Bringing home the Bacon #1

Sorry about the corny headline, it's a weakness and I throw myself on the mercy of the court!  However, I have rediscovered one of my old 'Favourites'  - Sir Francis Bacon.  What a wise, shrewd , old cove he was.  You can read him for yourself at the excellent Bartleby Books which might be a good idea because in paraphrasing him I am more than likely to set the old boy spinning in his grave with my misunderstandings.  Even so, for those of you 'working stiffs' without too much time on your hands, perhaps my occasional synopsizes will intrigue you enough to encourage you to look him up later.

In Essay VI, Of Simulation and Dissimulation, Bacon considers these behaviours particularly as they appear in the conduct of politicians:

There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not that he is. And the third, simulation in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be that he is not.

Oh yes, several contemporary names instantly spring to mind in all those three categories!  He investigates each of them in greater depth:

For the first of these, secrecy; it is indeed the virtue of a confessor. And assuredly the secret man heareth many confessions. For who will open himself to a blab or a babbler? But if a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery; as the more close air sucketh in the more open; and as in confession the revealing is not for worldly use, but for the ease of a man’s heart, so secret men come to the knowledge of many things in that kind; while men rather discharge their minds than impart their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy.

Next, he moves onto dissimulation:

For the second, which is dissimulation; it followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity; so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence as by his speech.

Finally, simulation:

But for the third degree, which is simulation and false profession; that I hold more culpable, and less politic; except it be in great and rare matters. And therefore a general custom of simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice, rising either of a natural falseness of fearfulness, or of a mind that hath some main faults, which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of [practise].

In his final paragraph he sums up the pros and cons of these essential political and social 'arts and crafts':

The best composition and [temperament] is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.

There you have it - Politics 101!  

 

     Lord Edmund Blackadder                        Sir Francis Bacon

 

Comments

[rogerh]

The old writers are I think the best on this topic. They wrote for a knowing elite and could write the truth plainly without much chance of a whiner from Ye Olde Maile banging on that thumbscrews were a breach of human rights. For the plain fact is that politics is a dirty business and the populace as a whole is a damn nuisance fit only to be taxed. Keep that clearly in mind and their actions become clear as day.

[David Duff]

Exactly so, Roger.