title: Francis Bacon: Essays and New Atlantis (Classics Club)
author: Francis Bacon
description: Francis Bacon reputation has suffered from the world's insistence that a moralist should follow his
  own advice; having recognized vice and folly, he should avoid them. But in Bacon knowing and doing were as far apart as they are in others...
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  # The New Atlantis
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Francis Bacon
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### INTRODUCTORY NOTE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Bacon's literary executor, Dr. Rowley, published "The New Atlantis" in
  
  
  1627, the year after the author's death. It seems to have been
  
  
  written about 1623, during that period of literary activity which
  
  
  followed Bacon's political fall. None of Bacon's writings gives in
  
  
  short apace so vivid a picture of his tastes and aspirations as this
  
  
  fragment of the plan of an ideal commonwealth. The generosity and
  
  
  enlightenment, the dignity and splendor, the piety and public spirit,
  
  
  of the inhabitants of Bensalem represent the ideal qualities which
  
  
  Bacon the statesman desired rather than hoped to see characteristic of
  
  
  his own country; and in Solomon's House we have Bacon the scientist
  
  
  indulging without restriction his prophetic vision of the future of
  
  
  human knowledge. No reader acquainted in any degree with the
  
  
  processes and re