We live today in a world made possible by modern science. Our world bears little outward relation to the one surveyed by Francis Bacon when, at the beginning of the seventeenth century he issued his call for the advancement of learning through the method of inductive science. Yet it is precisely his spirit of scientific experimentation which has become the foundation of modern science and, therefore, of the modern world itself.

It is then very worth our while to read this volume of Bacon's greatest writings—the Advancement of Learning, the Novum Organum, the New Atlantis and the famous Essays, which show his keen insight into the practical problems of human conduct as well as his mastery of English prose.

Professor Dick of the University of California has used various shorter pieces to link these major works and produce in one volume a coherent intellectual autobiography of a great mind.