"Pruning by study": Self-cultivation in Bacon's Essays

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 1995 by Miller, John J

"Of Counsel" focuses on the self in what would seem to be its most secure and efficiently potent state: kingship. However, the paranoia which in fact characterizes the selfs position at the top of the hierarchy of its fellow selves is not unique to that position. Rather, kingship represents the paradigm of the matured self in the world: now able to exercise its power, yet all the more susceptible to and jealous of losing control of how that power is deployed. "Of Counsel" is consequently concerned with almost nothing but the maintenance of control over one's power, as epitomized in the problems of kingship. The myth of Athena's birth figures the desire of the matured self jealously to guard its own powers so as neither to depend on the infusions of others nor to disperse wastefully one's own vital energies.

The ancient times do set forth in figure both the incorporation and inseparable conjunction of counsel with kings, and the wise and politic use of counsel by kings: the one, in that they say Jupiter did marry Metis, which signifieth counsel; whereby they intend that Sovereignty is married to Counsel: the other in that which followeth, which was thus: They say, after Jupiter was married to Metis, she conceived by him and was with child, but Jupiter suffered her not to stay till she brought forth, but eat her up; whereby he became himself with child, and was delivered of Pallas armed, out of his head. Which monstrous fable containeth a secret of empire; how kings are to make use of their counsel of state. That first they ought to refer matters unto them, which is the first begetting or impregnation; but when they are elaborate, moulded, and shaped in the womb of their Counsel, and grow ripe and ready to be brought forth, that then they suffer not their Counsel to go through with the resolution and direction, as if it depended on them; but take the matter back into their own hands, and make it appear to the world that the decrees and final directions (which, because they come forth with prudence and power, are resembled to Pallas Armed) proceeded from themselves; and not only from their authority, but (the more to add reputation to themselves) from their head and device. (VI: 424)

The force of this "monstrous Fable"--a rare device in the Essays--is not so much in its illumination of the political stratagem described, but rather in its almost literal embodiment of the problem of personal power. The figure is an assertion--similar to others noted above--of the dependence of physical body on the control of creative power. The jealousy it represents is not simply a jealousy of one's "Authority" but of one's personal security. For the close reader of the essays, the politics of the counsel room recalls the economics of the self detailed in the essays on domestic relations and education. The fable also illustrates, however, that with proper handling this threat of loss or dismemberment can in fact be turned to profit, for the marriage to Metis can be redeemed as marriage to one's wife cannot. As the domestic essays have shown, a wife cannot increase the efficiency of the economy of self-hood, but is rather a drain on the self. Metis, on the other hand, can be swallowed by the clever king; in fact, it is his ability to do so which constitutes and preserves his power over others. Authority is maintained by maintaining the appearance that ideas gleaned from others in fact emanate from oneself. As in several of the domestic essays, the efficient use of personal power is validated by public recognition, though "Of Counsel" suggests that, like domestic exertions, public work may also involve a certain secrecy. To maintain this fiction of self-sufficiency, and thus personal power, counselors must be made dependent for their own safety on the safety of the king.