Iago swore by Janus, and so might Francis Bacon have done, for that god presided over his philosophy as well as his birth. Because Bacon sought to match the process of induction ‘to the process of perception of natural phenomena’, and because a central part of that process involved a preliminary search for parallels in nature and society, and, furthermore, because Bacon saw science as an operation of collective disclosure and prudential secretion, and looked back beyond the Greeks to find inspiration for a new age, he seems to ‘stand like Janus in the field of knowledge’. John C. Briggs writes in Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature:
The doubleness that accompanies the Baconian idea of experience is more than a useful means to an end. It is a discovery of the truth of things.
In this dissertation I discuss some aspects of Bacon‘s philosophical and prudential doubleness in relation to his theory of the Janus-like imagination, and in relation to the development of his attitude to fable in the years that led up to the publication of De Sapientia Veterum in 1609.
De Sapientia was written in Latin and translated into English by Sir Arthur Gorges for publication in 1617. It draws on thirty-one fables of ‘primæval antiquity’ to provide illustrations of Bacon‘s natural, moral, and political philosophy. In the dedication to the Earl of Salisbury, Bacon likens ‘parable’ to an ‘arc’ which preserves ‘the most precious portions’ of antediluvian wisdom (neatly combining his classical subject with a biblical allusion). Yet the wisdom which Bacon uncovers always accords with his own viewpoint, and, as that viewpoint changes, so too does his reading of fables.
Bacon does not shrink from presenting anachronistic readings as is most strikingly seen, for example, in his treatment of the fable of Diomedes, which becomes the matrix for a discussion of religious intolerance and persecution of his own times. In both professing that ancient wisdom was embedded in fables while extracting from those fables his own interpretations Bacon was following a path beaten by numerous Renaissance mythographers. Indeed, as Charles W. Lemmi has shown, he had been following more closely in the footsteps of his predecessors than some readers realised.
The writing of De Sapientia signified the resolution of an internal struggle concerning the status of ancient fable. I suggest that Bacon had come to accept the view that fables did indeed contain ancient wisdom, but that much of that wisdom remained closed to subsequent readers. He believed also that fables had a double function – to illuminate no less than to conceal – and he had decided that it was acceptable for him to employ those fables in order to convey his philosophy to a wider audience.
The progression of Bacon‘s thought can be traced through his works from his writing of the unpublished Temporis Partus Masculus some time before 1603. The pages of Temporis are few and violent. Bacon vigorously attacks the various schools of thought which stand in the way of scientific progress and he sets his face firmly towards the light of nature. Yet although he seems to reject the use of ancient fable his tone is not so trenchant as elsewhere in the work and betrays signs of the approaching accommodation.
I sketch the outlines of Bacon‘s struggle with regard to fable, and his Janus-like resolution of that struggle (as expressed in the Preface to De Sapientia) in the last chapter of this dissertation. It seems to me pertinent to approach an analysis of the Preface via an overview of the Janus-like aspects of Bacon‘s philosophy so that when we arrive we shall recognize from what has gone before the appropriacy of his resolution to his philosophy and see that the two are of a piece, just as the ‘sister faces’ of Janus grace a single herm.
On our journey through the small portion of the Baconian labyrinth that can be compassed in these few words I shall employ Janus as a useful ‘clue‘, opening to us various aspects of Baconian doubleness, whether it be the doubleness of opposition; or the presentation of opposites to a middle position (a kind of fabulous syllogism); or the presentation of a resemblance between things as it were between ‘sister faces‘; or even an opening up of the four doors of the temple; or a closing down and secreting of one face behind another. It seems to me convenient also to use some of the fables found in De Sapientia by way of illustration not only of Baconian thought but also of the convenience of fable for the purpose of illustration.
The nature of our subject requires that we not only seek to locate the contemplative, imaginative, Orphic aspect of Bacon‘s thought, but that we also consider Bacon‘s view of imagination in terms of what it was and what it could do (for contemplation and action should be united, a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter) so that when we emerge from the labyrinth we may apply the hard won sagacity of experience to the educing of Bacon‘s argument from the Preface of De Sapientia.
The complete paper is available for download in PDF format and comes with a comprehensive bibliography.
Janus of Imagination
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