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08853_Field_TCGG T618.txt
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1996-04-10
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Milton must have some ironic intent.
Bacon’s conception of applied knowledge concerns the
means of restoring the text of the Book of Nature which has
been defaced by the Fall, even as our faculties have been
impaired. Just as Bacon strives to mend the text of Nature by
his Histories, so he sought to repair our faculties by his Essays
or Counsels, Civil and Moral , or public and private. The broken
mirror or glass of our minds no longer lets “light through” but
enchants us with broken lights, besetting us with Idols.
Just as Bacon draws on traditional inductive grammatica
for his exegesis of the two books of Nature and Revelation, so
he relies heavily on the Ciceronian conception of eloquence as
applied knowledge, explicitly uniting Cicero and Solomon in this
regard. In the Novum Organum (pp. 181­2) he writes: