PARSON.—“You take for your motto this aphorism, ‘Knowledge is Power.’—BACON.”
RICCABOCCA.—“Bacon make such an aphorism! The last man in the world to have said anything so pert and so shallow!”
LEONARD (astonished).—“Do you mean to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon? Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favour of popular education.”
RICCABOCCA.—“Then that should be a warning to you never again to fall into the error of the would-be scholar,—
[This aphorism has been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the
mere authority of the index to his works. It is the aphorism of the
index-maker, certainly not of the great master of inductive
philosophy. Bacon has, it is true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of
knowledge, but with so many explanations and distinctions that
nothing could be more unjust to his general meaning than the attempt
to cramp into a sentence what it costs him a volume to define.
Thus, if on one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in
another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as
follows “Adeo signanter Deus opera potentix et sapientive
discriminavit.” But it would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into
an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between knowledge and
power as it is to convert into an aphorism any sentence that
confounds them.]
namely, quote second-hand. Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what it might be mistaken. And, pray, do you think so sensible a man ever would have taken the trouble to write a great book upon the subject, if he could have packed up all he had to say into the portable dogma, ‘Knowledge is power’? Pooh! no such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first page of his writings to the last.”
PARSON (candidly).—“Well, I supposed it was Lord Bacon’s, and I am very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the sanction of his authority.”
LEONARD (recovering his surprise).—“But why so?”
PARSON.—“Because it either says a great deal too much, or just—nothing at all.”
LEONARD.—“At least, sir, it seems to me undeniable.”