Seventeenth-century founder of modern inductivism and philosopher of the industrial revolution Bacon, a prophet of modern science and technology, reveals a debt to antiquity in his polished Essays. In them, he develops an extraordinary variety of themes, from the mundane to the profound, by contrasting classical maxims. Using seemingly irreconcilable antitheses, he draws his truths with an almost subliminally persuasive rhetoric that transcends both the brute force of scholastic logic and the abstractions of modern philosophy. The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, glossary, index and chronology of Bacon’s life and times