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Bacon et Descartes

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Élodie Cassan

Partie II. La diffusion de la pensée baconienne dans la France post-cartésienne

Chapitre VII

The French reception of Francis Bacon’s natural history in mid seventeenth century

Dana Jalobeanu

Texte intégral

Francis Bacon’s natural histories

  • 1 See G. Rees, “An Unpublished Manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva Sylvarum drafts and other working n (...)
  • 2For once a faithful and abundant history of nature and the arts has been collected and arranged, a (...)
  • 3 Parasceve, OFB, XI, p. 451. See also OFB, XII, pp. 13-15.
  • 4 Parasceve, OFB, XI, pp. 450-451.
  • 5 Parasceve, OFB, XI, pp. 458-459.
  • 6 Examples can be found in Parasceve, in the preface to Historia naturalis et experimentalis (1622), (...)
  • 7 OFB, XII, p. 12 is referring to natural histories as the “timber and material” (Sylva et Materia). (...)
  • 8 Parasceve, appended at the end of NO, 1620, but also Norma Historiae praesentis published in the Hi (...)

1In the last five years of his life, Bacon was actively engaged in a process of re-fashioning his natural philosophical project around a redesigned notion of natural history.1 Although always a core element in the Baconian programme, the notion of natural history had a fluctuating meaning: it meant simply a large repository of facts and data for the use of inductio, as well as a more theoretical topical construction of experiments, observations, questions, suggestions for further experimentation, rules and sometimes even axioms, destined to provide the basis of a never fully explained process of interpretatio naturae. Natural history meant both an introductory general survey of the natural world and a more advanced experimental study of qualities, virtues and appetites of matter. Under one form or another, however, natural history was crucial for any kind of natural philosophical enterprise. In a number of methodological writings, Bacon claimed that natural history is both necessary and sufficient for constructing some sound knowledge of the natural world. Such is for example the opening claim of Historia naturalis and experimentalis (1622), stating that with a sufficiently large natural historical data-base, science can proceed even if the method of interpretatio naturae is not yet perfected.2 Moreover, while natural philosophy or other branches of knowledge require preliminary training and are accessible only to a handful of people, this natural history was a field open—in principle—to everyone.3 It was described as a cooperative and cumulative large-scale enterprise requiring ‘an army of workers’4 and designed on the ‘measure of the universe.’5 The product of such cumulative efforts was a tentative and provisional set of results, facts, experiments, experimental techniques, observations, questions and rules of research belonging to the whole community of researchers and accessible, in principle, to all. The provisional character of natural history was emphasized by Bacon at every step: both in his more methodological writings describing how such a natural history is to be assembled6 and in his topical Latin natural histories written between 1622 and 1626. Natural histories were designed and composed in such a way to capitalize on their programmatically unfinished character: they were ‘materials for the building,’7 designs and plans for future completion, lists of open-ended questions to be addressed in the future with the help of improved experimental design. In many ways, the diversity of Francis Bacon’s natural historical texts written between 1620 and 1626 is astonishing: he drew a list of 130 natural histories to be written in the future; he compiled lists of important questions and magnalia naturae. In addition, Bacon composed a methodological preface with the purpose of explaining in what ways his natural history is fundamentally different from more traditional natural histories. The same text offered rules for the composition of a topical natural history.8 He planned and wrote a number of topical natural histories himself; and he wrote or dictated an astonishingly large number of observations and experiments that became, after his death, one of the most popular Baconian writings in the seventeenth century, namely Sylva Sylvarum or a natural history in ten centuries (1627).

  • 9 D. Jalobeanu, “The fascination of Solomon’s House in seveteententh-century England,” in Vlad Alexan (...)

2In view of all this, it should not be surprising that natural history played a very important role in the seventeenth-century Baconianism; that Bacon’s natural histories or his plans for subsequent and yet unexplored natural histories were subject of interest, exploration and completion in the numerous scientific societies in England and on the Continent.9 It should be not surprising that the eclectic (and for the modern eye unreadable) Historia ventorum, Historia vitae et mortis and the posthumous Sylva Sylvarum went through a good number of subsequent editions and were translated in English, Latin and French. Of the three, Sylva Sylvarum was by far the most popular: with at least 17 editions in English until the end of the seventeenth century, with two subsequent translations in Latin and one translation in French. What is quite astonishing is the little interest that Baconian natural histories were able to rouse until rather recently in the contemporary Baconian scholarship. The history of Baconian natural history is still to be written. This paper is just a modest attempt to sketch one of its first episodes, namely the reception of Baconian natural history in mid-seventeenth century France.

  • 10 M. Le Doeuff, “Bacon chez les grands au siècle de Louis XIII” in M. Fattori ed., Francis Bacon: ter (...)

3As it has been noticed before, the first generation Baconianism took off the ground across the Channel. It is in France and Holland that one can find Baconians as early as 1630s; readers, translators or continuators of various aspects of Bacon’s program. It has been shown, for example, that Bacon’s works were extensively translated into French and Italian from the 1620s onwards (sometimes even earlier than this), and that these translations were, in France, partially supervised and supported by the Court and Crown.10 Bacon’s works (and sometimes Bacon’s manuscripts) were extensively read by Isaac Beckman, Marin Mersenne, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc and various correspondents and members of the circle around Pierre and Jaques Dupuy. In France, in the 1630s, we can find an interesting and multi-layered Baconianism: moral, philosophical, essayistic and natural philosophical. My paper will deal with this last aspect of the reception of that part of Bacon’s program: what we would be tempted to call today the ‘scientific’ aspect, i.e. Bacon’s legacy of natural history.

French Baconians and English Baconians: the interest for Bacon’s natural history in France

  • 11 Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy edited by P. Tamizey de Laroque, Paris, 1840, pp. 17, 31-32, 35 (...)
  • 12 28 December 1623, “le premier volume de l’Instauratio magna de Verulamius que nous attendrons en g (...)
  • 13 W. Boswell was the English ambassador in The Hague and a part of Bacon’s manuscripts went to Hollan (...)
  • 14 For the complete story see P. Fortin de la Hoguette, Lettres au frères Dupuy et à leur entourage ( (...)
  • 15 16 May 1627, “Cet autre livre de pauvre Bacon de divers meslanges en anglois, seroit encores bon a (...)
  • 16 See Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 319-320, p. 527.
  • 17 Ibid., pp. 692-693: “J’ai decouvré par hazard d’un gentillhome qui venoit de Rome une petite piece (...)

4The reception of Bacon in France, in the 1620s and 1630s is a multi-faceted phenomenon. On the one hand, there are numerous translations of Bacon’s moral and literary works destined to the cultivated elite, the salons and the Court. On the other hand, there is a widespread interest in the philosophical circles for Bacon’s methodological works: for the theory of idols and the new logic but, even more so, for the division of sciences and the general program of Instauratio Magna. A survey of the ‘scientific’ correspondence of the late 1620s and early 1630s can illustrate this vivid interest. In a series of letters written in 1623 and 1624, for example, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc mentioned more than once his eagerness to see the “first volume of Bacon’s Instauratio Magna11, namely the newly published De Augmentis Scientiarum.12 Peiresc also corresponded with William Boswell, one of Bacon’s literary executors and guardians of Bacon’s papers,13 on the same subject of the augmented Latin version of The Advancement of Learning. When eventually the first copy of De Augmentis Scientiarum reached Paris, it was dismantled and used for the publishing of a ‘pirated’ edition, in Latin, in 1624.14 Although Peiresc seemed to have been equally interested in Bacon’s Essays and in the History of Henry the VIIth, his letters are emphasizing time and again the importance of Bacon’s natural philosophical works and especially his natural histories. Also, Peiresc’s letters mention more than once the preoccupation for finding suitable translators for Sylva Sylvarum and New Atlantis.15 A recurrent project occurring in Peiresc’s correspondence seemed to have been to publish an anthology of utopian writings, a book containing “toutes ces republiques.” The content of such a book vary, but Campanella, Bacon, Seneca, Foscarini are the most often mentioned names in connection with this project.16 Peiresc seemed as well to have read a draft of Bacon’s Historia Vitae et Mortis, identified only as Bacon’s De Vita.17

  • 18 G. Ferreti, Un ‘soldat philosophe:’ Philippe Fortin the la Hoguette (1585-1668?), EGIG, Genoa, 1988 (...)

5And, last but not least, Peiresc was involved in the attempt to publish the fragments of Bacon’s manuscripts presumably stolen by Phillippe Fortin de la Hoguette in 1623. The story of these stolen manuscripts has been extensively told18, so I won’t detail it here. It is worth mentioning it, however, only because it gains more weight in the context of a more general interest exhibited in the circle Dupuy for Bacon’s natural historical writings.

  • 19 “Si vous pouvez achever la traduction du Sylva Sylvarum a l’aide de votre anglais et la donner au (...)
  • 20 C. Buccolini, “Mersenne traduttore di Bacon,” op. cit., p. 7 sq.
  • 21 Mersenne to Sorbière, 1647, CM, XV, p. 468.
  • 22 He seemed to be especially interested in the observations of parhelia made in Rome by the Jesuit Sc (...)

6Another well-known character in the story of the French reception of Baconian natural history is Marin Mersenne, whose interest in Bacon’s natural history seems to be even greater than Peiresc’s. Although critical of Bacon’s philosophy in general, Mersenne seemed to have been convinced of the value of Bacon’s natural historical method. In Mersenne’s correspondence with Robert Cornier one can find another project for the translation of Sylva Sylvarum.19 As Buccolini has convincingly shown, Mersenne seemed to have taken the task upon himself, translating the third century of Sylva—namely the experiments on sounds, in which he was directly interested while working on his Harmonie Universelle.20 The question of publishing a Latin or French translation of Sylva Sylvarum was recurrent in Mersenne’s correspondence in the 1630s and even 1640s.21 It was also coupled with the more general question of writing a natural history ‘à la manière de Bacon’, on subjects as varied as sounds and music, meteorological observations and the motions of the heavens. In this respect it is worth mentioning here Descartes’ interest in the same aspect of Baconian natural history. In the much quoted letter to Mersenne dated 10 May 1632, one in series of letters showing Descartes in the process of drafting Le Monde and parts of his scientific treatises, Descartes asks Mersenne for data: observations of phenomena relating to meteorology, atmospheric phenomena, comets and the constitution of the heavens.22 Such observational data would help advancing his own scientific work: a more comprehensive study of comets, claimed Descartes, would help to solve his major problem concerning the structure and positions of the stars in heavens. In generalizing his claim, Descartes writes:

Vous m’avez austrefois mande que vous connoissiez des gens qui se plaisoient a travailler pour l’avancement des sciences, jusques a vouloir mesme faire toute sorte d’expériences a leurs dépens. Si quelqu’un de cette humeur vouloit entreprendre d’écrire l’histoire des apparences celestes, selon la méthode de Verulamius, et que, sans y mettre aucune raison ni hypothèses, il nous decrivist exactement le ciel, tel qu’il paroist maintenant, qu’elle situation a chaque étoile fixe au respect de ses voisines, quelle différence, ou de grosseur, ou de couleur, ou de claret, ou d’estre plus ou moins esticelante, etc.; item, si cela répond a ce que les anciens astronomes en ont écrit, et quelle différence il s’y trouve (car je ne doute point que les estoiles ne changent tousjours quelque peu entr’elles de situation, quoy- qu’on les estime fixes); après cela qu’il y adjoustast les observations des comètes, mettant une petite table du cours de chacune, ainsi que Tycho a fait de trois ou quatre qu’il a observées; et enfin les variations de l’écliptique de des apogées des planètes: ce seroit un ouvrage qui seroit plus utile au public qu’il ne semble peut-estre d’abord, et qui me soulageroit de beaucoup de peine.

7This fragment was often quoted and widely discussed. What seems to me more interesting, however, is the fragment following immediately, a paragraph in which Descartes plainly doubted not only that such a writing exists, but that such a science is ever possible.

  • 23 CM, II, p. 308; AT, I, pp. 250-251.

Mais je n’espère pas qu’on le fasse, non plus que je n’espère pas aussi de trouver ce que je cherche a présent touchant les astres. Je croy que c’est une science qui passé la portée de l’esprit humain…23

  • 24Illud insuper praecipimus, ut omnia in Naturalibus tam Corporibus quam Virtutibus (quantum fieri p (...)

8This reference to a natural history of the heavens is challenging and mysterious on more than one front. One wonders what could have Descartes meant by it. What kind of natural history of the heavens did he have in mind? It seems to be a descriptive natural history, free from hypotheses, a description of the celestial movements. However, this is not what Bacon used to call a natural history of the heavens in Novum Organum, Parasceve or Sylva Sylvarum. It is true, Novum Organum ends with a catalogue of 140 natural histories, the first four of which might have interested Descartes: History of celestial phenomena; or astronomical history, History of the configuration of heaven and its parts towards the Earth and its parts, or cosmographical history, History of comets, History of fiery meteors. In Parasceve, one important question of the astronomical history regards the motions of celestial bodies, measured with accuracy, in a ‘marriage of physics with mathematics.’24 However, this is just one question—and Bacon’s natural histories are always constructed around multiple questions. In the slightly earlier Descriptio Globi Intellectualis Bacon enumerated some such questions, having to do with the material constitution of the heavens, with the nature, virtues and appetites of a fiery heaven. The manuscript passages scattered through Bacon’s natural historical notes similarly dealt with the fiery nature of the stars, and the sympathies and antipathies of celestial bodies. From the little that we have we can safely infer that Bacon’s projected history of the heavens would have been directed by theoretical questions and driven by causal explanations regarding the constitution and matter of the universe. And it would have been permeated at every level by Francis Bacon’s own and rather peculiar pneumatic theory, very much like the other extant natural histories.

  • 25 G. Rees has shown that they were present in the manuscript he discovered in British Library. See G. (...)

9However this may be, the fragments regarding the motions and influences of celestial bodies have disappeared from the published English version of Sylva Sylvarum.25 Scattered references to the influx and influence of the stars, fiery nature of the heavens or the pneumatic and ‘spiritual’ matter theory are still present in the Sylva. They are even more present in the only French translation of Sylva Sylvarum that was eventually published, a very curious rewriting of Bacon’s posthumous natural history, to which I will now turn.

Histoire naturelle de Francois Bacon: the mysterious translation

10In 1631, a book was printed in Paris (by Antoine de Sommaville & Andre Soveron) under the name Histoire naturelle de Francois Bacon Baron de Verulam, Vicomte de Sainct Alban, & Chancellier d’Angleterre. It is dedicated to Charles de l’Aubépine, Marquis de Chateauneuf, abbé de Preaux who was the French ambassador in London, in 1629-1630. The Privilege du Roy gives permission to the author, Pierre Amboise, sieur de la Magdelaine (unidentified in the title page of the book) to publish a translation of:

  • 26 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” n.p.

“un Livre intitule, l’Histoire Naturelle du sieur Francois Bacon, Chevallier d’Angleterre, avec quelque Lettres du Mesme Auteur ; ensemble la vie dudit sieur Bacon, composée par ledit exposant.”26

  • 27 M. Le Doeuff emphasized that the fact that one could not find out anything about P. Amboise does n (...)

11As it has been often remarked, this book is rather peculiar. Unlike the other translations of Bacon into French, it is written by an author we know next to nothing.27 Unlike other translations into French, it is not only extremely liberal, but in many respects it is a rewriting of a new book. It is in principle, a translation of Sylva and New Atlantis. The latter is not identified in the privilege; the former is not even named. The book is called throughout Bacon’s natural history, and not a natural and experimental history, as the original. It does not have ten centuries, but six books, topically organized and heavily edited, with a good number of things left out. In fact, at a cursory reading, it does not look a bit like Sylva Sylvarum and one is tempted to dismiss it as a non-Baconian compilation written by someone who did not really read and understand Bacon’s Sylva.

  • 28 “… pour avoir trouve trop de confusion en disposition de matières, que semblent avoir este disposé (...)

12In the meantime, Amboise’s book appears in print with a number of signs carrying authority: it has the first ever published life of Bacon, for example, preceding with almost 20 years Rawley’s life of Bacon. It also claims to have been written by someone who spent some time in England and had access to Bacon’s manuscripts. It claims to contain ‘new materials’ with respect to Rawley’s edition and a more proper order than Rawley’s version.28 Amboise goes even further than that: his Histoire naturelle constructs a novel and in many respects original portrait of Francis Bacon, a portrait in many respects different from the one put together by Bacon himself or by William Rawley. Amboise’s Bacon is a philosopher, experimenter and explorer of nature but is also an alchemist or, at least, someone actively engaged in chemistry. The natural philosophical activity envisaged is fairly traditional: Bacon’s natural history is seen as born in a more general attempt to know the ‘qualities’ of all things in the universe:

  • 29 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., pp. 21-22.

L’Histoire Naturelle est aussi l’un des fruicts de son oisiveté. Le désir louable qu’il avoit de ne rien ignorer & de connoistre la nature & les qualités de toutes choses, portèrent son esprit a faire des expériences, dont quelques curieux peut-estre se seroient avisez, mais que personne ne pouvoit si bien établir que luy. En quoy sans doute il a reussi avec tant de bon-heur, que peu de choses ont echappe sa connoissance, nous decouvrans a tout propos les faussetez de l’ancienne philosophie & nous faisant voir les abus qui se sont glissez dans l’ecole sous le crédit des premiers autheurs de cette science.29

13All the experimentation is depicted as being organized in a place specially built for such purposes, a place bearing many resemblances with an alchemical laboratory:

Mais Monsieur Bacon, sans s’arrester aux termes de ceux qui l’ont précède, a voulu joindre l’expérience avec la raison: Et pour cet effet il avoit une maison de campagne assez proche de Londres qui ne luy servoit qu’a faire les expériences. En ce lieu il avoit un nombre infiny de vases et de fioles, dont les unes estoient remplies d’eaux distillées, les autres d’herbes et de metaux en leur propre nature, quelques-unes de meslanges et compositions; et les laissant exposees a l’air pendant toutes les saisons de l’année, il observoit soigneusement les diverses actions du chaud et du froid, du sec et de l’humide, les productions et corruptions des simples, et autres effets de la nature. C’est par ce moyen qu’il a trouvé tant de rares secrets dont il nous a laisse l’invention, et qu’il a sait reconnoitre pour faux tant d’axiomes qui jusqu’ici avoient este tenus pour inviolables parmi les Philosophes.

14What Amboise emphasizes here is a portrait of Bacon engaged in alchemical experimentation, and constructing (in the last five years of his life, in retirement in his ‘college’ of experiences) a natural history of qualities and a theory of matter. Moreover, although describing this matter theory in terms of tangible bodies and pneumatical spirits, the translator slips more than once in the language of corpuscularian philosophy, as I will show in more details in the next section of this paper.

  • 30 “Monsieur Bacon estoit si amoureux des sciences naturelles, qu’il avoit envie de faire bastir pres (...)

15Amboise’s translation also contains a heavily and interestingly edited version of New Atlantis called Nouvel Atlas. This opens with a short preface stating the fact that Bacon had an actual design to build a college of experiments but, lacking funds and time, left a literary model of it for further generations.30New Atlantis and its college are therefore part of the natural history: they give Bacon’s plan for how to pursue such a natural historical project.

  • 31 See the letters of Gruter to Rawley—showing a plan to incorporate material from Amboise’s translati (...)
  • 32 Gruter’s letter, May, 1652: “The Design of him who translated into the French the Natural History (...)

16Throughout the six books of his Histoire naturelle, Amboise gives a heavily edited, completely rearranged, cut and paste version of Sylva Sylvarum. No thorough study has been made of this book, and I do not pretend to give here more than the first hints and opened directions for further exploration. However, before getting into more details, it is worth pausing a little on the reception of this book to note that it was taken seriously in the mid-seventeenth century. Isaac Gruter’s project for a Latin version of Sylva started as a project for translating Amboise’s version.31 Even after the correspondence with Rawley dissuaded him of this project, Gruter still claims that the ensuing Latin translation contains Amboise’s additions.32 Even if, in the end, a new translation, Gruter’s Latin edition of Sylva, still calls New Atlantis, Nova Atlas. A comparative study of the Latin and French edition is sill wanted. Pierre Amboise’s translation is quoted positively by Watts preface of The Advancement of Learning (the English version of DA). I was not able to discover who has read the book in France and how widely spread it was. I was not able to discover who the author was. In fact, from now on, all I have are questions and puzzles. I will try to place them in a more general context and address them as clearly as possible.

The ‘alchemical’ natural history of Pierre Amboise

  • 33 As for example in chapter 4 book III: “Le quatrieme & le dernier moyen est l’Assimilation de l’alim (...)

17At first sight, Amboise’s book is strikingly un-Baconian: the translator is reordering the material, does not number the experiments and very often does not call them experiments. Throughout the six books of Histoire naturelle one can spot very few remaining experiments or experimental reports. The material is arranged in a topical and fairly traditional manner in many respects. Histoire naturelle begins with a number of chapters on the generation of metals by the heat of the sun and the possibility of making gold and continues with a heavily annotated selection of items from Sylva, with a recurrent emphasis on wonders of nature or wonders of art. Meanwhile, the tentative and provisional character of Bacon’s experimentation—or sometimes even the experiments themselves—is simply eliminated. Maybe this is the reason why the book has not received the proper attention in this or in the previous century. It is relatively easy to dismiss it by saying that the translator has entirely missed the point of Bacon’s natural and experimental enterprise and the result is a thoroughly un-Baconian compilation of ‘facts’. Such a conclusion, however, is not well founded. A more careful reading of the book shows that an awful lot of material from Sylva has found its way into the French translation. Even if heavily edited, and topically reorganized, a good part of Sylva is present in Amboise’s book. Moreover, what is even more important, most of the more theoretical and speculative parts of Sylva Sylvarum are fully translated. For example, chapter 1 of book V closely follows Bacon’s speculative essay on matter theory that we can find in Sylva Sylvarym I. 98. We can find in Amboise’s compilation Bacon’s appetitive and pneumatical matter theory, his speculations concerning the motions and activities of spirits, the perception present in all bodies, sympathies, antipathies, the force of imagination, action at a distance, etc. Amboise also proves to be acquainted with other works by Bacon and makes more than one reference to Bacon’s Historia vitae et mortis.33 It is perhaps interesting to emphasize that especially the chapters on medicine from Histoire naturelle are often a close translation, sometimes augmented with a number of experiments and observations reported in the first person, rewritten however from the direct and fragmentary form into a prose more similar with a natural philosophical treatise. All this depiction of Bacon’s text is however embedded into a slightly different context and coached in a different language than the Baconian language of natural history. This is the context and language of an author especially interested in matter theory and alchemy.

  • 34 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., p. 281-282.

18There are a number of arguments to sustain the claim that Amboise’s translation bears the marks of its author’s own agenda, namely a particular interest in alchemy and matter theory. The preface and the appended life of Bacon are consistent in picturing an image of the experimental philosopher engaged in a thorough process of studying the qualities and properties of matter in what is clearly a simplified depiction of an alchemical laboratory. The first chapter of the book begins with the alchemical story of the generation of metals and the making of gold. Amboise cuts out from his translation of Bacon’s considerations and experiments on making gold all the critical references to alchemy one can find in the English edition of Sylva. Meanwhile, he adds the references to alchemy in the beginning of chapter 3 of book V which is a rough translation of the theoretical considerations on the acceleration of time and maturation coming from experiments 301 and 311 in the English version. If Bacon speaks of three kinds of maturation: of fruits, drinks and ulcers, Amboise alters the list to fruits, drinks and metals. The ‘acceleration of time’ is said to be primarily interesting for the prolongation of life in general (in living beings but also in humans).34

19The very definition of natural history for Amboise is picking a significant group from Bacon’s various natural historical questions:

C’est une histoire naturelle, ou les qualitez des metauz, la nature des elemens, les causes de la generation et corruption, les diverses actions des corps les unes sur les autres et choses semblables, sont traitees avec tant de lumiere, qu’il semble en avoir appris la science a l’ecole du premier homme.

20This is of course not a neutral definition. It is also a very restricted definition, leaving aside things like the natural history of animals, plants or the faculties of the human mind, so present in the English version of Sylva. Natural history is depicted here as a sort of traditional physics of the sublunary sphere, with a special emphasis on elements, the generation and corruption and the nature of metals—in other words, very much like the common list of priorities of someone with a sustained interest in matter theory and alchemy.

Experience, experiment and natural history

  • 35 Here is how the passages look comparatively: “The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes (...)
  • 36 “Quant aux status & regles de nostre Societe, la premiere loy & la plus importante est celle qui c (...)

21Throughout the translation, one recurrent theme is that of the exploration of ‘secrets;’ Bacon’s natural history is successful in finding the ‘secrets of nature’ hitherto unexplored. In the accompanying New Atlantis, the Solomon’s House is similarly depicted as a society devoted to the exploration and preservation of secrets. Significantly, the purpose of the society is said to be “the knowledge of causes and secrets of nature;”35 and its very first law is the oath of secrecy.36

  • 37 It is worth noting that, in the translation, the recurrence of the words secret, secrecy or various (...)

22It is worth keeping in mind this recurrent insistence on secrets.37 It might help to understand some of the bewildering features of this bewildering book. One such feature is that having a look at the table of contents can be entirely misleading. The volume is organized in six books. The first book begins with a speculation regarding the generation of metals in the bowels of the earth under the influence of the Sun and continues with a chapter on the making of gold. The other chapters of the first book are diverse, but they are all dealing in one way or another with matter theory or the properties, qualities or forces hidden in matter. The first book contains materials coming from all the centuries of the English version, sometimes entirely rewritten. The second book gathers together Bacon’s experiments and theories about sounds, perception of sounds, music or the transmission of sounds, coming mainly from the centuries II and III of Sylva. The third book contains mainly medical theories, recipes and speculations. Its materials are also diverse, coming from centuries I, III, V, VIII, IX and X of the English version. The fourth book deals with plants and the sixth with animals. In many ways, it looks like the translator follows a roughly traditional cosmological organization. However, book 5 deals with the secret operations in matter: attractions, sympathies, vegetation, generation and putrefaction, and other such things, a category of its own, containing materials coming from all the centuries of the English version. What are the reasons for this very peculiar organization?

23In many ways, the translator is hence using Sylva Sylvarum as ‘materials for building’ properly speaking: only what he seems to be building is constructed in a traditional cosmological or cosmographical order. Meanwhile, a more careful reading of this organization reveals that Amboise works in the very popular style of the common-place book: he cuts and pastes fragments from various places in Bacon’s Sylva that relate to the same topic. For example, chapters 5-7 dealing with the nature of fire are constructed in the following way: Amboise begins with theoretical considerations on the possibility of knowing the nature of fire, (and not merely, as in Bacon, on the nature or properties of the flame). Then follows an abridged version of the experiments and considerations corresponding to SS I. 31 dealing with the properties of flame, SS IV. 399, 366, 373, 371, 372, 375, 374 dealing with the ways in which candles and lamps can burn slower or faster. However, if the gist of Bacon’s experimentation is to understand better the nature of flame, the chapter in Amboise’s translation deals mainly with the subject of whether one can build inextinguishable lamps, as sometimes claimed by the ancients. In terms of language, Amboise eliminates Bacon’s constant reference to flame as a ‘body’ or a ‘fixed body’ and replaces it with the language of elements. Even more telling is the way he expands Bacon’s passing reference to Stoic cosmology. If we look comparatively at the corresponding passages (my emphasis added on the parts that don’t have a correspondent in the English version):

Note also, that the flame of the candle, within the flame of the spirit of wine, is troubled; and doth not only open and move upwards, but moveth waving, and to and from; as if flame of his own nature (if it were not quenched) would roll and turn, as well as move upwards. By all which it should seem that the celestial bodies (most of them) are true fires or flames, as the Stoics held; more fine (perhaps) and rarified than our flame is. For they are all globular and determinate; they have rotation ; and they have the colour and splendour of flame: so that flame above is durable and consistent, and in his natural place; but with us it is a stranger, and momentany, and impure, like Vulcan that halted with his fall.

La troisieme, que la proprieté de la flame n’est pas seulement de faire son effet en haut, mais qu’elle peut agir aussi aux costez & en rond, & se servir du mouvement de circulation, si la force de l’air ne l’en empeschoit par les mesmes raisons que j’ay deduites cy-dessus. Et certes il me semble que l’on a condamné assez legerement l’opinion des Stoiques, qui prenoient que la pluspart des corps celestes n’estoient que de vrais feux ; puis que l’on a fondé leur condemnation sur cette raison seulement qu’il eust este impossible que ces corps celestes eussent le movement de circulation s’ils eussent este de feu. Mais il faut croire que ces Juges n’avoient pas bien observe la nature de cet element ; & si nous trouvons icy bas quelques vestiges de ce movement circulaire, il est bien facile a juger que ces flambeaux celestes, qui sont composez d’une mesme matiere, mais beaucoup plus rarefiee que n’est pas nostre flame, peuvent avoir la mesme fonction en un degre bien plus parfait ; veu mesme que nous n’avons en terre, a proprement parler, que la lie des elemens. Et c’est sans doute ce que les Anciens nous vouloient depeindre par leur fable, quand ils nous ont fait croire que le Vulcain tombant du Ciel en terre s’estoit rendu boiteux ; signifians par là, que les qualitez de cet élement font bien moindres en terre qu’elle ne sont aux Cieux. (pp. 30-32)

24In what is in many ways a careful translation of the English text, Amboise intercalates a number of additions that are changing both the emphasis and the meaning of the text. This way of working is characteristic of the whole translation. The language of elements and sometimes references to alchemy are reoccurring throughout the book. For example, in chapter 4 of book I dealing with transmutation of air into water (my emphasis added):

La nature de l’air est si voisine a celle de l’eau, que bien souvent ces deux elements se changent l’un en un autre: & cette metamorphose se fait avec tant de facilité, qu’il est la pluspart du temps impossible de la reconnoistre. La chose neantmoins merite bien d’etre observee, puis que ce n’est pas une operation peu considerable de depouiller les elemens, qui font les principes des choses, de leurs qualitez naturelles, pour leur en donner d’estrangere: C’est ce que je pretens faire voir par les exemples dont je vais traiter. (p. 20)

25The chapter contains material coming from the experiments 27, 81, 82, 77, 76 and 80 of the English Sylva; however, Amboise is translating just some of the observations and experiments reported by Bacon. The choice is also significant: translated are the observations coming from Pliny and Aristotle enhanced by Bacon. What is left out are Bacon’s conjectures, experiments and proposals for further experimentation. Such is, for example, the story of the people sealed in caves and discovered long time after dead of thirst and hunger but surrounded by vessels full or water “thicker and more towards ice, than common water” (SS I. 74). Amboise translates the beginning of this story and completes it with more details than one can find in the English version. Meanwhile, he leaves out Bacon’s explanation and suggested experiments, as it is clear from the following passages (emphasis added and the passages in italics differ between the two versions):

  • 38 The source seems to be Aristotle De Mirab. 53 (but what the corresponding passage is saying is that (...)

It is reported by one of the ancients, that in Lydia, near Pergamus, there were certain workmen in time of wars fled into caves; and the mouth of the caves being stopped by the enemies, they were famished. But long time after the dead bones were found; and some vessels which they had carried with them; and the vessels full of water; and that water thicker and more towards ice, than common water:38which is a notable instance of condensation and induration by burial under earth (in caves) for long time; and of version also (as it should seem) of the air into water; if any of those vessels were empty.
Try therefore a small bladder hung in snow, and the like in nitre, and the like in quicksilver; and if you find the bladders fallen or shrunk, you may be sure the air is condensed by the cold of those bodies; as it would be in a cave under the earth.

Pour appuyer davantage l’opinion de ce frequent changement d’air en eau, je ne veux oublier de mettre icy ce que j’ay leu dans un ancien Autheur; qu’en la province de Lydie, assez prez de Pergame, quelques habitans du pais (pour eviter les fureurs de la guerre) se refugierent en des caves assez profondes; dont l’entrée leur ayant esté depuis bouchée par les ennemis, apres avoir consomme les vivres & provisions qu’ils y avoient portees, ils perirent tous de faim sans pouvoir estre secourus. Long temps apres ces caves ayant este ouvertes on trouva les os de ces miserables, & ensemble les vases dans lesquels ils avoient porte leurs provisions, qui estois tous remplis d’eau, mais fort apaisse & fort approchant de la glace. Or il est certain que cette eau ne pouvoit proceder d’ailleurs, que de ce changement dont nous traittons. (pp. 22-24)

26As I hope I have proven by ways of the preceding examples, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct the way in which Amboise’s translation was put together: one of the chapters of the book contains sometimes passages coming from as many as 4 different centuries of Sylva Sylvarum. Very few of the ‘experiments’ or observations of Sylva are fully reported. What the translator is doing is to offer an abridged version and especially what he takes to be the result of Bacon’s multiple experiments, observations or questions. What is also characteristic is the change of the language: instead of Bacon’s tentative and experimental language, Amboise employs the language of facts and certainty and often rewrites what is in the English version a question or a suggestion for further experimentation so that it looks more like a result. If all this is in many ways consistent with the attempt to put Sylva Sylvarum into a more traditional form, structure and language, what is striking is the recurrent ways in which Amboise is cutting out most of the detailed experimental reports one can find in the English version.

  • 39 The axioms of maturation, in experiment 326 and subsequent experiments from Century IV.

27For example, the first two chapters of Amboise’s Sylva leave out precisely Bacon’s proposed experiment for making gold. They are totally devoid of Bacon’s reservations regarding the current alchemical theory of the generations of metals or Bacon’s critique of alchemists. Amboise also leaves out Bacon’s insistence on the fact that an experiment of making gold should be organized in such a way that it lasts for many months. Instead, Amboise adds a number of passages I have not been able to identify, illustrating the widespread theory claiming that metals are generated in the bowels of the Earth by the heat of the Sun. He also edits out what for us looks like the most important point of Bacon’s experiments for producing gold, namely the formulation of axioms.39 This elimination of the experimental report seems to be a constant feature of the translation. Especially when Bacon formulates a hypothesis and proposes experiments to test it, leaving the discussion open for further inquiry, the translation is either eliminating the issue altogether or transforms the tentative hypothesizing into affirmative claims. An interesting example is that of the effects of the moon on the sublunary bodies. Bacon introduces the whole issue in a tentative manner:

Of the power of the celestial bodies, and what more secret influences they have besides the two manifest influences of heat and light, we shall speak when we handle experiments touching the celestial bodies; meanwhile we will give some directions for more certain trials of the virtue and influences of the moon; which is our nearest neighbour. (SS IX 889)

28By contrast, Amboise begins the chapter on the virtues and powers of the moon by claiming that it is the common universal opinion that the moon has a strong influence over terrestrial things. Two particular influences are on trial in this chapter, namely what Bacon calls ‘the opinion’ ‘that moon is magnetical of heat’ (SS I 75) and the hypothesis that moon induces putrefaction. The first opinion leads Bacon to a complex experiment of placing hot water in various recipients under the rays of the moon and shielded from the moon rays by screens, trees or bushes (in experiments 75 and 890). In Amboise, all this is reduced to an affirmative claim illustrated by one experimental instance and one further example:

il est certain que la Lune a une proprieté particuliere, de tirer la chaleur des corps, & j’ay experimente que de l’eau chaude exposee aux rayons de la Lune, sera bien plutost refroidie, que si elle estoit a couvert sous l’ombrage de quelques arbres. C’est aussi par la mesme raison, que ceux qui dormant a la Lune ressentent tant de froid.

29In the case of the second claim, the fact that the moon induces putrefaction, the English version is very cautious in affirming the possibility of a correlation and in formulating possible trials to be attempted:

For inducing the putrefaction, it were good to try it with flesh or fish exposed to the moon-beams, and again exposed to the air when the moon shineth not, for the like time; to see whether will corrupt sooner: and try it also with capon, or some other fowl, laid abroad, to see whether it will mortify and become tender sooner… Try also with an apple or orange, with holes made in their tops, to see whether will rot or mould sooner. Try it also with Holland cheese, having wine put into it, whether it will breed mites sooner or greater. (SS IX 891)

30By contrast, this becomes in Amboise:

Pour le second je scai bien que cet Astre induit la putrefaction, & j’ay esprouvée que la chair exposée a ses rayons se corrupt bien plustot qu’aileurs. (Amboise, p. 51)

31It is fairly clear that Amboise is working with a different, more traditional concept of experiment and experimentation than one can find in Bacon. His ‘experiences’ are merely illustrations of claims and ‘facts’ about nature, not open ended questions addressed to nature. They are at best personal reports, bearing the authority of the eye-witness: hence the translation is changing Bacon’s way of talking about experiments as receipts to be tried by his readers with reports of facts written in the first person and said to be based on personal experience. Therefore, the complexity and multi-layered conception of Baconian experimentation is entirely lost in the translation.

Added material

  • 40 The origin of the observation recorded by Bacon in experiment 387 is Aristotle, Prob. XII, 1 and 2. (...)

32A more thorough study of Pierre Amboise’s book would still be needed in order to be able to identify all the interpolations and added materials that have found their ways in this peculiar natural history. For the moment, and just as a tentative conclusion, I would say that there are certainly less added materials than one would suspect at first glance. In some cases, the additions seem to come from the fact that Amboise, recognizing Bacon’s sources (Pliny, Aristotle, Sandys, Della Porta) expands on the initial story from which the Baconian observation and experiment was first derived. Some other times, added material is justified by what I suggested one might consider as being Amboise’s own agenda: matter theory and alchemy. Some such additions even go one step further and distort Bacon’s explanation by introducing references to a corpuscularian theory of matter. Such is the rather curious paragraph from chapter 11, book one, where Amboise is grouping together various observations concerning the transmission of smell (coming from the experiments 843, 931, 932, 933, 934, 928, 387, 388, 390 of the English version). In explaining why “smells and other odours are sweeter in the air at some distance, than near the nose”40 Bacon claims that the smells are usually a mixture between sweeter and more spiritual and cruder and ‘earthy’ odours, of which the latter are “reacheth not so far.” In the translation, the paragraph is rendered slightly differently as:

  • 41 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., pp. 65-66.

Les parfums, aussi bien que les sons, semblent beaucoup plus doux de loin que de pres. De cela on en peut rendre deux raisons; ou que l’odeur & le son s’incorporans mieux avec l’air par le moyen de cet espace, se portent plus entiers jusques au sens; ou plustot que les parties les plus grossieres estans separees par cet intervale, il ne penetre jusques a nous que ce qu’il y a de plus doux & subtil.41

33It is worth emphasizing that while Bacon speaks about different spiritual characters of sweet and earthy smells, Amboise replaces this with a reference with the bigger or smaller ‘parts’ of smells, in what looks very much like a corpuscularian explanation. Another similar corpuscularian explanation is at the beginning of chapter 12 of the same book, a chapter on colours. It is a very short chapter, which, however, begins with a peculiar paragraph which states the inherent nature of colours and the fact that bodies retain their colours no matter how much they are divided. This striking claim is followed by an even more mysterious reference to a treatise on colours:

  • 42 Ibid., p. 67.

Les corps conservent leur couleur, quoi qu’ils soient separez en un million de parcelles. Je parlerois plus amplement de cette matiere, si je ne l’avois desja traitee aileurs en un de mes livres, out pres avoir examine fort soigneusement toutes les opinions des Philosophes, touchant la nature des couleurs & leur causes, j’ay estably mes sentimens particuliers avec des raisons & des experiences, de sorte qu’il ne me reste plus que fort peu d’observations a faire.42

34It might be that this mysterious reference is only a way to justify the scarcity of Bacon’s observations on colours in the English Sylva Sylvarum. It may also be, however, another veiled reference to a whole set of corpuscular explanations that are in many ways at odds with the rest of Bacon’s pneumatic matter theory.

35However this may be, there are also in Pierre Amboise’s book a number of interpolated paragraphs I have not been able to identify so far. Clearly more work is needed to explore the potential sources of this complex and mysterious book.

Materials for the building: Baconian natural histories

36Although by far the most peculiar of the seventeenth century renderings of Bacon’s natural histories into French, Pierre Amboise’s Histoire naturelle, is not the only natural history that got reorganized, enhanced, edited and sometimes cut by the translator. To a lesser extent, but in the same line, I. Baudoin, the translator of Bacon’s Latin natural histories into French is similarly treating Bacon’s natural history as belonging to a category of ‘materials for the building.’ Most strikingly, the long and comprehensive philosophical preface appended by Bacon to his 1622 Historia naturalis et experimentalis is missing from the corresponding Baudoin’s translation of the Historia ventorum (Histoire des vents, 1650). What we have instead is a short preface explaining the practical use of such a natural history of winds for navigation, prognostication of weather and other practical purposes. Baudoin also intervenes in Bacon’s text, adds glosses or references on the margins and sometimes introduces more substantial changes, such as the last two pages of the volume on the effects of the winds which is in many ways a gloss on various (quoted) paragraphs from Pliny’s Historia naturalis.

37Such interventions in Bacon’s texts are not only the trademark of translations. The English successive editions of Sylva Sylvarum contained additions of various degrees of complexity, sometimes entire treatises (like Rawley’s translation of History of Life and Death or the very much abridged translation New Organon epitomized). It was a common practice to treat natural histories as work in progress, collections of observations, facts and experiments that can be enhanced and augmented by successive generations of explorers of nature. This being said, however, it is worth emphasizing that such additions were mostly done on an existing structure, without a topical reordering of the whole work. And, even if some of them illustrated the own agenda of the translators and editors, the extent to which Pierre Amboise changes the Baconian text is unheard of in the mid-sixteenth century.

Notes

1 See G. Rees, “An Unpublished Manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva Sylvarum drafts and other working notes,” Annals of Science, 38 (1981), pp. 377-412; G. Rees, Introduction, in OFB, XII and XIII. D. Jalobeanu, “From natural history to early modern science: the case of Bacon’s Histories,” in Analele Universitatii Bucuresti, 60/2010, pp. 23-33; D. Jalobeanu, “The Philosophy of Francis Bacon’s Natural History: a Research Program,” Studii de ştiinţă şi cultură, 2010, pp. 18-37.

2For once a faithful and abundant history of nature and the arts has been collected and arranged, and once it has been unfolded and placed as it were before men’s eyes, there will be no mean hope that those great intellects of whom I have sppoken (such as flourished in the ancient philosophers, and are even now not unusual), who till now have built with such efficiency as far as the work goes certain philosophical skiffs of ingenious construction from a plank or shell (i.e. from slight and paltry experience) will, once the right timber and material have been obtained, raise much more solid constructions, and that too although they prefer to follow the old ways and not the way of my Organum (which seems to me to be either the only or the best way). And so it comes down to this, that my Organum even if it were finished, would not carry forward the Instauration of the Sciences much without Natural History, whereas Natural History without the Organum would advance it not a little,” OFB, XII, p. 13.

3 Parasceve, OFB, XI, p. 451. See also OFB, XII, pp. 13-15.

4 Parasceve, OFB, XI, pp. 450-451.

5 Parasceve, OFB, XI, pp. 458-459.

6 Examples can be found in Parasceve, in the preface to Historia naturalis et experimentalis (1622), but also in the Latin natural histories properly speaking. D. Jalobeanu, “The philosophy of Francis Bacon’s Natural History: A Research Progam” in Studii de stiinta si cultura, 4/2010, pp. 18-37

7 OFB, XII, p. 12 is referring to natural histories as the “timber and material” (Sylva et Materia). Rawley’s preface to Sylva Sylvarum refers to this and other natural histories as being ‘materials for the building.’ D. Jalobeanu, “Francis Bacon’s Natural History and the Senecan Natural Histories of Early Modern Europe,” in Early Science and Medicine, 1-2/2012, pp. 197-229.

8 Parasceve, appended at the end of NO, 1620, but also Norma Historiae praesentis published in the Historia naturalis et experimentalis, 1622.

9 D. Jalobeanu, “The fascination of Solomon’s House in seveteententh-century England,” in Vlad Alexandrescu, Branching-off. The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, Zeta Books, 2009, pp. 225-256.

10 M. Le Doeuff, “Bacon chez les grands au siècle de Louis XIII” in M. Fattori ed., Francis Bacon: terminologia et fortuna nell XVII secolo, Rome, Edizioni dell Atento, 1984, pp. 155-178.

11 Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy edited by P. Tamizey de Laroque, Paris, 1840, pp. 17, 31-32, 35, 142, 198, 231-232

12 28 December 1623, “le premier volume de l’Instauratio magna de Verulamius que nous attendrons en grande impatience” in Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, op. cit., p. 17.

13 W. Boswell was the English ambassador in The Hague and a part of Bacon’s manuscripts went to Holland with him. Some of them eventually got in the hands of I. Gruter and were published in 1658.

14 For the complete story see P. Fortin de la Hoguette, Lettres au frères Dupuy et à leur entourage (1623-1662), edited by G. Feretti, Firenze, 1999. See also Lettres de Peiresc, I, p. 35.

15 16 May 1627, “Cet autre livre de pauvre Bacon de divers meslanges en anglois, seroit encores bon a recouvrer par cez libraries anglois, parce qu’il s’en peult tousjours faire traduire quelque piece,” 11 November 1627, “J’ai admire d’entendre que le chancellier d’Angleterre se soit amuse a faire des romans. Je crois que c’est l’air de ce pais la qui porte quasi generalement un chascun a la romanserie. Mais je verrois volontiers ceux la, ne doubtant pas que la gentilezze de cet esprit n’y paroisse. Il faudroit induire le traducteur de son Henri VII de traduire encore cela en françois…” , in Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 231-232.

16 See Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 319-320, p. 527.

17 Ibid., pp. 692-693: “J’ai decouvré par hazard d’un gentillhome qui venoit de Rome une petite piece du chancellier Bacon de son projet pour un ouvrage de Vita, ou il a encore quelque conception qui n’est pas a rejecter. Je vous envoye coppie et bien qu’incorrecte vous ne laisrez pas, je m’asseure, de la voir volontiers.”

18 G. Ferreti, Un ‘soldat philosophe:’ Philippe Fortin the la Hoguette (1585-1668?), EGIG, Genoa, 1988, P. Fortin de la Hoguette, Lettres au frères Dupuy et à leur entourage (1623-1662), op. cit. See also G. Rees, “La Hoguette’s Manuscripts,” in “Introduction: Contexts and Composition,” OFB, XIII.

19 “Si vous pouvez achever la traduction du Sylva Sylvarum a l’aide de votre anglais et la donner au public, je crois que vous feriez une chose fort agreable a beaucoup de monde. Pour moi, je vous dirai que je n’estime pas tant en Bacon la curiosité de ses experiences comme les consequences qu’il en tire, et la methode avec laquelle il s’en sert. C’est pourquoy (encore que ses observations soiend fort ordinaires) je pense que ce seroit une chose fort agreable a beaucoup de monde de cognoistre ses procedés,” CM, I, pp. 611-612. As Buccolini has shown, there is a lot of interesting background to this often quoted letter. Mersenne visits Rouen on May 1625 and enters the circle of savants centered around R. Cornier, seigneur de Sainte Helene; a group of people interested in experimental philosophy. The subsequent Mersenne-Cornier correspondence mentions a numerous number of Baconian experiments performed at Rouen: concerning the nature and transmission of sounds and light, the relation between light and heat, experiments of gravity and others—partially taken from NO, later (in the second part of 1626) taken from Sylva. See C. Buccolini, “Mersenne traduttore di Bacon,” in M. Fattori, Linguagio e filosofia nel seicento europeu, L. Olschki, 2000.

20 C. Buccolini, “Mersenne traduttore di Bacon,” op. cit., p. 7 sq.

21 Mersenne to Sorbière, 1647, CM, XV, p. 468.

22 He seemed to be especially interested in the observations of parhelia made in Rome by the Jesuit Scheiner (see the letter from 3 May 1632, CM, II, p. 297, 10 May 1632, CM, II, p. 305). In the letter from 10 May 1632 he is asking about recent observations concerning comets.

23 CM, II, p. 308; AT, I, pp. 250-251.

24Illud insuper praecipimus, ut omnia in Naturalibus tam Corporibus quam Virtutibus (quantum fieri potest) numerate, appensa, dimensa, determinate proponantur. Opera enim mediatamur, non Speculationes. Physica autem & Mathematica bene commistae, generant Practicam. Quamobrem exactae Restitutiones & Distantiae Planetarum, in Historia Coelestium…,” OFB, XI, p. 464.

25 G. Rees has shown that they were present in the manuscript he discovered in British Library. See G. Rees, “An Unpublished Manuscript by Francis Bacon: Sylva Sylvarum Drafts and Other Working Notes,” in Annals of Science, 38, 1981, pp. 377-412.

26 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” n.p.

27 M. Le Doeuff emphasized that the fact that one could not find out anything about P. Amboise does not necessarily mean he was in the mid-seventeenth century an unknown or a mysterious person. The book is, however, certainly mysterious, as I shall argue further. See M. Le Doeuff, “Bacon chez les grands au siècle de Louis XIII,” op. cit.

28 “… pour avoir trouve trop de confusion en disposition de matières, que semblent avoir este disposées en plusieurs endroits plustot par caprice que par raison. Outre qu’ayant este aide de la pluspart des manuscrits de l’Auteur, j’ay juge nécessaire d’y ajouter ou diminuer beaucoup de choses qui avoient este obmises ou augmentées par l’Aumosnier de Monsieur Bacon, qui apres la mort de son Maistre fit imprimer confusement tous les papiers qu’il trouva dans son cabinet.”

29 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., pp. 21-22.

30 “Monsieur Bacon estoit si amoureux des sciences naturelles, qu’il avoit envie de faire bastir pres de Londres un College destiné particulierement à cette sorte d’estude : mais prevoyant bien que cet ouvrage estant du nombre des grands desseins qui demeurent souvent dans le simple project, ne pouroit pas estre si tost achevé, il a voulu au moins nous en laisser le modele. Pour cet effect il s’est servy de la fiction d’un voyage en la terre Australe, où il depeint estre abordé dans une Isle parfaitement bien policee, dans laquelle (entre autres establissemens) il rencontra un College semblable à celuy qu’il avoit dessein de fonder. Je laisse au Lecteur son jugement libre sur cette piece, & me contenteray seulement de dire que cet ouvrage me semble estre à peu pres de mesme nature que la Republique de Platon, ou L’Utopie de Thomas More &semblables autres reglemens dont les hommes ne sont pas capables & qui ne se peuvent faire que sur du papier. Nous devons neantmoins regretter que ce soit une fable, & que non pas une verité ; car je doute point qu’on ne tirast une grande utilite d’un pareil establissment,” P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., pp. 417-418.

31 See the letters of Gruter to Rawley—showing a plan to incorporate material from Amboise’s translation into the latin edition of Sylva Sylvarum. The translation is quoted by T.T in An account of all the Lord Bacon’s Works. In the context of introducing Sylva: “This Book was written by his Lordship in the English Tongue, and translated by an obscure interpreter into French, and out of that translation, into Latine, by James Gruter, in such an ill manner, that they darkened his Lordship sence, and debased his Expression. James Gruter was sensible of his miscarriage, being kindly advertised of it by dr. Rawley: And he left behind him divers amendments, published by his brother I. Gruter, in a second edition (Amstel, 1661). Yet still so many Errors have escaped, that the Work requireth a Third Hand” (Baconiana, or Certaine Genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon…, London, 1679).

32 Gruter’s letter, May, 1652: “The Design of him who translated into the French the Natural History of the Lord Bacon […] is briefly exhibited in my brother’s Preface […] That edition of my brother’s, of which you write, that you read it with a great deal of Pleasure, shall shortly be set forth with his Amendments, together with some additions of the like argument to be substituted in the place of New Atlantis, which shall be here omitted. These additions will be the same with those in the version of the forementioned Frenchman, put into Latine; seeing we could not find the English Originals from which he translates them; Unless you, when you see the book, shall condemn those additions as adulterate” (Baconiana, or Certaine Genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon, op. cit., p. 224-226).

33 As for example in chapter 4 book III: “Le quatrieme & le dernier moyen est l’Assimilation de l’aliment, dont je n’entretiendray point icy le Lecteur, ayant traitte cet matiere assez au long dans mon Histoire de la vie & de la mort” (Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., p. 157).

34 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., p. 281-282.

35 Here is how the passages look comparatively: “The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire to the effecting of all things possible.” “La fin & le but de notre institution est de travailler a la connoissance des causes & des secrets de la nature. Comme aussi d’essayer a enstendre la puissance de l’homme a toutes les choses dont elle est capable” (p. 540).

36 “Quant aux status & regles de nostre Societe, la premiere loy & la plus importante est celle qui commande de garder la silence & de ne reveler les secrets de la Compagnie,” p. 564.

37 It is worth noting that, in the translation, the recurrence of the words secret, secrecy or various references to the unveiling of the secrets of nature is more frequent than in the English version.

38 The source seems to be Aristotle De Mirab. 53 (but what the corresponding passage is saying is that the vessels and the bones were petrified, and there is no corresponding change mentioned as having happened to the water).

39 The axioms of maturation, in experiment 326 and subsequent experiments from Century IV.

40 The origin of the observation recorded by Bacon in experiment 387 is Aristotle, Prob. XII, 1 and 2. The paragraph runs like this: “Smells and other odours are sweeter in the air at some distance, than near the nose; as hath been partly touched heretofore. The cause is double: first, the finer mixture or incorporation of the smell: for we see that in sounds likewise, they are sweetest when we cannot hear every part by itself. The other reason is, for that all sweet smells have joned with them some earthy or crude odours; and at some distance the sweet, which is more spiritual, is perceived, and the earthy reacheth not so far.”

41 P. Amboise, Histoire naturelle, “Privilege du Roy,” op. cit., pp. 65-66.

42 Ibid., p. 67.

Auteur

Enseignant-chercheur en philosophie à l’université de Bucarest

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