Bacon has warned us that selfishness should be checked, in the context of a prince-servant relationship.
Of course he is dead but here "has" is used.
Why? He warned us right? He warned us in the past many many years ago. Not recently.
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In the humanities generally we regard old authors as still present through their works. You will rarely find a scholar or critic writing that “”Homer said” or “Shakespeare wrote”; it is almost always “Homer says” and “Shakespeare writes”. The same is true of scholarly writing: “McCawley (1971) distinguishes four varieties of categories of use of the perfect.”
This is not the case in the social sciences; the APA style sheet calls for even very recent papers to be referred to in the past.
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is it like Bacon said in the past and we still feel the effect of it so the past and the present are connected in this case? – user8153 Aug 22 '14 at 16:22
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@user08742 Sort of ... it's more like Bacon wrote it and his work is still living for us when we read it. – StoneyB Aug 22 '14 at 17:58
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Please note that the "Present perfect" tense says about either past and present.
For instance, I may say (many times) :
"You should wash your hands before eating!"
and some time later, I see you're eating with dirty hands, so I tell you:
"I've told you many times that you should wash your hands before eating, but you never take care!"
Obviously I've told you something in the past, but I use the Present perfect to this aim. Indeed the verb has happened in the past but the effect still exists.
