New Atlantis

Summary

New Atlantis is a short, unfinished prose fable that Francis Bacon probably wrote around 1623-1624, after his fall from office; his chaplain William Rawley printed it in 1627, the year after Bacon's death, bound in with the natural history Sylva Sylvarum. A Spanish-speaking ship's company sailing from Peru toward China and Japan is driven north by contrary winds, runs out of food, and prays for land. They sight an unknown island, Bensalem, whose officials first forbid them to land, then question them ("Are ye Christians?"), make them swear they have shed no blood for forty days, and on the warning of the city's Conservator of Health keep a careful distance from their seventeen sick men. The strangers are lodged in the Strangers' House, given scarlet oranges and small grey pills for the sick, confined for three days, and found to be well-behaved. Over several conversations the Governor of the Strangers' House, who is also a Christian priest, tells them how Bensalem received the Scriptures about twenty years after the Ascension in an ark of cedar sent by the apostle Bartholomew, guided by a pillar of light that a member of Salomon's House judged to be a true miracle. He explains why the world knows nothing of Bensalem: the ancient lawgiver King Solamona, about nineteen hundred years before, closed the island to strangers while providing generously for any who arrived in distress, and allowed only one kind of foreign traffic. Every twelve years two ships carry three Fellows of Salomon's House abroad in disguise to gather the books, instruments and inventions of the world, a trade "for God's first creature, which was Light." The narrator then witnesses the Feast of the Family, a state-funded honour for any father who lives to see thirty living descendants, and hears from Joabin, a learned Jewish merchant, a long praise of the chastity of Bensalem and its marriage laws, set pointedly against European vice. Finally one of the Fathers of Salomon's House enters the city in procession and grants the narrator a private audience. In a long speech the Father sets out the end of the foundation, its caves, towers, lakes, Chambers of Health, orchards, dispensatories, engine-houses and perspective-houses, the offices of its Fellows (Merchants of Light, Depredators, Mystery-men, Pioneers, Compilers, Benefactors, Lamps, Inoculators and Interpreters of Nature), and its galleries of inventors and daily hymns of thanks. He gives the narrator leave to publish the account. Rawley's note closes the book: the rest was not perfected. The fable is Bacon's picture of what organised, collaborative natural philosophy might become under a pious and well-governed state. Readers have long debated whether its Christian frame governs the ambitions of Salomon's House or merely decorates them, a question the unfinished text leaves open.

Plot or Argument

• Lost in the South Sea and warned off a strange shore

  After a year in Peru the ship is blown north with its provisions exhausted. The crew pray to the God who 'showeth his wonders in the deep'. At the port of Bensalem a scroll in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Spanish, sealed with cherubim and a cross, orders them away but offers water, victuals and help for the sick. A dignitary asks whether they are Christians and administers an oath that they are no pirates.

• Quarantine and the Strangers' House

  The Conservator of Health has the visitors kept at a distance; a notary carries a fragrant fruit as a preservative against infection. Fifty-one men, seventeen of them sick, are lodged in chambers and an infirmary of cedar cells, given remedies, and confined for three days. The narrator urges his fellows to reform their ways, suspecting they are being watched; the sick recover quickly. Officials refuse every tip, calling a bribed officer 'twice paid'.

• The conversion of Bensalem by Bartholomew's ark

  The Governor recounts the pillar of light topped by a cross seen off Renfusa, the prayer of a Fellow of Salomon's House distinguishing true miracle from imposture, and the cedar ark holding the whole canon of Scripture and a letter from Bartholomew, legible to every reader in his own tongue.

• Atlantis, Solamona, and the law of secrecy

  The Governor tells of ancient navigation, the expeditions of Coya (Peru) and Tyrambel (Mexico), the clemency of King Altabin, and the flood that ruined the 'great Atlantis' of America. King Solamona then sealed the island against strangers, joining 'humanity and policy': visitors in distress are relieved, and those who stay are well provided for, but Bensalem sends out only the secret twelve-yearly missions of the Merchants of Light.

• The Feast of the Family and Joabin's account of marriage

  The Tirsan, father of thirty living descendants, settles the family's quarrels, relieves its poor and rebukes its wayward before a feast at public cost, with a charter from the king and a cluster of golden grapes. Joabin the Jewish merchant describes Bensalem as 'the virgin of the world', without brothels or polygamy, with a month's delay before contracts and Adam and Eve's pools in place of the bathing custom of More's Utopia.

• The Father of Salomon's House

  A Father enters the city in a cedar chariot and grants the narrator a private audience. He describes in four parts the end of the foundation, its preparations and instruments, the employments of its Fellows, and its ordinances and rites, including a gallery of inventors' statues, daily prayers for the 'good and holy uses' of their labours, and secret deliberation over which discoveries to publish. He blesses the narrator and permits him to publish the relation. The narrative breaks off.

Characters

• The narrator, spokesman of the ship's company

  A devout, observant European mariner who leads the crew's prayers, warns them to behave soberly under watch, and is chosen for the private audience with the Father of Salomon's House.

• The Governor of the Strangers' House, host, priest and historian

  A Christian priest by vocation who answers the visitors' questions about Bensalem's conversion, its ancient history, and the law of secrecy laid down by Solamona.

• The Conservator of Health, public-health official (mentioned)

  The city officer whose warning keeps the dignitary from boarding a ship carrying sick men; he never speaks, but his office frames the first encounter.

• Solamona, ancient lawgiver of Bensalem

  The king, about nineteen hundred years before the visit, who closed the island to strangers and founded Salomon's House, also called the College of the Six Days Works.

• The Tirsan, father honoured at the Feast of the Family

  Any man living to see thirty descendants together; he judges family disputes and is publicly honoured, choosing one son as the 'Son of the Vine'.

• Joabin, Jewish merchant of Bensalem

  A learned man 'of great policy' who befriends the narrator, praises the chastity and marriage laws of Bensalem, and brings news of the Father's arrival.

• The Father of Salomon's House, head of the college of natural philosophy

  A grave man with 'an aspect as if he pitied men' who describes the purposes, instruments, offices and rites of the House and blesses the narrator.

Lessons

• Miracle, nature and imposture in the Bensalem conversion

  The first person in the book to judge the pillar of light is a natural philosopher, who prays that his order has been given to discern 'between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art, and impostures'. Bacon makes the scientist the witness who certifies a miracle, not the man who explains it away. The episode shows how Bacon wanted investigation of nature to serve, rather than rival, revealed religion, and it sets up the later ban on 'impostures, and lies' in Salomon's House.

  • Why does Bacon give a member of Salomon's House, not a priest, the task of declaring the pillar a true miracle?
  • What does the prayer's claim that the laws of nature are God's 'own laws' imply about how a Christian should study them?
  • How does the houses-of-deceits passage near the end echo this early scene?

• Hospitality joined to policy

  Bensalem's first acts are mercy (water, food, an infirmary, medicine) and caution (oaths, distance, confinement, watchers). Solamona's law aims to join 'humanity and policy': strangers in distress are relieved, but no Bensalemite trades abroad except in secret. Students can weigh whether this is a model of prudent charity or of a closed society that controls information, and compare it with the narrator's own advice to his men to behave as men under observation.

  • List the ways the islanders care for the sick sailors. Which are acts of mercy, which acts of prudence, and which both?
  • The Governor contrasts Bensalem's law of secrecy with China's, which he calls a law of 'pusillanimity and fear'. Is the distinction convincing?
  • Why do officials refuse every reward, and what does the phrase 'twice paid' say about public office in Bensalem? Recall that Bacon himself was impeached for accepting gifts.

• The Tirsan and the household as the root of the commonwealth

  Between the history and the science Bacon places a domestic ceremony. The Feast of the Family rewards fruitfulness, but its two days of private consultation also reconcile quarrels, relieve poor relations, and correct the wayward, with the civil governor standing ready to enforce the father's decisions. Joabin then grounds the island's strength in chastity and faithful marriage. The section shows that Bacon's ideal society rests on ordered households as well as on laboratories.

  • What tasks does the Tirsan perform before the feast, and why might Bacon put reconciliation before celebration?
  • Joabin says the reverence of a man's self is, next to religion, 'the chiefest bridle of all vices'. What does he mean, and do you agree?
  • Why might a book about natural philosophy pause for a long account of family and marriage?

• The end of the foundation: knowledge for power and for use

  The Father states the purpose plainly: knowledge of causes and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire 'to the effecting of all things possible'. What follows is a catalogue of controlled experiment, division of labour, and practical application, from artificial metals to submarines and new breeds of animals. Yet the House also prays daily for the 'good and holy uses' of its work and decides in secret which discoveries to withhold even from the state. The tension between unlimited aim and self-imposed restraint is the heart of the fragment, and the text does not tell us how it would have been resolved.

  • What is the difference between 'knowledge of causes' and 'enlarging the bounds of human empire'? Can one be pursued without the other?
  • Which experiments in the Father's catalogue would you rank as most beneficial, and which give you pause? Give reasons from the text.
  • The Fellows take an oath to conceal some inventions, 'though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state and some not'. Who should decide what knowledge is published?

• An unfinished design: reading the fragment as a fragment

  The book ends with Rawley's note that 'the rest was not perfected'. We never learn the purpose of the Father's secret visit, see the island's government, or hear Bacon's laws for Bensalem. Students should resist filling the gap with confident claims about what Bacon 'really' meant, while noticing the order of what was written: rescue, revelation, history, family, and only then science.

  • What questions about Bensalem remain unanswered when the narrative stops?
  • Does the order of the episodes suggest which matters Bacon thought most fundamental?
  • How should a careful reader treat an author's unfinished work differently from a finished one?

Context

New Atlantis belongs to the Renaissance genre of the imagined commonwealth reached by sea that Thomas More founded with Utopia (1516); Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (written 1602, printed 1623) is a near contemporary. Bacon wrote it in the era of Spanish Pacific voyaging, which explains the Peruvian departure and Spanish language of the visitors, and of active English interest in exploration and plantation. Its Salomon's House is a fictional form of the collaborative, state-supported natural history Bacon urged in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the Novum Organum (1620). The island's history adapts Plato's Atlantis story from the Timaeus and Critias, which the Governor partly corrects, identifying the 'great Atlantis' with America.

Composition

The text is undated. William Rawley's address to the reader, printed with the first edition, describes it as a fable devised to set out a college for the interpreting of nature, and scholars usually date its writing to about 1623-1624, after Bacon's fall from office in 1621. It was first published in 1627 at the end of Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon's collection of experiments, which shows how closely Rawley associated the two. The narrative stops after the Father's speech with the note 'The rest was not perfected.'

Reception

The founders and early apologists of the Royal Society (chartered 1662) repeatedly invoked Salomon's House; Joseph Glanvill and Thomas Sprat presented the Society as realising Bacon's plan, and Robert Boyle's circle spoke of an 'invisible college'. Later readers have treated the fable as a prophecy of the research institute and modern technology, a point the Harvard Classics introductory note printed with the library's text stresses. Others read its Christian frame and its secrecy as essential qualifications of its programme. The work was included in the Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 28.

Comparisons

• Utopia

  Bacon borrows More's frame (a traveller's report of an unknown island) and alludes to it directly when Joabin mentions 'a Feigned Commonwealth' where couples see each other naked before marriage. More's Utopia is a pre-Christian republic whose communal property is the main point of interest; Bensalem is already Christian, keeps private households and merchants, and makes organised natural philosophy its glory.

• The Advancement of Learning

  The Advancement of Learning (1605) argues in discursive prose for surveying the deficiencies of knowledge and pursuing it for 'the relief of man's estate'; New Atlantis dramatises that argument as an institution, turning its divisions of labour and its call for royal patronage into the offices and galleries of Salomon's House.

• The Republic

  Plato's Republic designs a city ruled by philosophers who contemplate the unchanging Forms; Bacon's Fathers rule nothing directly and seek the causes of changing things in order to produce works. Plato's Timaeus and Critias also supply the Atlantis legend that the Governor revises.

• Gulliver's Travels

  Swift's Academy of Lagado in Book III (1726) is widely read as a satire on Baconian projecting and on the Royal Society; reading the two together shows how Bacon's reverent catalogue of experiments could be turned into comedy within a century.

• Frankenstein

  The Father's boast that his House can keep animals alive after removing vital parts and can resuscitate 'some that seem dead in appearance' anticipates Victor Frankenstein's ambition. Shelley imagines the solitary experimenter who answers to no one; Bacon imagines a praying, collegial order that deliberates about what to reveal.

• The Sceptical Chymist

  Boyle's dialogue (1661) shows a member of the early Royal Society actually practising the patient, experiment-led, collaborative inquiry that Bacon's Pioneers, Compilers and Interpreters of Nature divide among themselves.

Quotes

Medical Lens

New Atlantis is a useful early-modern source for the imagined organisation of medicine. Its first scenes turn on what we would call quarantine: a Conservator of Health, distance kept from a ship with sick men, a fruit carried against infection, an infirmary of separate cells and three days' confinement. Salomon's House then gathers therapeutic research into institutions: Chambers of Health where air is adjusted for particular diseases, medicinal baths and mineral waters, caves used for curing disease and prolonging life, dispensatories with distillations and compound drugs, and parks of animals used 'for dissections and trials' and for testing poisons and remedies, surgical and medical, before applying lessons to the human body. Bacon's interest in the prolongation of life (pursued also in his Historia Vitae et Mortis, 1623) is evident. The vivisection and resuscitation passage reads, from a later vantage, as an early statement of animal experimentation in the service of human medicine; the text itself raises no ethical objection to it. The record raises relevance from the earlier 'none' because these passages are in the text itself.

• Arrival at Bensalem, before landing

  The dignitary keeps his distance on the warning of the city's Conservator of Health because the ship reports many sick; a notary carries a scarlet-orange fruit as a preservative against infection.

  Public Health Sanitation
• The Strangers' House, first days

  Seventeen sick men are placed in an infirmary gallery of cedar cells, given scarlet oranges as a remedy for sickness at sea and grey or whitish pills nightly, and confined three days; they recover quickly.

  Nursing Caregiving Public Health Sanitation Pharmacology Poisons
• Father of Salomon's House, the caves and wells

  Deep caves are used for curing some diseases and for prolonging the lives of hermits who live there; a 'Water of Paradise' is said to be sovereign for health and long life.

  Aging Senescence
• Father of Salomon's House, Chambers of Health and baths

  Rooms where air is qualified for the cure of diseases, and baths of several mixtures for restoring the body from 'arefaction' (drying out) and strengthening sinews and vital parts.

  Public Health Sanitation
• Father of Salomon's House, parks of beasts and birds

  Animals kept for dissections and trials; life continued after vital parts are removed, apparent death reversed, and poisons and medicines, surgical and physical, tried on them to learn what may be wrought on the human body.

  Anatomy Dissection Medical Ethics Reanimation Galvanism Pharmacology Poisons
• Father of Salomon's House, dispensatories

  Shops of medicines with simples of many ages, long fermentations, distillations, percolations and exact forms of composition.

  Pharmacology Poisons
• Father of Salomon's House, circuits of the kingdom

  Fellows publish useful inventions and give public forecasts and counsel concerning diseases, plagues and scarcity for their prevention and remedy.

  Public Health Sanitation

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Rawley's note says 'the rest was not perfected'. Write the next scene: the narrator learns why the Father of Salomon's House came to the city in secret after a dozen years' absence. Keep to the manners and institutions the fable has already shown.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between a Depredator and an Interpreter of Nature deciding whether one new invention (choose it from the Father's catalogue) should be revealed to the state, kept secret, or published to the people.

• Essay

  Is the Christian faith of Bensalem the foundation of Salomon's House or an ornament on it? Argue from at least three episodes: the pillar of light, the daily hymns, and the Father's statement of the 'end of our foundation'.

• Classroom

  Divide the class into the nine offices of Salomon's House. Give the group one simple question about the natural world and have each office perform its stated task in order, from Merchants of Light to Interpreters of Nature, then discuss what the division of labour gained and lost.

Further Reading

• Novum Organum, Francis Bacon

  Bacon's 1620 statement of inductive method and the 'idols' of the mind that Salomon's House is organised to overcome.

• The City of the Sun, Tommaso Campanella

  A contemporary utopia (printed 1623) in which a priestly-philosophical state also honours learning and natural knowledge.

• History of the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat

  Sprat's 1667 defence of the young Society, which presents Bacon as its intellectual founder.

• Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, Paolo Rossi

  A study of Bacon's relation to Renaissance magic, alchemy and the ideal of operative knowledge.