To Isaac Casaubon.
Understanding from your letter to the Lord Cary
that you approve my writings, I not only took it as a matter for
congratulation with myself, but thought I ought to write and tell
you how much pleasure it had given me. You are right in supposing
that my great desire is to draw the sciences out of their hiding
places into the light. For indeed to write at
leisure that which is to be read at leisure matters little; but to
bring about the better ordering of man's life and business, with all
its troubles and difficulties, by the help of sound and true
contemplations, -- this is the thing I am at. How great an
enterprise in this kind I am attempting, and with what small helps,
you will learn perhaps hereafter. In the meantime you would do me a
very great pleasure if you would in like manner make known to me
what you are yourself revolving and endeavouring and working at. For
I hold that conjunction of minds and studies has a greater part in
friendships than civil ties and offices of occasion. Surely I think
no man could ever more truly say of himself with the Psalm than I
can, "My soul hath been a stranger in her pilgrimage." So I seem to
have my conversation among the ancients more than among these with
whom I live. And why should I not likewise converse rather with the
absent than the present, and make my friendships by choice and
election, rather than suffer them, as the manner is, to be settled
by accident? But to return to my purpose. If in any thing my
friendship can be of use or grace to you or yours, assure yourself
of my good and diligent service: and so biddeth you farewell
[@ Bacon, Works XI, 146-7] |
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