy to practice, of which he issues so fair a prospectus, though he frequently refers to them, could not then be published. The time had not come, and personally, he was obliged to leave, before it came. He was careful, however, to make the best provision which could be made, under such circumstances, for the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a will. These works of practice could not then be published; and if they could have been, there was no public then ready for them. They could not be published; but there was nothing to hinder their being put under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in packing them up in a portable form, under lids and covers of one sort and another, so unexceptionable, that all the world could carry them about, for a century or two, and not perceive that there was any harm in them. Very curiously wrought covers they might be too, with some taste of the wonders of mine art pressing through, a little here and there. They might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in one case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another; but in such a manner as to command, in both cases, the admiration and wonder of men, so as to pique perpetually their curiosity and provoke inquiry, until the time had come and the key was found.
'Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes in the historical plural of his philosophic chair, – 'this question, rather than objection,' – [it was much to be preferred in that form certainly] – 'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone, according to our method, or the other sciences such as– ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' A pretty question to raise just then, truly, though this philosopher sees fit to take it so demurely. 'Whether we talk of perfecting politics with our method,' Elizabethan politics, – and not politics only, but whether we talk of perfecting 'ethics' with it also, and 'logic, – common logic,' which last is as much in need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of perfecting of that is the reform in the others. 'We certainly intend,' – the emphasis here is on the word 'certainly,' though the reader who has not the key of the times may not perceive it; 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' For this is the author whose words are most of them emphatic. We must read his sentences more than once to get all the emphasis. We certainly INTEND to comprehend them all. 'We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing that word in another place, and putting this intention into the shape of a promise.