Francis Bacon

The Wisdom of the Ancients and New Atlantis (1886) Francis Bacon

Bacon wrote this book at the age of forty-eight, four years after the publication of his Two Books of the Advancement of Learning the first important work of the series that set forth his philosophy of Nature, and three years before the publication of the second edition (enlarged in its contents from ten to thirty-eight) of the Essays, that set forth his philosophy of Human Life. Bacon's New Atlantis written at the age of sixty-three, in the days of his withdrawal from all public office, and about two years before his death, at High-gate, on the 9th of April, 1626, was not published until the year after his death. It is unfinished, but nearly finished. Solon was said to have been writing in his last days of a perfect island of Atlantis. Plato, in his unfinished Critias left part of a sketch of an ideal conflict, by citizens of an ideal Athens, with iuYaders from a vast island of Atlantis, fabled to be where America long afterwards was found; and Bacon placed his New Atlantis in another island continent, fabled to be where Australia has since been found. Like his Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon's New Atlantis was written and first published in Latin.