They
have become "household words," and without knowing it we repeat
Bacon's wisdom. But we miss in them something of human
kindliness. Bacon's wisdom is cool, calm, and calculating, and
we long sometimes for a little warmth, a little passion, and not
so much "use."
The essays are best known, but the New Atlantis is the book that
you will best like to read, for it is something of a story, and
of it I will tell you a little in the next chapter.
Chapter LIII BACON--THE HAPPY ISLAND
ATLANTIS was a fabled island of the Greeks which lay somewhere in
the Western Sea. That island, it was pretended, sank beneath the
waves and was lost, and Bacon makes believe that he finds another
island something like it in the Pacific Ocean and calls it the
New Atlantis. Here, as in More's Utopia, the people living under
just and wise laws, are happy and good. Perhaps some day you
will be interested enough to read these two books together and
compare them. Then one great difference will strike you at once.
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