- I considered promises that limit our freedom to be extreme. It’s not that I disapproved of laws that help people with weak resolve stay committed to good causes through vows and contracts, or laws that secure commerce with similar commitments for neutral purposes. However, since nothing on earth is completely unchangeable, and I hoped to gradually improve my judgments, I thought it would be foolish to bind myself to something I approved of at one time, only to find it no longer good or valuable later. This would go against common sense, as it would prevent me from adapting my beliefs as circumstances changed or as my understanding improved.
- Francis Bacon (plato.standford.edu)
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the leading figures in natural philosophy and in the field of scientific methodology in the period of transition from the Renaissance to the early modern era. As a lawyer, member of Parliament, and Queen’s Counsel, Bacon wrote on questions of law, state and religion, as well as on contemporary politics; but he also published texts in which he speculated on possible conceptions of society, and he pondered questions of ethics (Essays) even in his works on natural philosophy (The Advancement of Learning).
- And I placed in the class of extremes especially all promises by which somewhat of our freedom is abridged; not that I disapproved of the laws which, to provide against the instability of men of feeble resolution, when what is sought to be accomplished is some good, permit engagements by vows and contracts binding the parties to persevere in it, or even, for the security of commerce, sanction similar engagements where the purpose sought to be realized is indifferent: but because I did not find anything on earth which was wholly superior to change, and because, for myself in particular, I hoped gradually to perfect my judgments, and not to suffer them to deteriorate, I would have deemed it a grave sin against good sense, if, for the reason that I approved of something at a particular time, I therefore bound myself to hold it for good at a subsequent time, when perhaps it had ceased to be so, or I had ceased to esteem it such.