Wrestling with Proteus: Francis Bacon and the "Torture" of NatureAuthor(s): Peter PesicReviewed work(s):Source: Isis, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 81-94Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237475 .Accessed: 21/03/2012 15:21

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CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS

Wrestling with Proteus

Francis Bacon and the "Torture" of Nature

By Peter Pesic*

ABSTRACT

Although many writers state that Francis Bacon advocated the torture of nature in order to force her to reveal her secrets, a close study of his works contradicts this claim. His treatment of the myth of Proteus depicts a heroic mutual struggle, not the torture of a slavish victim. By the "vexation" of nature Bacon meant an encounter between the scientist and nature in which both are tested and purified.

... the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.

-Francis Bacon (1620)

T HE EMERGENCE OF EXPERIMENT is a crucial aspect of modem science.' Francis Bacon played an important part in this story not so much because he himself performed

significant experiments but because he envisioned the emergent character of experimen- tation. Bacon described himself as a trumpeter (bucinator) or herald rather than as a com- batant. But as herald he sounded crucial messages concerning what experiment should be. Since he was describing something not yet formed, he used a rich variety of rhetorical figures to express his vision; especially, he turned to ancient myth as a storehouse of potent images that he reinterpreted to illustrate his meaning. Perhaps the pervasive misrepresen- tation of Bacon's view is a reaction to these charged images. Despite his careful defense of the legitimacy of experiment, critics have represented Bacon as advocating the "torture

* St. John's College, 1160 Camino de la Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4511; ppesic @ mail.sjcsf.edu.

I would like to thank John Briggs, Kenneth Cardwell, Nieves Mathews, Graham Rees, Margaret Rossiter, and Harvey Wheeler for their helpful comments; Elizabeth McGrath, Robert Mowry, Hydee Schaller, and Curtis Wilson for their help in locating the illustrations; and Nancy Buchenauer for her translations of the Latin figure captions.

I Citations from Bacon refer to volume and page number in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Longmans, 1857-1874; rpt., New York: Garrett, 1968); Vols. 1-7 include the Works, Vols. 8-14 comprise The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Where two citations are given for the same passage, the bracketed one refers to the Latin original; for the epigraph: 4.29 [1.141].

Isis, 1999, 90:81-94 ? 1999 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/99/9001-0004$02.00

81

82 WRESTLING WITH PROTEUS

of nature," even to the point of rape and abusive domination.2 Even some of his admirers have used the metaphor of torture to elucidate his concept of science. As early as 1696 Leibniz wrote of "the art of inquiry into nature itself and of putting it on the rack-the art of experiment which Lord Bacon began so ably."3 Ernst Cassirer presents a Bacon who insists that "one must resort to force to obtain the answer desired, that nature must be 'put to the rack.' "4

Unlike humans, nature cannot literally be put to the rack. The issue is whether science deliberately acts to abuse nature. Bacon makes no such assertion; indeed, he positively disclaims such misinterpretations of the arduous quest for truth.5 He uses metaphors of legal examination and invokes the mythic touchstone of heroic labor. Bacon envisages a struggle that tests the nobility both of the seeker and of nature.

BACON'S ACCOUNT OF PROTEUS

Bacon faced a complex rhetorical problem as he sought to present his vision of a new science. Though Aristotelian science had presumably been based on close observation of nature, Bacon asserted that it touched nature only "by the fingertips." He felt that it was therefore barren and incapable of alleviating human suffering. Convinced that more prob- ing could offer access to nature's secrets, Bacon both criticized what he deemed the ex- cessive restraint of ancient science and anticipated the shape a deeper inquiry might take.

2 Bacon styles himself a bucinator at 4.372 [1.579]; see Paolo Rossi, "Bacon's Idea of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 25-46, on p. 26. For critics of Bacon's "torture" of nature see, e.g., Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), pp. 164-190; Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 35-37; and Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 113, 237. Note that Keller repeats the claim that Bacon advocated "putting nature on the rack" in her later collection Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 57. Elizabeth Hanson treats torture as "a paradigm for discovery" and consistently links Bacon's roles "as a champion of the discovery of nature's secrets and as a persistent practitioner of torture" in Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 19-54, 122-149, esp. pp. 20, 25. The imputation of rape has been trenchantly addressed in Alan Soble, "In Defense of Bacon," Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1995, 25:192-215, which discusses the matter of torture on pp. 205-207; this essay was reprinted (with additions and corrections) in A House Built on Sand, ed. Noretta Koertge (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 195-215. See also the insightful article by Iddo Landau, "Feminist Criticism of Metaphors in Bacon's Philosophy of Science," Philosophy, 1998, 73:47-61, which discusses the metaphor of torture on pp. 51, 54.

3Leibniz's remark comes from a letter of 1696 to Gabriel Wagner concerning the value of logic: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. Leroy E. Loemker, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1958), p. 456. This passage is cited in Alan G. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 87 n 6, 212: "although the sentiment is Baconian, the phrase is from Leibniz." I thank Kenneth Cardwell for drawing my attention to these citations. For a detailed discussion of Leibniz's position see Peter Pesic, "Nature on the Rack: Leibniz's Attitude towards Judicial Torture and the 'Torture' of Nature," Studia Leibnitiana, 1997, 29(2):189-197.

4 Est Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J. P. Pettegrove (Austin: Univ. Texas Press, 1953), p. 48. Charles Webster writes that "nature would be 'tortured' into revealing her secrets" in The Great Instauration (London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 338. See also Howard White, Peace among the Willows (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), p. 1. Soble, "In Defense of Bacon" (cit. n. 2), concentrates on extreme views; I am more concerned with these more moderate critiques. A brilliant discussion of these matters is given in John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), p. 35; I am indebted to this outstanding work on many points.

5Kenneth Cardwell also notes that he has not found "in Bacon an unambiguous instruction to rack nature," though he does not comment further; see Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor," in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts, ed. William A. Sessions (New York: AMS Press, 1990), pp. 269-289, on p. 285 n 4.

PETER PESIC 83

Thus one prong of his rhetorical program was a polemic against ancient science;6 another was the reformulation of the process of inquiry undertaken in the Novum Organum, a text meant to replace Aristotle's logical writings (Organon) as the fundamental "tool" to guide scientific study. Here Bacon took up the term "experiment," akin to "experience" (exper- ientia), and emphasized the sense of test or trial inherent in those words. He called such probing tests "the spials or intelligencers of nature" (3.325, 4.287), without which no true knowledge can be gained (2.672). Such experiments act "to provide helps for the sense substitutes to supply its failures, rectifications to correct its errors"-so that "the office of the sense shall be only to judge of the experiment, and that the experiment itself shall judge of the thing. And thus I conceive that I perform the office of a true priest of the sense (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its oracles" (4.26). He added that "the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment" (4.70 [1.179]), meaning that testing must not be "blind and stupid ... wandering and straying as [men] do with no settled course." There must be "some direction and order in experimenting," what he calls "Learned Experience [Experientia Literata], or the Hunt of Pan" (4.413 [1.623]). Under this heading Bacon included his reformulation of the inductive method and the "tables of instances" he proposed to organize the fruits of observation and experiment.7

Searching for a mode of exposition adequate to the essential novelty he expected from true experimentation, Bacon turned to ancient myth to evoke the new qualities he discerned in the emergent science. Bacon found in myth far more than mere rhetorical decoration. In part he used myth to appeal to an audience steeped in classical learning; through par- ables, "inventions that are new and abstruse and remote from vulgar opinions may find an easier passage to the understanding" (6.698). Furthermore, Bacon felt that these stories contained hidden clues to the new learning he sought. He devoted Of the Wisdom of the Ancients (1609) to the attempt to penetrate "a veil, as it were, of fables" that conceals "the hidden depths of antiquity" (6.695), directly interpreting eleven of the thirty-one fables in terms of newly emergent science. Bacon considered "the wisdom of the ancients to be like grapes ill-trodden: something is squeezed out, but the best parts are left behind and passed over" (6.762). In his versions, "though the subjects be old, the matter is new" (6.699). Indeed, Bacon finds ways of describing aspects of science that crucially amplify the di- rection he takes in his logical writings.

Bacon explicitly personifies nature as Pan or Minerva, just as he depicts the Sphinx as science and Prometheus as the state of man. These personifications are not merely rhetor- ical embellishments of impersonal entities. In the case of nature, especially, Bacon clarifies the way in which spirit imbues even inanimate beings. For instance, in his account of "Proserpina; or Spirit" Bacon emphasizes that the story of Proserpina abducted by Hades "relates to Nature, and explains the source of that rich and fruitful supply of active power subsisting in the under world." Proserpina signifies "an etherial spirit which, having been

6 The most extreme form these polemics took are the unpublished early works: "The Masculine Birth of Time," "Thoughts and Conclusions," and "The Refutation of Philosophies," trans. in Benjamin Farrington, The Philos- ophy of Francis Bacon (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 61-133. It is not clear whether the more moderate critique voiced in the Novum Organum is the result of prudent restraint or of mature reconsideration.

7 The crucial passages detailing these structures of "learned experience" are Novum Organum 4.94-98 [1.202- 206] and De augmentis scientiarum 4.413-421 [1.622-633]. I discuss these "tables" and their relation to crypt- analytic tables in Peter Pesic, The Labyrinth of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming), Ch. 6. For a review of Bacon's notion of experiment see Michel Malherbe, "Bacon's Notion of Science," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen (cit. n. 2), pp. 75-98. Concerning the original sense of the words see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "experience," "experiment."

84 WRESTLING WITH PROTEUS

separated by violence from the upper globe, is enclosed and imprisoned beneath the earth" (6.759). This personification reflects the permeation of nature by spirit, just as spirit per- vades both animate and inanimate beings in Bacon's theory of matter.8

As nature is filled with spirit, the quest for "the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter" (6.725) must grapple with spirited beings. The character of this encounter is par- ticularly well illuminated in Bacon's version of the story of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea. (See Figure 1.) The fact that he used this same imagery repeatedly throughout his other works shows the seriousness and importance he accorded it.9 According to Homer's Odyssey, the hero Menelaos wrestled with the immortal Proteus in order to gain vital information the Greeks needed to return home from Troy. Bacon reminds us that Proteus was the herdsman to Neptune, "an old man and a prophet; a prophet moreover of the very first order, and indeed thrice excellent; for he knew all three,-not the future only, but likewise the past and the present; insomuch that besides his power of divination, he was the messenger and interpreter of all antiquity and all secrets." Proteus is for Bacon a figure for "Matter-the most ancient of things, next to God," and the fable relates "the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter." If one wanted Proteus's help, "the only way was first to secure his hands with handcuffs, and then to bind him with chains" (6.725). Bacon repeated this account elsewhere in his works, explaining that "the vexations of art are certainly as the bonds and handcuffs of Proteus, which betray the ultimate struggles and efforts of matter" (4.257 [1.399]). Thus these "vexations" are revealed to be the interro- gations of a divine minister worthy of respect and reverence. The implicit comparison of the thrice-excellent prophet Proteus with the thrice-great Hermes Trismegistus indicates that Bacon intended to wrestle with ancient wisdom rather than accept it meekly. This struggle contradicts Frances Yates's suggestion that Bacon's vision follows Hermetic tra- dition.10

The interrogation requires handcuffs and chains, but it is not a scene of torture:

8 On the interrelation between vital and inanimate spirits see Graham Rees, "Bacon's Speculative Philosophy," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen, pp. 121-145, on pp. 136-141; Rees, "Matter Theory: A Unifying Factor in Bacon's Natural Philosophy," Ambix, 1977, 24:110-125; and Rees, "Francis Bacon and Spiritus Vitalis," in Spiritus IV: Colloquio internazionale, ed. Marta Fattori and Massimo Bianchi (Rome: Ateneo, 1984), pp. 265-281.

9 Besides this treatment (6.725-726 [6:651-652]), Bacon also treated Proteus in the Parasceve (4.257 [1.399]) and De augmentis scientiarum (4.298, 4.420-421 [1.500, 1.632]). These passages are substantially the same, in language and meaning, as the version in Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. Other passages use the imagery of "vexing" or "squeezing" without explicit reference to Proteus, though with the same sense: Description of the Intellectual Globe 5.506, 5.512 [3.729, 3.735]; Great Instauration 4.29 [1.141]; Novum Organum 4.95 [1.203]. On Bacon's use of classical myth see Charles W. Lemmni, The Classic Deities in Bacon (New York: Octagon, 1971), which points out that "most of the mythological interpretations of a scientific nature which delight us in Bacon's works may be traced to the chief contemporary authority on such matters, Natalis Comes" (pp. 145- 146); Lemmi treats Proteus on pp. 91-98. See also Barbara Carman Garner, "Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes, and the Mythological Tradition," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1970, 33:264-291. For general background see A. Bartlett Giamatti, "Proteus Unbound: Some Versions of the Sea God in the Renais- sance," in The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 437-475, which emphasizes the sinister aspects of Proteus. Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), treats Bacon's use of parable on pp. 179-193. Elizabeth Sewall, The Orphic Voice (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 126-127, takes Bacon's "interrogation" of Proteus to mean plain torture. John Briggs gives an insightful reading of this passage in Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), pp. 32-40; however, I will argue that Bacon does not "chain Proteus to the rack" (see his p. 35).

10 See Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hernetic Tradition (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1964), p. 450. Bacon reiterates his characterization of thrice-great Proteus in Descriptio globi intellectualis (1612). See the new Oxford edition: Francis Bacon, Philosophical Studies c. 1611-c. 1619, ed. Graham Rees (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), Vol. 6, pp. 112-113; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.512 [3.735].

PETER PESIC 85

Prot cus Oce ani & T thyos fiti tiu t

A 3Jtitt am zA uz2s tsts Pr0teaz 'Verbif -Narr4min nnh tzj ~Iz z Jol

Figure 1. Proteus, son of Ocean and Tethys, from J. J. Boissard, De divinatione (Oppenheim, ca. 1600). The caption reads: 'Aegyptus heard Proteus telling in obscure language the mystical thoughts of highest Jove." (Copyright Warburg Institute.)

86 WRESTLING WITH PROTEUS

Nevertheless if any skilful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex and drive it [vexet atque urgeat] to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period; when, if the force be continued, it returns at last to itself. And this constraint and binding will be more easily and expeditiously effected, if matter be laid hold on and secured by the hands; that is, by its extremities. (6.726)

Homer has Menelaos and his companions wrestle bare-handed with the Old Man, whereas Bacon's "skilful Servant of Nature" employs "mechanical" aids, handcuffs and chains. (See Figure 2.)" Here and elsewhere Bacon connects vexation with the mechanical arts.12 Bacon also speaks of "any skilful Servant of Nature" rather than of a singular hero such as Menelaos. However, these servants win Proteus's prophetic answer only if they can grasp him tight. Proteus tries the seekers as much as they try him; their struggle is mutual and has an appointed ending, after which force must cease. Finally, the seeker must recognize Proteus's primal form. This, in Bacon's account, is the "period," the point of return "when, if the force be continued, it returns at last to itself' (6.726).

Even more, Proteus is the prophet, and not the deity he serves. Bacon's servant of nature is grappling with matter, not with God directly. The "omnipotence of God" forbids "an- nihilation or true destruction" except at divine behest. Thus the servant of nature acts "as if with the purpose of reducing [matter] to nothing," knowing already that all his force and vexation cannot succeed in its ostensible purpose. Still, though he can never bring matter to nothingness, his force does induce its manifold mutations, which finally circle back to their beginning and thus disclose "the sum and general issue (for I do not say that his knowledge would extend to the parts and singularities) of all things past, present, and to come" (6.726). These mechanical arts are not opposed to nature; as Bacon says else- where, "all that man can do is to put together and put asunder natural bodies. The rest is done by nature working within" (4.47). As he remarks in Descriptio globi intellectualis (1612),

But if anyone gets annoyed because I call the arts the bonds of nature when they ought rather to be considered its liberators and champions in that in some cases they allow nature to achieve its ends by reducing obstacles to order, then I reply that I do not much care for such fancy ideas and pretty words; I intend and mean only that nature, like Proteus, is forced by art to do what would not have been done without it: and it does not matter whether you call this forcing and enchaining, or assisting and perfecting.13

11 See Homer, Odyssey 4.365-570. Briggs notes that, though these "bonds" are absent in Homer even in the 1537 Latin translation, they are mentioned in Virgil's treatment of Aristaeus questioning Proteus (Georgics 4.399-405). However, Briggs concludes that other Renaissance mythographers as well as these ancient sources indicate that the interrogators "overpower [Proteus] without violating his divinity": Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), p. 35. Giamatti, "Proteus Unbound" (cit. n. 9), pp. 438, 467, cites a passage in Erasmus's well-known Enchiridion showing Proteus as a figure of the evil passions of men that require binding with chains. I address the question of artistic representations of Proteus in Peter Pesic, "Shapes of Proteus in Renaissance Art" (in preparation).

12 In his account of the fable of Ericthonius Bacon explains that art "endeavours by much vexing of bodies to force Nature to its will and conquer and subdue her.... Such things may often be observed among chemical productions, and among mechanical subtleties and novelties" (6.736). See also 4.29 [1.14], 4.257 [1.399], 4.298 [1.500]. I thank Graham Rees for drawing these passages to my attention.

13 This translation is from Bacon, Philosophical Studies, ed. Rees (cit. n. 10), Vol. 6, pp. 100-101; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.506 [3.729].

PETER PESIC 87

Figure 2. Giulio Buonasone, Symbolum LXI: Proteus and Aristaeus, from Achille Bocchi4 Symbolicae quaestiones (Bologna, 1574). The accompanying poem notes that Proteus is 'the image of Truth itself' in "that vast cave of errors, where blind lust / Distracts the mad senses in contrary pursuits./ On which account the greatest content of the mind ought to be grasped, in order that! You may hold on to the truth, zealously seized by wise reason ... Therefore you should cast chains of genuine truthfulness [syncerae inijcias fidei] onto the captive: / Until no Enticement shall find means of escape, and the very / Truest form of man shall return to itself at last." (Copyright Warburg Institute.)

88 WRESTLING WITH PROTEUS

Bacon emphasizes the congruence of nature and art by emphasizing the time set for the confrontation with Proteus. It is high noon, which Bacon identifies "from the sacred history to have been in fact at the very time of the creation. For then it was that by virtue of the divine word producat matter came together at the command of the Creator, not by its own circuitous processes, but all at once; and brought its work to perfection on the instant, and constituted the species." The moment of the struggle with Proteus is always the moment of creation, charged with divine energies ready to disclose their portent to the properly prepared seeker. Such a seeker rightfully wrestles with matter at the moment when the "full and legitimate time has come for completing and bringing forth the species out of matter already duly prepared and predisposed" (6.726). Bacon emphasizes how strongly matter struggles against his grip, not only with brute force but even more with the dazzling variety of those "strange species" it produces in response. Accordingly, the servant of nature needs special discernment and extraordinary tenacity more than sheer strength. The struggle of scientific research requires not mere suffering but, rather, the purification and consecration of the elect, which purges the clouded vision of men.14

VEXATION VERSUS TORTURE

The crucial term in Bacon's account of Protean experimentation is "vexation" (vexatio), a term he also uses throughout his theoretical writings, as in this important passage from The Great Instauration:

I mean it to be a history not only of nature free and at large (when she is left to her own course and does her work her own way)-such as that of the heavenly bodies, meteors, earth and sea, minerals, plants, animals-but much more of nature under constraint and vexed [naturae con- strictae et vexata]; that is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded.... Nay (to say the plain truth) I do in fact (low and vulgar as men may think it) count more upon this part both for helps and safeguards than upon the other, seeing that the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations [vex- ationes] of art than in its natural freedom. (4.29 [1.141])

Bacon does not use the crucial term "torture" here, nor are its legal cognates tortura or quaestio used in the Latin text. The Latin root vexare suggests shaking, agitation, distur- bance; the English uses of "vexation" contemporaneous with Bacon pertain to conditions that are troubling, afflicting, or harassing.15 In many passages the mental trials inherent in

14 Here the critical passages are Bacon's account of the Sphinx (6.755-758), Prometheus (6.745-753), and Orpheus (6.762-764). I have treated the purification of the "sons of science" in Peter Pesic, "Desire, Science, and Polity: Francis Bacon's Treatment of Eros," Interpretation (forthcoming); and Pesic, Labyrinth of Nature (cit. n. 7), Chs. 3, 4. The use of heroic topoi in Bacon is discussed in John M. Steadman, "Beyond Hercules: Bacon and the Scientist as Hero," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 1971, 4:3-47. See also Moody E. Prior, "Bacon's Man of Science," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1954, 15:348-370, rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968), pp. 140-163. For a useful treatment of the concept of science as a hunt (venatio) see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 269-300.

15 See the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "vex," "vexation." Shakespeare's Ariel speaks of the "still-vexed Bermoothes [Bermudas]" (Tempest 1.2.229), meaning the ceaseless tumult of the waves. Ben Jonson uses "vex- ation" to indicate shaping and strengthening: "As the wind doth try strong trees, / Who by vexation grow more sound and firm" (Sejanus 4.1.69-70). Elsewhere Jonson evokes "the vexations, and the martyrizations / Of mettalls, in the worke" of alchemical transmutation (Alchemist 2.5.20-21), indicating that vexation accompanies the transformation of base metals into noble perfection.

PETER PESIC 89

vexation distinguish it from the sheer brutality of torture.16 Indeed, the phrase "vexation of spirit" is common; Bacon remarks that "man, when he turned to look upon the work which his hands had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could find no rest therein" (4.32). A vexed question requires prolonged examination, so that "the best way to finde the truth in this matter, was to debate and vexe it," as John Donne remarks.17 Bacon would not allow "double vexation"-that is, unjustified legal actions or harass- ment-in his Court of Chancery (7.762). He also speaks of his "law-like, chaste, and severe inquisition" (4.32) of nature, while elsewhere indicating his awareness of the "odi- ous' connotation of the term "inquisitor" in its common application (11.339).18

The few places in which Bacon speaks explicitly of torture clarify its distinction from vexation. He writes that "the Turks, though by race and habits a cruel and bloody people, yet are wont to give alms to brute creatures, and cannot endure to see them ill used or tortured [neque animalium vexationes et torturas fieri sustinent]" (5.44 [1.758]). In this context torturas mean physical abuses, while vexationes mean crossing or frustrating the animal to perplex and enrage it. The viciousness of the combination of vexation and torture acknowledges the distinctions between these words. Though here he is discussing animate beings, I will later clarify the ways in which Bacon acknowledges limits even to the vexation of inanimate matter. Exceeding those limits would amount to torture, which he never recommends.19 Bacon's own experimental practice in his Sylva sylvarum tends to be cautious and moderate; for instance, he advises great care before using purgations as medicine, "for certain it is that purgers do many times great hurt, if the body be not accommodated both before and after the purging" (2.368).

"Torture" connotes abuse even when the word is used metaphorically. Bacon criticizes those who, "since they make up their minds before trying anything out, when they come to particular facts abuse their minds and the facts, and wretchedly squander and torture

16 Vexation is distinct from torture, even when they occur together: "Vex not his ghost: 0, let him pass! He hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer" (Shakespeare, King Lear 5.3.314-317). In contrast with the physical torments of the rack, vexation acts in the inwardness of the soul. Shakespeare's Egeus comes before Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream "full of vexation" at the behavior of his daughter Hermia (1.1.22). Later in the play Oberon refers to all "this night's accidents" as "the fierce vexation of a dream" (4.1.74), contrasting inward vividness with outward unreality. In his casuistic defense of godly suicide, Biathanatos (written ca. 1609), John Donne recounts the story of St. Appollonia, who, "after the persecutors had beat out her teeth, and vexed her with many other tortures, when she was presented to the fire, being inflamed with a more burning fire of the Holy Ghost, broke from the Officers hands, and leapt into the fire": John Donne, Selected Prose, ed. Helen Gardner and Timothy Healy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), p. 34. Vexation refers to inward anguish and differs from physical torture: her vexation ceased as she gave herself freely to death.

17 The Authorized Version renders Ecclesiastes 1:14 as "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) Robert Burton describes the "vexation of spirit and anguish of minde" that follow quarrels (2.3.7.422). Abraham Fraunce also speaks, in Lawyers Logike (1588), of "the perpetual vexation of spirit, and continual consumption of body, incident to every scholar." Donne compares this vexation to the pool of Bethsaida in which "there was no health till the water was troubled" by divine power. Here "troubling" manifests the infusion of grace. He is referring to the question whether martyrs such as St. Appollonia were justified in going voluntarily to their deaths; see Biathan- atos, in Donne, Selected Prose, ed. Gardner and Healy, p. 28.

18 In quoting at 4.32 I follow the more literal translation of the Latin original given in Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5), pp. 271-272; see also p. 269. Bacon here is quoting one James Whitelocke, who was accused in June 1613 of traducing a royal commission and who "termed the Commissioners therein In- quisitors, to make it seem more odious."

19 The distinction between abuse and legitimate vexation also pertains to the training of horses. Bacon states that "the horse is not to be accounted the less of which will not do well without the spur" (7.80); not needing the spur "is to be reckoned [rather] a delicacy than a virtue." Here the spur is not an instrument of cruelty but "the ordinary instrument of horsemanship," which, Briggs observes, "does not violate the virtue it consistently attends and stimulates": Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), p. 111.

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both [misere lacerant & torquent]."20 He judges that the application of what he calls "mathematics" or "dichotomies" "hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method [legibus res torqueant]" (3.406, 4.448-449 [1.663]).21 Here "method" means not scientific method nor mathematics in the modern sense but the rigid application of logical dichotomies. This "method produces empty abridgements, and destroys the solid substance of knowledge" (4.448-449).22 This judgment accords with Bacon's opinion that "there is no worse torture than the torture of laws" (6.507), a reference to the constricted twisting of "hard constructions and strained inferences" that violates true interpretation and justice.23 A comprehensive examination of all his known writings shows that Bacon consistently uses "torture" (or its Latin cognates) to denote excessive and wrongful force; he never speaks of experiment expressly as the "torture of nature." In contrast, he uses "vexation" to indicate agitation or disturbance within legitimate limits.

THE TRADITION OF JUDICIAL TORTURE

Bacon's own vocation as a lawyer and judge bears on his use of these words and on his sense of the legal parallels to experimentation. As queen's counsel, later solicitor general and attorney general, Bacon was deeply versed in all aspects of the examination of wit- nesses and the evaluation of testimony. In his private speculations he marshaled a similar investigatory apparatus that would penetrate into nature, whose "genuine forms ... lie deep and are hard to find" (4.161-162). Nature is put on trial and examined through testimony and evidence.24 This regular procedure of questioning is called "examination

20 Bacon is referring to Telesio and his opponents in De principiis atque originibus (ca. 1610-1620); see Bacon, Philosophical Studies, ed. Rees (cit. n. 10), Vol. 6, pp. 246-247; the citation in the Spedding edition is 5.488.

21 In his Latin translation of this passage Bacon substituted for "mathematics" the logical technique of "di- chotomies" (dichotomias), the exclusion of impossibilities to arrive at the truth, that was advocated by Peter Ramus, whom Bacon scorns for using "the rack of his summary method" on facts, which "soon lose their truth, which oozes or skips away, leaving him to gamer only dry and barren trifles.... Ramus out of the real world made a desert": Philosophy of Francis Bacon, trans. Farrington (cit. n. 6), p. 64. For discussion of Bacon and Ramus see Jardine, Francis Bacon (cit. n. 9), pp. 41-54, 169-171; and Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (cit. n. 4), pp. 189-192, 201-214.

22 Though here Bacon treats mathematics as a form of torture, elsewhere he left room for a new mathematics that could make fruitful connection with experience. Graham Rees has argued that "the scope of his mathematical concerns was far wider than is usually granted" in "Mathematics and Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1986, 40:399-426.

23 In a passage in the Sylva sylvarum on the production of sound by bowed instruments, Bacon remarks that "the bow tortureth the string continually, and thereby holdeth it in a continual trepidation" (2.398). This singular usage suggests that he may at times mean by "torture" rather mild alterations of nature. It may also recall Plato's ironic reference in Republic 531a to "those good men who harass the strings and put them to the torture [Poovfxov,rotg], racking them on the pegs [GtpFPkXotvotq]," which compares the torturers of slaves to mu- sicians who trust their ears rather than their minds; see The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic, 1968), p. 210. For Bacon's study of sound see Rees, "Mathematics and Francis Bacon's Natural Philos- ophy," pp. 416-417; and Penelope M. Gouk, "Music in Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy," in Francis Bacon: Terminologia e fortuna nel XVII secolo, ed. Marta Fattori (Rome: Ateneo, 1984), pp. 139-154.

24 Harvey Wheeler has argued that "Bacon's science derived ultimately from his jurisprudence" in "The In- vention of Modem Empiricism: Juridical Foundations of Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science," Law Library Journal, 1983, 76:78-120, on p. 119. For a helpful overall account of Bacon's legal works see Daniel R. Coquillette, Francis Bacon (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992). See also Paul Kocher, "Francis Bacon on the Science of Jurisprudence," J. Hist. Ideas, 1957, 18:3-26, rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon, ed. Vickers (cit. n. 14), pp. 167-194; Wheeler, "Science out of Law," in Toward a Humanistic Science of Politics, ed. Dalmas H. Nelson and Richard L. Sklar (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press America, 1983), pp. 101-

PETER PESIC 91

upon interrogatories" in English law, and Bacon claims "(according to the practice in civil causes) in this great plea or suit granted by the divine favor and providence (whereby the human race seeks to recover its right over nature), to examine nature herself and the arts upon interrogatories [super articulos]" (4.263).

Bacon's avoidance of the term "torture" reflects its precise judicial significance.25 "Ju- dicial torture" excludes the use of physical torment as legal punishment or for intimidation beyond the rule of law. Although torture as an instrument of intimidation and terror was fairly widespread throughout history, it was in Greek and Roman law that judicial torture was instituted as a controlled means of legal investigation.26 Torture was not utilized in Mosaic law, nor in English common law, which relied upon the jury to establish legal proof. Between 1540 and 1640 torture was used in England as a carefully supervised tool of the king's power, and only at the order of his privy council. Bacon supervised the use of torture in extraordinary proceedings aimed at uncovering plots against the king, though reluctantly and with express reservations.27 In his legal treatises Bacon made no mention of any royal prerogative to torture, although he was in other respects "the King's man" (14.775-778 [11.280]). He notes only that "in the highest cases of treason, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence," in order "to identify and forestall plots and plotters" (10.114). During this period Edward Coke, Bacon's great rival, used torture without stating such reservations and even expressed regret on some occasions when it was not used,

144; John C. Hogan and Mortimer D. Schwartz, "On Bacon's 'Rules and Maximes' of the Common Law," Law Library J., 1983, 76:48-77; and Mark S. Neustadt, "The Making of the Instauration: Science, Politics, and Law in the Career of Francis Bacon" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 1987). On Bacon's manner of interrogation see Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5); and Kenneth Cardwell, "Inquisitio Rerum Ipsarum: Francis Bacon and the Interrogation of Nature" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. California, Berkeley, 1986). Antonio Perez-Ramos remarks that Bacon's "forensic image of the stem judge" leads to "the ethos of domination" in "Bacon's Legacy," in Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. Peltonen (cit. n. 2), pp. 311-334, on p. 330; however, the image of the judge connotes the search for justice, not merely domination. There is a valuable survey of the political and legal dimensions of Bacon's scientific projects in Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 141-165; however, Martin does not cite the earlier works of Wheeler and Coquillette.

25 For the nature and practice of judicial torture in ancient and modem times see David Jardine, A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England Previously to the Commonwealth (London: Baldwin & Craddock, 1837); James Heath, Torture and English Law (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982); John H. Lang- bein, Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1977); Edward Peters, Torture (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986); and Page DuBois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge, 1991).

26 Slaves were required to be examined under torture, called the touchstone [E aovoq], a reference to the dark-colored quartz or jasper (called also lapis Lydius) that reveals genuine gold by the mark it makes. Even a freeman could be tortured in capital cases or on suspicion of treason. See, e.g., Euripides, Hippolytus 924-926; and Pindar, Pythian Ode 10.67, Nemean Ode 8.20-21. DuBois, Torture and Truth, pp. 9-38, gives other ex- amples. Demosthenes asserted that "no statements made as a result of P&aovoq have ever proved to be untrue" (Orations 30.37). Socrates applies the P&6avoq at critical moments in the dialogues: "in the sort of situation in which we are caught, it's a necessity to twist around every speech and put it to the torture [PaavfImV]" (Theaetetus 191c). Socrates does not merely hunt down the sophist; he also proposes to put an important speech of "the great Parmenides" to the touchstone, "which, if it should be put to a fair degree of torture [ggrpta PvtaviaO.fq], would as certain as anything make its own confession" (Sophist 237b). Most of all, Socrates tums this touchstone on his own ideas: "Let's take them up and put them to the torture [PutavtI64&v]-but, rather, let's do it to ourselves" (Theaetetus 203a). These quotations are from Plato's Theaetetus and Plato's Sophist, trans. Seth Benardete (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1986).

27 On the absence of torture in English common law see Clifford Hall, "Bacon and the Legality of Torture," Baconiana, 1989, 188:24-37. See Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (cit. n. 25), pp. 81-128, for a careful review of the warrants to torture given in England from 1540 to 1640, particularly pp. 90, 129, for Bacon's part in five such cases. See also Nieves Mathews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 283-294; and Hall, "Some Perspectives on the Use of Torture in Bacon's Time and the Question of His 'Virtue,' " Anglo-American Law Review, 1989, 18:289-321.

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though after Bacon's death Coke stated in his Institutes that torture was contrary to English law.28

Bacon, "the leading Roman law jurist of his day," introduced many Continental legal ideas in his Court of Chancery.29 This court dealt with matters of equity that would not admit any use of torture. Bacon's vision of the "trial" of nature turns on the authentic evidence of nature, not the adversary contest of lawyers, much less extralegal recourse to torture.30 Bacon's arduous quest is conditioned and justified by the urgent need of suffering humanity for relief. In his earliest writings Bacon made it clear that his religion hinged on "the exaltation of charity" (7.243-246), especially the healing of bodily illness and infir- mity. To this end he calls on the "sons of science" to "try all things, and hold that which is good: which induceth a discerning election out of an examination whence nothing at all is excluded" (7.245). Bacon's daring reading of this sacred maxim suggests intrepid self- exposure and experimental trial on the part of the scientist rather than the violation of a nature under suspicion of witchcraft. Matter is "the most ancient of all things, next to God" (6.725), and, as befits the eldest child of creation, answers the ordeal of experiment without prevarication.

The majesty of nature requires commensurate treatment. Indeed, "the dignity of the commandment is according to the dignity of the commanded," to the extent that "to have commandment over galley-slaves is a disparagement rather than an honour" (3.316). The closest Bacon comes to depicting nature as a slave is in his unpublished "Masculine Birth of Time," where the speaker comes to his "dear, dear son," "leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave." Since this locution is not repeated in Bacon's published works, it is hard to be sure how definitively to take it. However, it evokes a captured queen and her royal brood, rather than ignoble slaves fit only for brutal use. There is in this passage no suggestion of torture, but only of "service." Indeed, at the end of this work Bacon's speaker calls for a "chaste, holy, and legal wedlock" uniting his beloved son "with things themselves." Nature is raised to the status of a wife.31

28 Nieves Mathews has clarified Bacon's reluctant participation in the use of torture and the reservations he expressed to the king in Francis Bacon, pp. 283-294. Her careful research corrects many of the misunderstand- ings expressed on this matter in the Times Literary Supplement (London), 11 and 25 Oct. 1996; there is further correspondence on 15, 22, and 29 Nov. and 20 and 27 Dec. 1996. At the trial of the earl of Essex Coke said that the queen had damaged the Crown's cause by excluding the use of torture; see Mathews, Francis Bacon, pp. 284-285. Though Hanson repeatedly asserts in Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (cit. n. 2) that Bacon was a cooperative "rack-master," "apparently the only English lawyer who actually asserted that torture was permissible in English juridical practice" (pp. 31, 25-26), her book does not cite or address Ma- thews's devastating rebuttal of these claims, nor does she cite Coquillette's careful treatment of Bacon's legal works and career in Francis Bacon (cit. n. 24).

29 Wheeler, "Invention of Modem Empiricism" (cit. n. 24), p. 108, shows in detail the elements of the empirical legal science that Bacon brought to his court. See also Barbara J. Shapiro, "Sir Francis Bacon and the Mid- Seventeenth-Century Movement for Law Reform," American Journal of Legal History, 1980, 24:331-362.

30 "The suit is civil: it concerns the recovery of a right, rather than punishment of a criminal": Cardwell, "Francis Bacon, Inquisitor" (cit. n. 5), pp. 278-284, which also discusses the Star Chamber summary procedure ore tenus, in which the defendant is judged on his own testimony (ex ore suo). For clarification of the practices of the Courts of Chancery and of the Star Chamber see G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 150-152, 158-163, 167-171. As Elton notes, the Star Chamber was, "in a sense, the chancellor's court of criminal jurisdiction," though it was "unable to touch life or property" and "did not use torture in the course of the trial" (pp. 169-171). This corrects Hanson's implication that torture is among "the more sinister procedures of the Star Chamber": Hanson, Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England (cit. n. 2), pp. 127-128, 37-39, 135. In contrast, the Court of Chancery dealt with issues of equity arising from the common law.

31 Bacon, "Masculine Birth of Time," in Philosophy of Francis Bacon, trans. Farrington (cit. n. 6), pp. 62, 72. Soble also makes the point about nature as wife in "In Defense of Bacon" (cit. n. 2).

PETER PESIC 93

BACON'S QUALIFICATION OF THE LIMITS OF EXPERIMENT

Bacon holds arduous experimentation to be both necessary and legitimate if the depths of nature are to be plumbed; he even feels that God had enjoined man to subject nature to penetrating interrogation. However, Bacon also is aware of the dangers inherent in the use of vexation and in experiment as it becomes torturous. He recognizes certain cases in which experiment is cruel or inhuman:

For to prosecute such inquiries concerning perfect animals by cutting out the fetus from the womb would be too inhuman, except when opportunities are afforded by abortions, the chase, and the like. There should therefore be set a sort of night watch over nature, as showing herself better by night than by day. For these may be regarded as night studies by reason of the smallness of our candle and its continual burning. (4.202 [1.316])

Furthermore, Bacon sees the danger that overzealous or uncritical experimentation might elicit misleading or distorted responses from nature, as torture can elicit false confessions. He notices that "when bodies are tormented [vexationibus] by fire or other means, many qualities are communicated by the fire itself and by the bodies employed to effect the separation which did not exist previously in the compound; whence strange fallacies have arisen" (4.199-200 [1.314]). Bacon thus criticizes the alchemists for overheating their work.32 He interprets Vulcan's attempt to rape Minerva as the excessive use of fire to cause "much vexing of bodies to force Nature" that yields only "imperfect births and lame works" (6.736). In his account of the "handcuffing" of Proteus in De augmentis scientiarum he notes that "the heat must be so regulated and varied, that there be no fracture of the vessels. For this operation is like that of the womb, where the heat works, and yet no part of the body is either emitted or separated" (4.420-421 [1.632]). The "handcuffs" should imitate the natural warmth of the womb.33

Torturous methods lead only to barrenness; eliciting nature's secrets requires proper respect. Bacon reminds us that "you may deceive nature sooner than force her" (4.324). Since she cannot be fooled, "nature to be conquered must be obeyed" (4.32).34 Man cannot enter nature's "inner courts" without confronting her inherent greatness. Bacon held that experiment should be a heroic struggle that will ennoble humanity; he emphasizes a mod- eration consistent with legitimate interrogation. Although the later development of science went far beyond anything he anticipated, Bacon's vision remains a crucial touchstone for the aspirations and methods of his successors.35 His writings are the glass in which the

32 In the Sylva sylvarum he says that natural gold is formed "where little heat cometh" (2.449). See Stanton J. Linden, "Francis Bacon and Alchemy: The Reformation of Vulcan," J. Hist. Ideas, 1974, 35:547-560, on p. 558.

33 For a helpful discussion of Bacon's use of the image of the garden to characterize scientific inquiry see Michele Le Doeuff, "Man and Nature in the Gardens of Science," in Francis Bacon's Legacy of Texts, ed. Sessions (cit. n. 5), pp. 119-138.

34 Discussing the ways in which a "window" into another man's heart might be found that would help one guide one's fortune, Bacon remarks that "the poet doth elegantly call passions tortures [Torturas], that urge men to confess their secrets: Vino tortus est et ira [tortured by wine and wrath; Horace Epistles 1.18.38]" (3.458, 5.61 [1.774]). Bacon goes on to enumerate other ways in which men "open themselves; especially if they be put to it with a counter-dissimulation, according to the proverb of Spain, Di mentira, y sacaras verdad, Tell a lie and find a truth" (5.61). These methods are essentially tortures, and they all treat their object as a means to their end, rendered a mere instrumentality and a slave by deceit. However, this model of Machiavellian working does not apply to nature, which cannot be deceived as people can.

35 For his immediate followers see my discussion of Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, John Evelyn, and Joseph Glanvill in Peter Pesic, "Eviscerating Nature: Bacon's Successors and the Defense of Experiment" (unpublished MS).

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enigmatic birth of modem science may best be beheld. Bacon reminds us that if we strive to be liberated from "great infelicity" and from "lasting and general agreement in error," we should agree that "the human understanding may the more willingly submit to its purgation and dismiss its idols" (4.63 [1.173]). Close examination shows that Bacon did not conceive of experiment as torture. The time has come to dismiss this idol.