“I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province”
Letter to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (ca. 1593), published in The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England 14 Vols. (1870) James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, Douglas D. Heath, editors, Vol. VIII p. 109. See also, for approximate date, Mrs. Henry Pott, Francis Bacon and His Secret Society (1891) p. 114 https://books.google.com/books?id=tKc_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114
Context: I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is the thing I greatly affect.
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Francis Bacon 295
English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and auth… 1561–1626Related quotes
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