Revision to edition 11 by William Fishburne





THE NEW ATLANTIS

BY SIR 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 results of modern scientific inquiry can fail to be
struck by the numerous approximations made by Bacon's imagination to
the actual achievements of modern times. The plan and organization of