renowned as any in English literature. The pub
lication ranks as one of the most influential in the



22 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

world. Its "proverbial sentences, chiefly such as
inculcated industry and frugality as the means of
procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue,"
were sown like seed all over the land. The alma
nac went year after year, for quarter of a cen
tury, into the house of nearly every shopkeeper,
planter, and farmer in the American provinces.
Its wit and humor, its practical tone, its shrewd
maxims, its worldly honesty, its morality of com
mon sense, its useful information, all chimed well
with the national character. It formulated in
homely phrase and with droll illustration what the
colonists more vaguely knew, felt, and believed
upon a thousand points of life and conduct. In so
doing it greatly trained and invigorated the natural
mental traits of the people. "Poor Kichard " was
the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young
nation during its period of tutelage. His teach
ings are among the powerful forces which have gone
to shaping the habits of Americans. His terse and
picturesque bits of the wisdom and the virtue of
this world are familiar in our mouths to-day ; they
moulded our great-grandparents and their children ;
they have informed our popular traditions; they
still influence our actions, guide our ways of
thinking, and establish our points of view, with
the constant control of acquired habits which we
little suspect. If we were accustomed still to
read the literature of the almanac, we should be
charmed with its humor. The world has not yet
grown away from it, nor ever will. Addison and



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 23

Steele had more polish but vastly less humor than
Franklin. "Poor Richard " has found eternal life
by passing into the daily speech of the people,
while the "Spectator" is fast being crowded out
of the hands of all save scholars in literature. At
this period of his life he wrote many short fugitive
pieces, which hold some of the rarest wit that an
American library contains. Few people suspect
that the ten serious and grave -looking octavos,
imprinted "The Works of Benjamin Franklin,"
hide much of that delightful kind of wit that can
never grow old, but is as charming to-day as when
it came damp from the press a century and more
ago. How much of "Poor Richard" was actually
original is a sifting not worth while to make.
Franklin said : " I was conscious that not a tenth
part of the wisdom was my own which he ascribed
to me, but rather the gleanings that I had made of
the sense of all ages and nations." No profound
wisdom is really new, but only the expression of
it; and all that of "Poor Richard " had been fused
in the crucible of Franklin s brain.

But the famous almanac was not the only pulpit
whence Franklin preached to the people. He had
an excellent ideal of a newspaper. He got news
into it, which was seldom done in those days, and
which made it attractive; he got advertisements
into it, which made it pay, and which also was a
novel feature; indeed, Mr. Parton says that he
"originated the modern system of business adver
tising; " he also discussed matters of public inter-



24 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

est. Thus he anticipated the modern newspaper,
but in some respects improved in advance upon
that which he anticipated. He made his "Ga
zette " a vehicle for disseminating information and
morality, and he carefully excluded from it "all
libeling and personal abuse." The sheet in its
every issue was doing the same sort of work as
"Poor Richard." In a word, Franklin was a
born teacher of men, and what he did in this way
in these his earlier days gives him rank among the
most distinguished moralists who have ever lived.

What kind of morality he taught is well known.
It was human; he kept it free from entangling
alliances with any religious creed ; its foundations
lay in common sense, not in faith. His own
nature in this respect is easy to understand but
difficult to describe, since the words which must
be used convey such different ideas to different
persons. Thus, to say that he had the religious
temperament, though he was skeptical as to all the
divine and supernatural dogmas of the religions
of mankind, will seem to many a self-contradic
tion, while to others it is entirely intelligible. In
his boyhood one gets a flavor of irreverence which
was slow in disappearing. When yet a mere child
he suggested to his father the convenience of saying
grace over the whole barrel of salt fish, in bulk,
as the mercantile phrase would be. By the time
that he was sixteen, Shaftesbury and Collins,
efficiently aided by the pious writers who had en
deavored to refute them, had made him "a real



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 25

rloubter in many points of our religious doctrine ; "
and while he was still his brother s apprentice
in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic.
Apparently he gathered momentum in moving
along this line of thought, until in England his
disbelief took on for a time an extreme and objec
tionable form. His opinions then were "that no
thing could possibly be wrong in the world; and
that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, 110
such things existing." But the pamphlet, already
mentioned, in which he expressed these views, was
the outburst of a youthful free-thinker not yet
accustomed to his new ideas; not many years
passed over his head before it " appear d not so
clever a performance as [he] once thought it; " and
in his autobiography he enumerates it among the
"errata " of his life.

It was not so very long afterward that he busied
himself in composing prayers, and even an entire
litany, for his own use. No Christian could have
found fault with the morals therein embodied ; but
Christ was entirely ignored. He even had the
courage to draw up a new version of the Lord s
Prayer ; and he arranged a code of thirteen rules
after the fashion of the Ten Commandments ; of
these the last one was: "Imitate Jesus and Soc
rates." Except during a short time just preceding
and during his stay in London he seems never to
have been an atheist; neither was he ever quite a
Christian ; but as between atheism and Christian
ity he was very much further removed from the



26 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

former than from the latter. He used to call him
self a deist, or theist ; and said that a deist was as
much like an atheist as chalk is like charcoal.
The evidence is abundant that he settled down into
a belief in a personal God, who was good, who
concerned himself with the affairs of men, who
was pleased with good acts and displeased with
evil ones. He believed also in immortality and in
rewards in a life to come. But he supported none
of these beliefs upon the same basis on which
Christians support them.

Unlike the infidel school of that day he had
no antipathy even to the mythological portions of
the Christian religion, no desire to discredit it,
nor ambition to distinguish himself in a crusade
against it. On the contrary, he was always reso
lute to live well with it. His mind was too broad,
his habit of thought too tolerant, to admit of his
antagonizing so good a system of morals because
it was intertwined with articles of faith which he
did not believe. He went to church frequently,
and always paid his contribution towards the ex
penses of the society ; but he kept his commenda
tion only for those practical sermons which showed
men how to become virtuous. In like manner
the instruction which he himself inculcated W 7 as
strictly confined to those virtues which promote
the welfare and happiness of the individual and
of society. In fact, he recognized none other ; that
which did not advance these ends was but a spuri
ous pretender to the title of virtue.



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 27

One is tempted to make many quotations from
Franklin s writings in this connection; but two
or three must suffice. In 1743 he wrote to his

sister:

" There are some things in your New England doc
trine and worship which I do not agree with ; but I do
not therefore condemn them, or desire to shake your
belief or practice of them. We may dislike things that
are nevertheless right in themselves. I would only have
you make me the same allowance, and have a better
opinion both of morality and your brother."

In 1756 he wrote to a friend:

" He that for giving a draught of water to a thirsty
person should expect to be paid with a good plantation,
would be modest in his demands compared with those
who think they deserve Heaven for the little good they
do on earth. . . . For my own part, I have not the van
ity to think I deserve it, the folly to expect it, nor the
ambition to desire it ; but content myself in submitting
to the will and disposal of that God who made me, who
hitherto has preserved and blessed me, and in whose
fatherly goodness I may well confide. . . .

" The faith you mention has doubtless its use in the
world ; I do not desire it to be diminished, nor would I
endeavor to lessen it in any man. But I wish it were
more productive of good works than I have generally
seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness,
charity, mercy, and public spirit ; not holiday-keeping,
sermon reading or hearing, performing church ceremo
nies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and
compliments despised even by wise men and much less
capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is



28 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

a duty, the hearing and reading of sermons may be use
ful ; but if men rest in hearing and praying, as too many
do, it is as if a tree should value itself in being watered
and putting forth leaves, though it never produced any
fruit."

Throughout his life he may be said to have very
slowly moved nearer and nearer to the Christian
faith, until at last he came so near that many of
those somewhat nondescript persons who call them
selves "liberal Christians" might claim him as
one of themselves. But if a belief in the divinity
of Christ is necessary to make a "Christian," it
does not appear that Franklin ever fully had the
qualification. When he was an old man, in 1790,
President Stiles of Yale College took the free
dom of interrogating him as to his religious faith.
It was the first time that any one had ever thus
ventured. His reply 1 is interesting : " As to
Jesus of Nazareth," he says, "I think his system
of morals and his religion, as he left them to us,
the best the world ever saw, or is like to see."
But he thinks they have been corrupted. " I
have, with most of the present dissenters in Eng
land, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is
a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never
studied it, and think it needless to busy myself
with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity
of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no
harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief
has the good consequences, as probably it has, of
i Works, x. 192.



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 29

making his doctrines more respected and more
observed; especially as I do not see that the
Supreme takes it amiss by distinguishing the un
believers in his government of the world with any
peculiar marks of his displeasure." His God was
substantially the God of Christianity; but con
cerning Christ he was generally reticent and non
committal.

Whatever were his own opinions, which un
doubtedly underwent some changes during his life,
as is the case with most of us, he never introduced
Christianity, as a faith, into any of his moral writ
ings. A broad human creature, with a marvelous
knowledge of mankind, with a tolerance as far-
reaching as his knowledge, with a kindly liking
for all men and women ; withal a prudent, shrewd,
cool-headed observer in affairs, he was content to
insist that goodness and wisdom were valuable, as
means, towards good repute and well-being, as
ends. He urges upon his nephew, about to start
in business as a goldsmith, "perfect honesty ; " and
the reason he gives for his emphasis is, that the
business is peculiarly liable to suspicion, and if a
man is "once detected in the smallest fraud . . .
at once he is ruined." The character of his argu
ment was always simple. He usually began with
some such axiom as the desirability of success in
one s enterprises, or of health, or of comfort, or
oi ease of mind, or a sufficiency of money; and
than he showed that some virtue, or collection of
virtues, would promote this result. He advocated



30 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

honesty upon the same principle upon which he
advocated that women should learn to keep ac
counts, or that one should hold one s self in the
background in the presentation of an enterprise
such as his public library; that is to say, his ad
vocacy of a cardinal virtue, of acquiring a piece
of knowledge, or of adopting a certain method
of procedure in business, ran upon the same line,
namely, the practical usefulness of the virtue, the
knowledge, or the method, for increasing the prob
ability of a practical success in worldly affairs.
Among the articles inculcating morality which he
used to put into his newspaper was a Socratic
Dialogue, " tending to prove that whatever might
be his parts and abilities, a vicious man could not
properly be called a man of sense."

He was forever at this business; it was his
nature to teach, to preach, to moralize. With
creeds he had no concern, but took it as his func
tion in life to instruct in what may be described
as useful morals, the gospel of good sense, the
excellence of common humanity. About the time
in his career which we have now reached this ten
dency of his had an interesting development in its
relationship to his own character. He "conceiv d
the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral
perfection." It is impossible to recite the details
of his scheme, but the narration constitutes one of
the most entertaining and characteristic parts of
the autobiography. Such a plan could not long
be confined in its operation to himself alone ; the



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 31

teacher must teach; accordingly he designed to
write a book, to be called "The Art of Virtue,"
a title with which he was greatly pleased, as in
dicating that the book was to show "the means
and manner of obtaining virtue " as contradistin
guished from the "mere exhortation to be good,
that does not instruct or indicate the means."
A receipt book for virtues! Practical instruc
tions for acquiring goodness ! Nothing could have
been more characteristic. One of his Busy-Body
papers, February 18, 1728, begins with the state
ment that: "It is said that the Persians, in their
ancient constitution, had public schools in which
virtue was taught as a liberal art, or science; "
and he goes on to laud the plan highly. Perhaps
this was the origin of the idea which subsequently
became such a favorite with him. It was his

" design to explain and enforce this doctrine : that
vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbid
den, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature
of man alone considered ; that it was therefore every
0*11 e s interest to be virtuous who wished to be happy
even in this world ; and I should . . . have endeavored
to convince young persons that no qualities were so
likely to make a poor man s fortune as those of probity
and integrity."

Long years afterward, in 1760, he wrote about
it to Lord Kames :

" Many people lead bad lives that would gladly lead
good ones, but do not know how to make the change. . . .
To expect people to be good, to be just, to be temperate,



32 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

etc., without showing them how they should become so
seems like the ineffectual charity mentioned by the
apostle, which consists in saying to the hungry, the cold,
and the naked, * Be ye fed, be ye warmed, be ye clothed,
without showing them how they should get food, fire, or
clothing. . . . To acquire those [virtues] that are want
ing, and secure what we acquire, as well as those we
have naturally, is the subject of an art. It is as pro
perly an art as painting, navigation, or architecture. If
a man would become a painter, navigator, or architect,
it is not enough that he is advised to be one, that he is
convinced by the arguments of his adviser that it would
be for his advantage to be one, and that he resolves to
be one ; but he must also be taught the principles of the
art, be shown all the methods of working, and how to
acquire the habit of using properly all the instruments.
. . . My Art of Virtue has also its instruments, and
teaches the manner of using them."

He was then full of zeal to give this instruction.
A year later he said: "You will not doubt my
being serious in the intention of finishing my Art
of Virtue. It is not a mere ideal work. I
planned it first in 1732. . . . The materials have
been growing ever since. The form only is now
to be given." He even says that "experiments"
had been made "with success; " one wonders how-
but he gives no explanation. Apparently Frank
lin never definitely abandoned this pet design ; one
catches glimpses of it as still alive in his mind,
until it seems to fade away in the dim obscurity
of extreme old age. He said of it that it was



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 33

only part of "a great and extensive project that
required the whole man to execute," and his coun
trymen never allowed Franklin such uninterrupted
possession of himself.

A matter more easy of accomplishment was the
drawing up a creed which he thought to contain
"the essentials of every known religion," and to
be "free of everything that might shock the pro
fessors of any religion." He intended that this
should serve as the basis of a sect, which should
practice his rules for self-improvement. It was at
first to consist of "young and single men only,"
and great caution was to be exercised in the admis
sion of members. The association was to be called
the "Society of the Free and Easy;" "free, as
being, by the general practice and habit of the
virtues, free from the dominion of vice ; and par
ticularly by the practice of industry and frugality
free from debt, which exposes a man to confine
ment and a species of slavery to his creditors." It
is hardly surprising to hear that this was one of
the very few failures of Franklin s life. In 1788
he professed himself "still of the opinion that it
was a practicable scheme." One hardly reads it
without a smile nowadays, but it was not so out of
keeping with the spirit and habits of those times.
It indicates at least Franklin s appreciation of the
power of fellowship, of association. No man knew
better than he what stimulus comes from the sense
of membership in a society, especially a secret
society. He had a great fondness for organizing



34 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

men into associations, and a singular aptitude for
creating, conducting, and perpetuating sucli bodies.
The Junto, a child of his active brain, became
a power in local public affairs, though organized
and conducted strictly as a "club of mutual im
provement." He formed it among his "ingenious
acquaintance" for the discussion of "queries on
any point of morals, politics, or natural philo
sophy." He found his model, without doubt, in
the "neighborhood benefit societies," established
by Cotton Mather, during Franklin s boyhood,
among the Boston churches, for mutual improve
ment among the members. 1 In time there came a
great pressure for an increase of the number of
members ; but Franklin astutely substituted a plan
whereby each member was to form a subordinate
club, similar to the original, but having no know
ledge of its connection with the Junto. Thus
sprang into being five or six more, "The Vine,
The Union, The Band," etc., "answering, in some
considerable degree, our views of influencing the
public opinion upon particular occasions." When
Franklin became interested in any matter, he had
but to introduce it before the Junto for discussion ;
straightway each member who belonged to any one
of the other societies brought it up in that society.
Thus through so many active-minded and dispu
tatious young men interest in the subject speedily
percolated through a community of no greater size
than Philadelphia. Franklin was the tap-root of

1 Parton s Life of Franklin, i. 47.



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 35

the whole growth, and sent his ideas circulating
throughout all the widespreading branches. He
tells us that in fact he often used this efficient
machinery to much advantage in carrying through
his public and quasi public measures. Thus he
anticipated more powerful mechanisms of the like
kind, such as the Jacobin Club ; and he him
self, under encouraging circumstances, might have
wielded an immense power as the creator and
occult, inspiring influence of some great political
society.

Besides his didactic newspaper, his almanac even
more didactic, the Junto, the subscription library,
the Society of the Free and Easy, his system of
religion and morals, and his scheme for acquiring
all the virtues, Franklin was engaged in many
other matters. He learned French, Italian, and
Spanish; and in so doing evolved some notions
which are now beginning to find their way into the
system of teaching languages in our schools and
colleges. In 1736 he was chosen clerk to the
General Assembly, and continued to be reflected
during the next fourteen years, until he was chosen
a member of the legislature itself. In 1737 he
was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia, an
office which he found "of great advantage, for,
tho the salary was small, it facilitated the corre
spondence that improv d my newspaper, increased
the number demanded, as well as the advertise
ments to be inserted, so that it came to afford me
a considerable income. My old competitor s news-



36 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

paper declined proportionally, and I was satisfied
without retaliating his refusal, while postmaster,
to permit my papers being carried by the riders."

Soon afterward he conferred a signal benefit on
his countrymen by inventing an "open stove for
the better warming of rooms, and at the same time
saving fuel," the Franklin stove, or, as he called
it, " the Pennsylvania fireplace." Mr. Parton
warmly describes it as the beginning of " the
American stove system, one of the wonders of the
industrial world." Franklin refused to take out
a patent for it, "from a principle which has ever
weighed with me on such occasions, viz. : That as
we enjoy great advantages from the inventions
of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to
serve others by any invention of ours; and this
we should do freely and generously." This lofty
sentiment, wherein the philanthropist got the
better of the man of business, overshot its mark;
an ironmonger of London, who did not combine
philosophy and philanthropy with his trade, made
"some small changes in the machine, which rather
hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and
made a little fortune by it."

A little later Franklin founded a philosophical
society, not intended to devote its energies to
abstractions, but rather to a study of nature, and
the spread of new discoveries and useful know
ledge in practical affairs, especially in the way of
farming and agriculture. Franklin always had a
fancy for agriculture, and conferred roany a boon



A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA 37

upon the tillers of the soil. A good story, which
may be true, tells how he showed the fertilizing
capacity of plaster of Paris. In a field by the
roadside he wrote, with plaster, THIS HAS BEEN
PLASTERED; and soon the brilliant green of the
letters carried the lesson to every passer-by.

In 1743 Franklin broached the idea of an acad
emy ; but the time had not quite come when the
purse-strings of well-to-do Pemisylvanians could
be loosened for this purpose, and he had no suc
cess. It was, however, a project about which he
was much in earnest, and a few years later he
returned to it with better auspices. He succeeded
in getting it under weigh by means of private sub
scriptions. It soon vindicated its usefulness, drew
funds and endowments from various sources, and
became the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin
tells an amusing story about his subsequent con
nection with it. Inasmuch as persons of several
religious sects had contributed to the fund, it was
arranged that the board of trustees should consist

O

of one member from each sect. After a while the
Moravian died; and his colleagues, having found
him obnoxious to them, resolved not to have
another of the same creed. Yet it was difficult
to find any one who did not belong to, and there
fore unduly strengthen, some sect already repre