Of Truth (Text) by Francis Bacon

Of Truth: Francis Bacon

WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate: and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief: affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And, though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins; though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth- nor, again, that, when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts- that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight that doth not, show the masques and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum, because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men’s depraved judgments and affections, yet truth (which is the love-making, or wooing of it) the knowledge of truth (which is the presence of it), and the belief of truth ( which is the enjoying of it), is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and His sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of His Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then He breathed light, into the face of man; and still He breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well. It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below: so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehoods is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious: And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge- saith he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.

Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, He shall not find faith upon the earth.