Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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When I held in my hand a copy of a text book I had to study once during my university years, memories of times long passed rushed back to mind.

It was Francis Bacon's Essays on Counsels, Civil and Moral, published by London and Glasgow Collins Clear- Type Press. There was no date of publication so that I was not able to ascertain whether or not it was first edition. Without a date it was probably prior to the first edition vogue, which probably, makes it a museum piece.

I went through the 58 essays in this rare book and came to understand two things: the importance of the essay in England of the 1560s, and the morals and social values that were adopted then. The essays varied from the topics of truth, death and unity of religion, to marriage and single life, with love and friendship strewn in between.

Let me start with his essay on friendship, since I am a great believer in the saying that "you don't choose your brother, but choose your friend." It's one of Bacon's longest essays which goes to show the value he attributes to this human bond. A principal fruit of friendship, he claims, "is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause to induce". He believes that nothing could open the heart but a true friend, "to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it."

Kings and monarchs set high rates upon the fruits of friendship. They are ready to "purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness". The friendship between Julius Caesar and Decimus Brutus was a case in point. "And that was the man that had the power with him to draw him forth to his death," Bacon writes. Friendship, in the author's opinion, makes a fair day in the affections from storm and tempest; and daylight "out of darkness and the confusion of thoughts".

Another fruit of friendship is faithful counsel from a friend. Bacon quotes the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as saying that "the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment."

Besides these two noble fruits of friendship, follows a last fruit, "which is like a pomegranate, full of many kernels": aid, and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. The ancients once said that a friend is another self. All the cares of a man are shared by a true friend. Bacon concludes his essay by saying "a man can speak to his son but as a father, to his wife but as a husband, to his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person." If a man has no friend, Bacon goes on, "he may quit the stage."

Words of wisdom pour out of Bacon's book. He looks upon love as a weakness, and this is why "great spirits and great business do keep out of this weak passion." The excess of love "braves the nature and value of things...there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved, and, therefore, it was well said that it is impossible to love and to be wise". He believes that love must be reciprocal, and advises men to keep love in "quarter" and to sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life.

The essay closes with a thought which I wholeheartedly support. "There is in man's nature," he writes, "a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which if it be no spent upon someone or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable."

I never have enough of reading essays by Bacon, Addison and Steele, not only for the variety of subjects they cover, but also as a guide to what an essay should be. I advise the departments of English in our universities to include have these books reinstated in their curricula.