And Bacon speaks of many things which were only guessed
at in his time. He speaks of high towers wherein people watched
"winds, rain, snow, hail and some of the fiery meteors also."
To-day we have observatories. He speaks of "help for the sight
far above spectacles and glasses," also "glasses and means to see
small and minute bodies perfectly and distinctly, as the shapes
and colours of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in gems,
which cannot otherwise be seen." To-day we have the microscope.
He says "we have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes,
in strange lines and distances," yet in those days no one had
dreamed of a telephone. "We imitate also flights of birds; we
have some degrees of flying in the air. We have ships and boats
for going under water," yet in those days stories of flying-ships
or torpedoes would have been treated as fairy tales.
Bacon did not finish The New Atlantis. "The rest was not
perfected" are the last words in the book and it was not
published until after his death.
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