This dissertation explores the social and political thought of Francis Bacon. While Bacon's contribution to the philosophy of science is recognized, his work is seen as having been focused primarily on the reform of the human estate. Bacon's Great Instauration, his programme for the advancement of learning and the restoration of mankind to pre-lapsarian dominion over nature, is examined for the influence of four main Renaissance perspectives: humanism, Christianity, millenarianism and historical optimism. Bacon wedded Renaissance humanism to millenarian-eschatology to provide an alternative to the classically-oriented interpretation of universal history. / Despite the frequent use of millenarian-eschatological metaphors, Bacon's proposed reforms were based on human endeavour, not on divine will. The New Atlantis, Bacon's utopian portrayal of ideal social order, expresses his vision of the advancement of learning and its relation to politics. There the principal problem he confronts is resolving the contradiction between the mutability of all things, human and natural, and the inexorable progress promised by the new learning. Bacon's solution in the New Atlantis is ultimately unsatisfactory for it is based on a radical separation of the active will from the public sphere, and is thus achieved only at the expense of politics.

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