Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5
The fact that both the science and exploration that Bacon thought were
foretold in Daniel figure prominently in his
New Atlantis
supports my argu-
ment that Bacon's story belongs to the genre of “feigned history” rather than
to that of utopian literature. Quite unlike the “nowhere” world imagined
by Thomas More, writes W. A. Sessions, Bacon's is “a 'model' of a higher
reality that is being presented as truth, not a choice of options.”
38
Bacon
does not bracket Bensalem off from history as More had when he called
his imaginary civilization “nowhere.” The Christian civilization he depicts
is certainly a product of imagination, but it is one that is also created in the
image of established theological truths. As a version of the “New Jerusalem”
of the Apocalypse, Bensalem represents something clearly envisioned in the
eschatology of the Bible. As a city that lies in “God's bosom,” it is an imagi-
native representation of what was for his readers a sanctioned trajectory,
that future city of God whose coming was certified by Scripture.
To make such an imaginary trajectory plausible, its narrative represen-
tation in the
New Atlantis
needed to be theologically coherent. This meant
