OF TRUTH

·         This essay opens with Biblical Reference.

·         Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judaea, who tried Jesus Christ and condemned him to death. Pilate, in fact, was in favour of releasing Christ, but under the pressure of the Jewish mob he had to condemn him. “Pilate saith unto him: What is truth?”.

·         Like a sceptic, he left the place that nobody was capable of finding out the truth.

·         Extreme skepticism, after Pyrrho, is called as pyrrhonism.

·         Bacon examines why most people like lies and dislike truth.

·         A satirist Lucian born about 124 A. D who in his Philopseudus (lover of lies) discusses this question.

·         Bacon regards poetry as pleasure of lies.

·         Masks and mummeries are popular dramatic entertainments of the age of Bacon.

·         Truth is like “naked and open day-light”.

·         Lies is like candle light.

·         Carbuncle – a precious stone.

·         Bacon compares Truth to Pearl and untruth to a precious stone.

·         Poetry lies like shadows which come and go into the mind.

·         Seeking after truth is like courting a lady. Successful courtship leads to the perpetual presence of the lady-love, and then enjoyment ensues.

·         According to the Bible, God created the world and Adam and Eve in six days. On the seventh day, he took rest.

·         In line 45 the poet refers to Lucretius, the Roman expounder of the philosophy of Epicurus who believed that pleasure was the highest good. Epicurus was an atheist.

·         Truth is a hill which cannot be conquered by falsehood.

·         The mist of falsehood and the commotion of indecision lie much below it.

·         Bacon has deviated from Philosophical Truth to the truth of everyday life and business.

·         Precious metals like gold and silver become harder and consequently more durable when certain other metals such as copper and Zinc are mixed with them. Similarly when an element of false hood is mixed with truth, it produces a mixture which is more workable than pure unalloyed truth.

·         Crooked tactics adopted by businessmen for profit are paralleled by Bacon to the zigzag path adopted by the serpent which is a symbol for Satan, the original Tempter.

·         A man knowingly telling a lie is in a paradoxical situation. He is being fearless  of God and fearful of human beings.

·         Christ will come on the Day of Judgment.