Bacon's New Atlantis and Campanella's Civitas Solis: A Study in Relationships

Abstract

When Francis Bacon set down, in the fragment called the New Atlantis, his conception of a commonwealth as it ought to be, he was following a precedent of honorable antiquity. As we should expect, he shows obvious indebtedness to Plato's Republic, Timœus, and Critias and to More's Utopia; but the fact that the latest of these was a century old when Bacon began to write gave him scope for considerable originality in creating a “perfect state” adapted to the thought of his own times. His notes and writings over a period of years show that many of the theories and projects that took form in the New Atlantis had long been in his mind. By 1608 he had perceived the importance to science of coöperation in research, had seen the suitability of a collegiate organization as an agency for carrying on scientific investigation, and had jotted down specific details of plans, problems, and equipment which show that his mind was occupied with the practical aspects of his ideal. Although the opportunity to establish a college of research in an English university never came to Bacon, the concept of such an institution persisted until it became the soul of his Utopia—Salomon's House, or the College of the Six Days' Work, credited with having inspired the founding of the Royal Society.