Sir Francis Bacon's Temperament, Character, and Personality

The contrast between Bacon's great intellect and his modest character is one of the commonplaces of history. This client and friend of Essex who directed the legal proceedings against him, this Lord Chancellor of James I who was forced to acknowledge himself guilty of the corruption and abuse of his office, is summed up by Pope as "the wisest, the most intelligent, the most vile of men." While it may be admitted that the circumstances were difficult for him to excuse, it is impossible to deny that he subordinated friendship and righteousness to his career. However, this lowly desire, the desire to serve mankind by the search for truth, was redeemed and encouraged by the other. Very early, while at Cambridge, Bacon realized the sterility of the academic sciences which led to verbal controversy but never to reality. He then conceived a mission with which the whole process of his practical life became almost meaningless. "I found in my nature", he wrote, "a peculiar adaptation to the contemplation of truth". He made it his aim to acquire knowledge which would increase the empire of man on earth.

"Bacon was intellectually great", says one observer, "but morally weak." His prodigious talents make it difficult to offer a critical estimate which would encompass all the varied aspects of his personality, as lawyer, politician, scientist, philosopher, historian, and essayist. The ambiguous phrase, 'Be kind to hidden poets' - a phrase which Bacon has emphasized in the Shakespearean theory - raises the suspicion that he acquired much more knowledge for his province than the two or three mishmash he wrote.
 
"It is impossible to feel too much admiration for Bacon's personal character. He exhibited almost all the undesirable traits of the Renaissance politician—greed, ostentation, indifference, and sluggish public morality. But it is equally impossible not to admire his broad and bright mind and in the letter which he wrote a profound account of his life. Early in his career he says proudly: "I confess that I have as wide a scope of contemplation as I have moderate civic ends, for I have made all knowledge my province."

Bacon was reserved by temperament, by the need for high office, and by intelligence. And he is very difficult to know. He never makes himself intimate except by occasional letters, but he is not, by any means, inaccessible. It is his style which is characterized by his taste, his biblical education, his sensuous alertness, and above all by a mind constantly "thinking, searching, wandering, new "Conceptions and Ideas". To read him is to be animated by a desire to know, and it is well known that Sir Thomas Browne was induced to follow him in the investigation of vulgar errors, because the method and result of the follower were so different from those of his master.

Dr. E.A. Baker describes the matter thus: 'Bacon's character has been the subject of violent controversy, Macaulay has presented him as the highest example of a brilliant intellect united to a base and vulgar moral nature, his treatment of Essex has shown the coldness of his feelings. His service in an age when progress was sought is regrettable to us, but it shows that there was no more base kind of selfishness than his desire to be great in practical affairs as well as in the world of thought, and to use his genius for the general progress. As a judge it has never been proved that he was influenced by bribery, though he was not in keeping with his modern views. "He had fallen into the habit of accepting gifts from suitors. His one pure desire was the acquisition of knowledge. A commanding intellect and a rich imagination were qualified by a strange incapacity for emotion or moral seriousness, and he has left these mysteries in the conduct of his life."

The tragedy of Francis Bacon's life, the contrast between his high ideals and his shortcomings in friendship and honor, the conflict of his character, may have for a time diverted men's minds from his greatness as an Englishman. A more modest nature would have given his critics less of a handle, but when all conveniences are restored, there will remain in the minds of those who admire him as a writer a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety, to think that so great a master of the splendor of words, so eloquent a prophet of that new world into which "many shall go," should have so much increased his complex knowledge as to increase his knowledge. Character has its own charm, and the psychological problem of "the wisest, the brightest, the greatest" of mankind will continue to engage the attention of historians and philosophers.

Perhaps George Saintbury wrote of Bacon's character: "There is no doubt that although personally good-natured, he had all the vices of the Renaissance in abundance and was greedy, ignorant and mean, a born conspirator and a jackass-hunter; and though it would probably be a mistake to represent him with this. The brave, bold and cunning man is deprived of any right to his own resources, he had no great strength of opinion, nor can it be said that, apart from scientific zeal and a certain patriotism, he displayed many high sentiments."

In the pursuit of his ambitions, Bacon showed a complete lack of scruples. He broke off his friendship with the king's favourite—Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset—and attached himself to the Duke of Buckingham, after the new rising star, George Villiers. Bacon's foresight proved correct. Somerset fell from royal favour, while Villiers rose like a rocket, aided materially by Bacon in the early stages of his upward journey. Bacon's reference to royal favourites in his essay On Ambition is thought to refer to James's favouritism for them. With characteristic service he defends the practice of keeping favourites thus: "It is a weakness in some princes to be a favourite; but it is the best remedy against ambitious nobles."

It is of course impossible to praise or defend Bacon's role in the punishment of Essex, but it is worth remembering that he often warned the earl that "I love few things more than I love your Majesty, as the service of the Queen, her quietness and peace, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like".

 What he wrote after his downfall, in his essay On Adversity, shows the effect that his misfortune had on him: "The virtue of prosperity," he writes, "is patience, which is a more heroic virtue in morals. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; which is the great achievement. The blessing and the clear revelation of the grace of God." Indeed, no reader can read this essay without being quite impressed by Bacon's response to his misfortune. 

On the whole, Bacon's own account of the incident is considered accurate, for he admitted (in his letters and in his life) that he had received gifts from suits involved in pending litigation. Yet he affirms that his intention was never influenced by bribery. And in several cases his judgment seems to have been given against the party who had bribed him. He did not defend himself against the bribery charge but at the same time described himself as "the fairest chancellor who has been in five changes."
From the time of Sir Nicholas Bacon" on the plea that his intentions were always pure and never influenced by gifts received.

In this connection we should remind ourselves of what the same man wrote in his Treatise of Judicature which expresses very high sentiments on the necessity of impartial justice. The whole essay may be read as a self-condemnation. The following sentences are particularly noteworthy: "Above all things, integrity is their (judges') portion and proper virtue. One wrong sentence hurts more than many wrong examples. To them it spoils the stream but spoils the other fountain. The seat of justice is a sacred place; and therefore not only the purpose of the bench and the presbytery, but also its object. is to be preserved without scandal and corruption."

Macaulay says: "In the Temper of Bacon we speak of Bacon the philosopher, not Bacon the lawyer and statesman—a singular union of boldness and prudence. The true philosophical temperament, we think, can be described in four words: anything but hope, anything but extraordinary, anything but extraordinary certainty, anything. Be that as it may, it is indifferent to believe that in these points the constitution of Bacon's mind was absolutely perfect.

"Closely connected with this peculiarity of Bacon's temperament was a wonderful characteristic of his understanding. With the utmost subtlety of observation, he possessed a breadth of understanding hitherto reserved for no other man." "Essays" contain numerous proofs that no feature of a garden, no feature of a beautiful house. or a courtly moustache, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of carrying the whole world of observation, though the breadth of his mind was his own..... Better than him could thousands of mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, physicians, botanists. The specific science or art which Bacon taught was the art of invention in which Bacon taught all men the knowledge of the interrelations of all branches of knowledge.

"He had no hand in that controversial temper which he so often condemned in his predecessors. He never got into any controversy: no, we cannot at present recall, in all his philosophical works, a single piece of a controversial character; the difference between his school and other schools of thought was so fundamental that any kind of fight was hardly possible in his mind. "Neither nature has formed nor disciplined by the habit of dialectical combat."

In religion Bacon desired unity and advocated tolerance: "The ancient and true bonds of unity are one faith, one baptism, and one ceremony, not one policy."

He makes ethics the handmaiden of theology. He gives no gospel of duty for duty's sake and condemns all idealist systems, admiring Machiavelli more for openly and unambiguously declaring and stating what men do and what they should not do. In opposition to Aristotle, he prefers the active to the intellectual life. He is also a pragmatist in the sense that he judges the rightness of an action by its effects, which, however, must be considered in relation to the good of the state, not of the individual.

Bacon's political ideas are influenced by the Greek concept of the state, especially by the ideas of Aristotle, whom he despises. He shares with Aristotle the view that states are naturally opposed to each other, that war is a necessity. And his account of foreign trade is as economically contradictory as Aristotle's account of usury. In Bacon we recall the modern democratic note that he had no faith in democracy and, like the Greeks, despised the working class.