The publication of The Passenger and Stella Maris seems almost like an undeserved gift. The recently deceased Cormac McCarthy’s career has spanned fifty-five years, and certainly, in writing as an octogenarian, the literary giant had nothing more to prove. His genius as a writer needed no further evidence, and an additional voice in the chorus of his praises seems likewise unnecessary. A mixed lament, perhaps, might be more fitting.
In Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, the head of Salomon’s House tells the visitors to the utopian island of Bensalem that “The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.” Bacon concludes the work with an appended list of Magnalia Naturae, Praecipue Quoad Usus Humanos, or, The wonders of nature, particularly those that are useful for human beings. These “wonders,” which seem to be the aim of scientific advancement, include such lofty goals as “prolongation of life … the curing of diseases counted as incurable … [and] the increasing of strength and activity.” It includes, too, however, such controversial goals as “The increasing and exalting of the intellectual parts … Making of new species … [and] Instruments of destruction, such as war and poison.” As one of my students recently remarked, “Who gave Bacon a time machine?”
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