For Bacon as for Luther, “knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.†Its concern is not “satisfaction, which men call truth,†but “operation,†the effective procedure. The “true end, scope or office of knowledge†does not consist in “any plausible, delectable, reverend or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before, for the better endowment and help of man’s life.†There shall be neither mystery nor any desire to reveal mystery.
Francis Bacon