What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay…

The sentence opens “Of Truth”, the first of Bacon’s Essays in their final form. It refers to the Gospel of John, where Pilate, questioning Jesus, asks “What is truth?” and goes out to the crowd without waiting for a reply. Bacon makes him a “jesting” sceptic and turns at once to his heirs: there are people, he says, who “delight in giddiness” and count it “a bondage to fix a belief”, and though the old sects of doubting philosophers are gone, “certain discoursing wits” of the same vein remain.

Bacon published ten short Essays in 1597, enlarged them in 1612, and gave them their final shape in 1625, with fifty-eight pieces; “Of Truth” was written for that last edition and placed at its head. He had fallen from the office of Lord Chancellor in 1621, convicted of taking bribes, and spent his last years writing.

The opening has become a byword for the cynic who asks a great question and will not stay for the answer.

Essays, “Of Truth”, opening sentence, 1625

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