1. Not to mention what we might believe about the telos of mules, still specially bred on mulefarms.

2. Bacon uses this metaphor elsewhere too, most notably in New Organon, I.82.Google Scholar

3. This fable's position in the book comes after we see the political problems man faces (in the first third of the book, chaps. 1–10) and after the introduction of philosophy, and the role and limits of natural and moral or political philosophy in the second third of the book (chaps. 11–19). In the final third of the book we have moved from wooing nature in “Ericthonius”(20), to conquering nature, including the baser parts of human nature in “Atalanta”(25) to this fable on the state of man, and, at last, the issue of the real ends for which our conquest of nature should be undertaken. The final five chapters work out questions arising from the use of science and philosophy.

4. This, the sixth last chapter is 19 pages in length. The next longest, the parallel sixth chapter, “Pan, or Nature,” is 14 pages long. None of the others approaches ten pages in length.

5. We have no assurance that Bacon discloses all of the “true and weighty contemplations” here. White, Howard B., in Peace Among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that Bacon does not: “the enigmatic conclusion to the promethean legend indicates esoteric writing” (p. 110). There are many other such indications of Bacon's reticence in the book.

6. Rousseau also makes a great deal of the difference between the origins, and the foundations, of man's state. Or, as Aristotle made the distinction, “while [the polis comes] into being for the sake of living, it exists for the sake of living well” (Politics 1252b29–30, trans. Lord, Carnes [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], p. 37).Google Scholar

7. As Aristotle points out (Metaphysics 981b10–25; 982b20–30), with the development of luxury and leisure, philosophy may also arise.

8. Cf. the Prometheus story presented in Plato's Protagoras 320d–322e where religion arrives before the civil arts and justice (322a).

9. The translations of “Prometheus” are mine, from a book in progress, which will be a translation and interpretation of Bacon's Of the Wisdom of the Ancients.

10. As a general rule, Bacon's chapters first offer a brief introductory exposition of an ancient fable, a synopsis carefully extracted from various sources. He then, typically announces the subject of the fable, and then proceeds to an explanation of the wisdom “concealed” in the story. The explanation, which usually runs two to three times the length of the exposition, does not always match the order, content, or point of the synopsis Bacon himself chose to give at the beginning. That is where much of the challenge in interpreting him arises.

11. Xenophon, Memorabilia I. iv. 6.Google Scholar Compare the treatment of the providence of the stars and animals in Memorabilia IV. iii.Google Scholar

12. Bacon concludes this thought: “and it follows almost necessarily that the human soul was endued with providence not without the example, intention and authority of the greater providence.” (emphasis added) Faulkner, Robert K. notes this too; see Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 134, for another interpretation of this observation.Google Scholar

13. This has become a staple of popular culture. Consider, for example, the dramatic beginning to the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

14. Notice that Bacon says “all things seem to be going about man's business.” In another chapter, “Pan, or Nature,” we had heard they were all about their own business, all hunting their own ends. There it seemed each species-telos governed the actions of the members of the species.

15. The best modern explanation and account of teleology I have read is Lowenthal's, David “The Case for Teleology,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978).Google Scholar His account both recognizes that the acceptance of teleology is essential for explaining the world, and points to the problem of putting man in the position Bacon says man is put here, as the final cause of the world. Lowenthal refers to this very chapter on Prometheus in his analysis. Another excellent account is that provided by Kass, Leon in Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985), pp. 249–76.Google Scholar Both Lowenthal's and Kass's analyses of teleology are worth comparing to Bolotin's, David, in An Approach to Aristotle's Physics (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998).Google Scholar

16. See, for example, Machiavelli, , The Prince, chap. 25Google Scholar, and Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV. iii. 3–9, and I. iv.Google Scholar

17. This is what is so frightening about generics. Now we can, but only selected local laws stipulate that we may not, so some of us will.

18. Rousseau's turn to metaphysical and moral man from physical man requires him to address the same problem with the “perfectibility” of man (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, in The First and Second Discourses, ed. Masters, Roger D. [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964], pp. 114ff. and note “i,” pp. 192–203).Google Scholar

19. Bacon hastens to point out that the alchemists take the “microcosm” too literally and spoil its elegance and distort its meaning (two different things, each of different import).

20. Presumably Bacon means that naked man is vulnerable to the elements, not that he is less beautiful because he is unable to mask imperfections by clothing; but we should not dismiss the possibility that shame instead of vulnerability to the elements is the issue, for Adam and Eve were said to have been naked in the Garden of Eden. Shame might be a vital requirement in man's attempt to fulfill himself.

21. “Want” preserves the ambiguity of indigeo–to need or require, as well as to long for.

22. Compare Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, for each of whom the status of that “state of nature” varies.

23. Bacon quotes from Aristotle De Anima 3. 8. One of the most problematic statements in Aristotle's writings is here used to exemplify an apparently simple statement about furnaces. The question of what precisely Aristotle means by “the soul is the form of forms” is not addressed by Bacon, but it does add speculation to the importance of man as the final cause of things. Bacon uses this same citation in Advancement of Learning, II. xii. 2.Google Scholar Faulkner's memorable comment here is: “Then came the invention of fire, and Bacon covers this replacement of providence with a little Aristotelian smoke” (Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, pp. 134–35).Google Scholar

24. A strong statement, especially coming as it does, from classical philosophy. Xenophon, Memorabilia IV. iii. 7Google Scholar (trans, and annotated Bonnette, Amy L. [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994]).Google Scholar

25. Cf. chapter 19, of Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, “Daedalus, or the Mechanic.”

26. Refer to Plato Protagoras 321c, on man's condition, where, for a time man had wisdom, and the arts, yet still lacked justice and civic arts.

27. Piety seems to require a continuing providence–not merely God as the prime mover–and perhaps even a special providence–that he cares about individual souls.

28. There is a theological reason for God's delight at man's ingratitude. The gods, not wanting mankind to try to usurp their power are happy that man might turn his back on the conquest of nature that fire will allow, and instead remain primitively pious. Recall why Adam and Eve lost their position in the Garden of Eden: they dared to gain knowledge of a kind forbidden. Several religions account for our troubles by an original fall from grace, and put us in a position decidedly beneath the gods.

29. Jupiter, throughout Bacon's book, has been displeased with man's ability to use the arts to gain power. He had been angry with Aesculapius for being able to raise a man from the dead, and powerfully lashed out at his skill. Plato, in the context of discussing the need for caution about the relationship between power and wisdom, mentions Prometheus in a letter to Dionysius: “It is natural for wisdom and great power to come together and they are forever pursuing and seeking each other and consorting together. Moreover, these are qualities which people delight in discussing…[several examples] the earliest men also brought together Prometheus and Zeus. And of these [examples] some were–as the poets tell us–at feud with each other, and others were friends; while others again were now friends and now foes, and partly in agreement and partly in disagreement” (Epistles 311b, vol. 9Google Scholar, Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. Bury, R. G. [London: Heinemann, 1971], pp.405–407).Google Scholar

30. Although Bacon announces that all of the ancient fables pose riddles, there are very few interrogative sentences in Of the Wisdom of the Ancients.

31. Machiavelli, , Discourses, 1.2Google Scholar (trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Nathan Tarcov [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], emphasis added).Google Scholar

32. This was met in chapters 14—16 of Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, where, interestingly, “forbidding the commerces of pity” was said to be “the extremity of evil,” as ingratitude is here described as the vice comprehending all other vices.

33. See Clifford Orwin's extensive writings on the problem of compassion, for example, “Compassion,” The American Scholar 49 (1980): 309–33Google Scholar; and “Machiavelli's Unchristian Charity,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978): 1217–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. See, for example, the teaching of the central fable of this book, “Juno's Suitor, or Disgrace.”

35. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.2.6–7Google Scholar (trans. Miller, Walter [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968], p.15, emphasis added).Google Scholar

36. Timothy Paterson notes that “only an unending stream of fresh inventions and new discoveries can hope to retain the affection of the non-scientific public for Baconian science” (“The Politics of Baconian Science: An Analysis of Bacon's New Atlantis” [Ph.D. diss., Yale University 1982], p. 76.Google Scholar

37. See, for example, Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 38–43.Google Scholar

38. Cf. New Atlantis, where statues honoring inventors are given such a prominent place in the scientific regime. Faulkner, Robert, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, seems to argue that this honor is the ultimate motive of scientists and of Bacon himself, e.g., pp. 53–54, 115–16, and 273.Google Scholar

39. See ibid., pp. 135–37, about this attack on the ancients.

40. And Bacon, after all, is not without feelings of gratitude for Aristotle. Momentarily he will concede that the sciences flourished most in their first authors, among whom he names Aristotle.

41. Paterson, Timothy noted this too, “The Politics of Baconian Science,” pp. 72–80.Google Scholar

42. For a somewhat different analysis of this section on ingratitude, I include this paragraph by White, Howard B., from his essay, ”Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients,” Interpretation I (1970): 107–29Google Scholar: “The fable of Prometheus is, in Bacon's narration and interpretation, the longest one. Mention must be made, however, of the strange virtue of ingratitude. It is said that when Prometheus stole the fire, men were ungrateful, and this ingratitude made them more bounties. Ingratitude is, to Bacon, a virtue in the study of art and nature. Men should be dissatisfied with what they have, ever seeking more. The accusation of art and nature brings science. Remember that this is the same Francis Bacon who held that inventions deserve greater acclaim than the works of kings and statesmen. Moreover, gratitude was the principal political virtue according to Machiavelli, whom Bacon often followed. Yet one can see that, in inventions, or in science generally, gratitude is a virtue, because those who bring benefits to man for the relief of man's estate deserve eternal glory, including, of course, Bacon himself. Ingratitude, however, is also a virtue, because it brings progress to science. Might not the same be true of politics? Bacon must have known that the same ambivalence could exist in political things. Consider the irony in the title, Daughters of the American Revolution. The members are doubtless so grateful to their ancestors that they despise all subsequent revolutions. The true revolutionary is ungrateful. It need hardly be said that such is a dangerous ambivalence” (p. 125).

43. The “ancients,” here, must be Greek ancients, for the biblical ancients said the fall was caused by active sin, not sloth and negligence.

44. Jupiter has learned, since “Tithonus,” that immortality is insufficient. Youthful health is needed in addition. Bacon does not point to the obvious problems of immortality here, for he (like Descartes, in his Discourse on Method, Part Six) will soon be relying on the politic nurturing of hopes of medical advances to get mass support for science.

45. Hippocrates, , Aphorism 1.Google Scholar See also Bacon's, The Advancement of Learning, II. vii. 6Google Scholar; De Augmentis Scientiarum, 8:507Google Scholar; Valerius Terminus in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, James, Ellis, Robert Leslie, and Heath, Douglas Denon, 15 vols. (Boston, 1864), 6:41.Google Scholar

46. Stanley Rosen suggests a similarity between the techniques of Hippocrates and the method of Socrates: “the techniques of medicine, to the extent that they reveal or make known 'what is,' are part of, or the same as, the techniques of philosophy (which is not itself, of course, merely a techne). Thus, in a much commented on passage in the Phaedrus (270b), Socrates cites 'Hippocrates and true reasoning' as joint authorities for the methodological remarks on the study of nature. Whether Plato or Hippocrates was the first to develop the technique of diaeresis, both employ it in their respective attempts to understand man” (Plato's Symposium [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968], pp. 93–94).Google Scholar

47. Cf. Machiavelli, , The Prince, chaps. 2 and 3. See also Bacon's discussion of Orpheus's frustration about the necessity of death.Google Scholar

48. Briggs's, John C. discussion of Prometheus departs from this account and argues for Bacon's religiosity. Briggs, however, reverses Bacon's actual order of events when he says “Prometheus, however, undergoes his torture in the prayerful spirit of the new learning and eventually gives mankind the warmth and light of fire” (Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Rousseau, , Second Discourse, pp. 155–81Google Scholar; and Plato, Republic 370a–374a.Google Scholar

50. Recall “Pan, or Nature.”

51. This must be compared with the teaching of the final chapter of the book, on Pleasure where there is a four–fold division among men for responses to pleasures-plebians, Odysseus, Solomon, Orpheus.

52. Cf. Hobbes, , Leviathan, chap. 12, where Promethean anxiety is connected with religion, and points to a concern for understanding causation.Google Scholar

53. White suggests that the best result may be the Epicurean philosopher: “The vice stressed in the Promethean fable is perturbation, and, following Lucretius, Bacon sees philosophy as freeing the mind from perturbation” (“Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients,” p. 122). There is also, of course, the possibility that it fits the Platonic philosopher, especially given the essential inclusion of courage. See Craig, Leon H., The War Lover (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp, 245–89Google Scholar, and Lampert, Laurence, Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study Of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

54. One place this choice appears is in Xenophon, Memorabilia II. 1.Google Scholar

55. The rape is not discussed now, for, as Bacon announces later, it would “have interrupted the order of the fable.”

56. Cf. Plato, Republic 443d.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., 508–19 for more on this analogy.

58. Virgil, Georgics 2. 490;Google Scholar see also Advancement of Learning, I. viii. 1.Google Scholar

59. Cf., however, Robert Faulkner's argument, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, pp. 272–78.Google Scholar

60. See Lampert, , Nietzsche and Modern Times, pp. 110–11, and 124–25.Google Scholar

61. In an earlier chapter, much turned on Pentheus' inability to distinguish divine from human light. Bacon uses this exact phrase also in De Augmentis Scientiarum, in Works, 8: 479,Google Scholar and New Organon, I. 65.Google Scholar

62. I follow Faulkner in interpreting the race-course here as the career of scientists in modern research establishments, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, p. 140.Google Scholar

63. Torchraces are an ancient metaphor for “handing on the light.” See, for example, Plato Laws 776b. See also Lucretius De Rerum Natura II. 79Google Scholar: Et quasi cursores vitae lampida tradunt. Cf. “Handing on the lamp,” in De Augmentis Scientiarum, VI. 2Google Scholar in Bacon, , Works, 9:124.Google Scholar

64. In his essay “Of Adversity” Bacon does not refrain. Even here, as White, Howard B. points out in Peace Among the Willows, pp. 162–63, Bacon makes foresight with courage and wisdom equivalent to the Redemption. The highest human virtues become man's salvation, or his Savior. That is indeed a strange fire.Google Scholar

65. See Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, chaps. 11 and 31.