In Samuel Johnson's retrospective view, the Yale of 1710 at Saybrook was anything but progressive with its "scholastic cobwebs of a few little English and Dutch systems."[i-39]The year of Johnson's graduation (1714), however, Mr. Dummer, Yale's agent in London, collected seven hundred volumes, including works of Norris, Barrow, Tillotson, Boyle, Halley, and the second edition (1713) of thePrincipiaand a copy of theOptics, presented by Newton himself. After the schism of 1715/6 the collection was moved to New Haven, at the time of Johnson's election to a tutorship. It was then, writes Johnson, that the trustees "introduced the study of Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton as fast as they could and in order to this the study of mathematics. The Ptolemaic system was hitherto as much believed as the Scriptures, but they soon cleared up and established the Copernican by the help of Whiston's Lectures, Derham, etc."[i-40]Johnson studied Euclid, algebra, and conic sections "so as to read Sir Isaac with understanding." He gloomily reviews the "infidelity and apostasy" resulting from the study of the ideas of Locke, Tindal, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and Collins. That Newtonianism and even deism made progress at Yale is the tenor of Johnson's backward glance. About 1716 Samuel Clarke's edition of Rohault was introduced at Yale: Clarke's Rohault[i-41]was an attack upon thisstandard summary of Cartesianism. Ezra Stiles was not certain that Clarke was honest in heaping up notes "not so much to illustrate Rohault as to make him the Vehicle of conveying the peculiarities of the sublimer Newtonian Philosophy."[i-42]This work was used until 1743 when 'sGravesande'sNatural Philosophywas wisely substituted. Rector Thomas Clap used Wollaston'sReligion of Nature Delineatedas a favorite text. That there was no dearth of advanced natural science and philosophy, even suggestive of deism, is fairly evident.
Measured by the growth of interest in science in the English universities, Harvard's awareness of new discoveries was not especially backward in the seventeenth century. Since Copernicanism at the close of the sixteenth century had few adherents,[i-43]it is almost startling to learn that probably by 1659 the Copernican system was openly avowed at Harvard.[i-44]In 1786 Nathaniel Mather wrote from Dublin: "I perceive the Cartesian philosophy begins to obteyn in New England, and if I conjecture aright the Copernican system too."[i-45]John Barnard, who was graduated from Harvard in 1710, has written that no algebra was then taught, and wistfully suggests that he had been born too soon, since "now" students "have the great Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Halley and some other mathematicians for their guides."[i-46]Although Thomas Robie and Nathan Prince are thought to have known Newton's physics through secondary sources,[i-47]and, as Harvard tutors, indoctrinated their charges with Newtonianism, it was left to Isaac Greenwood[i-48]to transplantfrom London the popular expositions of Newtonian philosophy. A Harvard graduate in 1721, Greenwood continued his theological studies in London where he attended Desaguliers's lectures on experimental philosophy, based essentially on Newtonianism. From Desaguliers Greenwood learned how
By Newton's help, 'tis evidently seenAttraction governs all the World's machine.[i-49]
By Newton's help, 'tis evidently seenAttraction governs all the World's machine.[i-49]
He learned that Scripture is "to teach us Morality, and our Articles of Faith" but not to serve as an instructor in natural philosophy.[i-50]In fine, Greenwood became devoted to science, and science as it might serve to augment avenues to the religious experience. In London he had come to know Hollis, who in 1727 suggested to Harvard authorities that Greenwood be elected Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural and Experimental Philosophy.[i-51]Greenwood accepted, and until 1737 was at Harvard a propagandist of the new science. In 1727 he advertised in theBoston News-Letter[i-52]that he would give scientific lectures, revolving primarily around "the Discoveries of the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton." From 1727 through 1734 he was a prominent popularizer of Newtonianism in Boston.[i-53]
It remained for Greenwood's pupil John Winthrop to be the first to teach Newton at Harvard with adequate mechanical and textual materials. Elected in 1738 to the Hollis professorship formerly held by Greenwood, Winthrop adopted 'sGravesande'sNatural Philosophy, at which time, Cajori observes, "the teachingsof Newton had at last secured a firm footing there."[i-54]The year after his election he secured a copy of thePrincipia(the third edition, 1726, edited by Dr. Henry Pemberton, friend of Franklin in 1725-1726). According to the astute Ezra Stiles, Winthrop became a "perfect master of Newton's Principia—which cannot be said of many Professors of Philosophy in Europe."[i-55]That he did not allow Newtonianism to draw him to deism may be seen in Stiles's gratification that Winthrop "was a Firm friend to Revelation in opposition to Deism." Stiles "wish[es] the evangelical Doctors of Grace had made a greater figure in his Ideal System of divinity," thus inferring that Winthrop was a rationalist in theology, however orthodox.[i-56]
A cursory view of the eighteenth-century pulpit discloses that if the clergy did not become deistic they were not blind to a natural religion, and often employed its arguments to augment scriptural authority. Aware of the writings of Samuel Clarke, Wollaston, Whiston, Cudworth, Butler, Hutcheson,[i-57]Voltaire, and Locke, Mayhew revolts against total depravity[i-58]and the doctrines of election and the Trinity, arraigns himself against authoritarianism and obscurantism, and though he draws upon reason for revelation of God's will, he does not seem to have been latitudinarian in respect to the holy oracles. Although he often wrote ambiguously concerning the nature of Christ, he asserted: "That I ever denied, or treated in a bold or ludicrous manner, the divinity of the Son of God, as revealed in scripture,I absolutely deny."[i-59]He is antagonistic toward the mystical in Calvinism, convinced that "The love of God is a calm and rational thing, the result of thought and consideration."[i-60]His biographer thinks that Mayhew was "the first clergyman in New England who expressly and openly opposed the scholastic doctrine of the trinity."[i-61]Coupling "natural and revealed religion," he does not threaten but he urges that one "ought not to leave the clear light of revelation.... It becomes us to adhere to the holy Scriptures as our only rule of faith and practice, discipline and worship."[i-62]In Mayhew one finds an impotent compromise between Calvinism and the demands of reason, fostered by the Enlightenment. Like Mayhew's, in the main, are the views of Dr. Charles Chauncy, who reconciled the demands of reason and revelation, concluding that "the voice of reason is the voice of God."[i-63]Jason Haven and Jonas Clarke are typical of the orthodox rationalists who were alive to the implications of science, and to such rationalists as Tillotson and Locke. Haven affirms that "by the light of reason and nature, we are led to believe in, and adore God, not only as the maker, but also as the governor of all things."[i-64]"Revelation comes in to the assistance of reason, and shews them to us in a clearer light than we could see them without its aid." Clarke observes that "the light of nature teaches, which revelation confirms."[i-65]Rev. Henry Cumings, illustrating his indebtedness to scientific rationalism, honors "the gracious Parent of the universe, whosetender mercies are over all his works ...,"[i-66]a Deity "whose providence governs the world; whose voice all nature obeys; to whose controul all second causes and subordinate agents are subject; and whose sole prerogative it is to dispense blessings or calamities, as to his wisdom seems best."[i-67]Simeon Howard discovers the "perfections of the Deity, as displayed in the Creation" as well as in the "government and redemption of the world."[i-68]Both Phillips Payson[i-69]and Andrew Eliot[i-70]affirm the identity of "the voice of reason, and the voice of God."
No clergyman of the eighteenth century was more terribly conscious of the polarity of colonial thought than was Ezra Stiles. Abiel Holmes has told the graphic story of Stiles's struggles with deism after reading Pope, Whiston, Boyle, Trenchard and Gordon, Butler, Tindal, Collins, Bolingbroke, and Shaftesbury.[i-71]If he finally, as a result of his trembling and fearful doubt, reaffirmed zealously his faith in the bibliolatry and relentless dogma of Calvinism,[i-72]Newtonian rationalism was a means to his recovery, and throughout his life a complement to his Calvinism.[i-73]Turning from his well-worn Bible, the chief source of his faith, he also kindled his "devotion at the stars." It should be remembered, however, that this tendency among Puritan clergy to call science to the support of theology had been inaugurated by Cotton Mather as early as 1693,[i-74]and that it was the Puritan Mather whom Franklin acknowledged as having started him on his career and influenced him, by hisEssays to do Good, throughout life.
Only against this complex and as yet inadequately integrated background of physical conditions and ideas (the dogmas of Puritanism, Quakerism, Methodism, rationalism, scientific deism, economic and political liberalism[i-75]—against a cosmic, social, and individual attitude, the result of Old-World thought impinging on colonial thought and environment) can one attempt to appraise adequately the mind and achievements of Franklin, whose life was coterminous with the decay of Puritan theocracy and the rise of rationalism, democracy, and science.
Franklin's penchant for projects manifests itself nowhere more fully than in his schemes of education, both self and formal. One may deduce a pattern of educational principles not undeservedly called Franklin'stheoriesof education, theories which he successfully institutionalized, from an examination of his Junto ("the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province"[i-76]), his Philadelphia Library Company (his "first project of a public nature"[i-77]), hisProposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America, calling for a scientific society of ingenious men or virtuosi, hisProposals Relating to the Education of Youth in PensilvaniaandIdea of the English School, which eventually fathered the University of Pennsylvania, and from his fragmentary notes in his correspondence.
Variously apotheosized, patronized, or damned for his practicality, expediency, and opportunism, dramatized for his allegiance to materiality, Franklin has commonly been viewed (and not only through the popular imagination) as one fostering in the American mind an unimaginative, utilitarian prudence, motivated by the pedestrian virtues of industry, frugality, and thrift. Whatever the educational effect of Franklin's life and writings on American readers, we shall find that his works contain schemes and theories whichtranscendthe more mundane habits and utilitarian biases ascribed to him.
Franklin progressively felt "the loss of the learned education" his father had planned for him, as he realized in his hunger for knowledge that he must repair the loss through assiduous reading, accomplished during hours stolen from recreation and sleep.[i-78]Proudly he confessed that reading was his "only amusement."[i-79]In 1727 he formed the Junto, or Leather Apron Club, his first educational project. Franklin was never more eclectic than when founding the Junto. To prevent Boston homes from becoming "the porches of hell,"[i-80]Cotton Mather had created mutual improvement societies through which neighbors would help one another "with a rapturous assiduity."[i-81]Mather in hisEssays to do Goodproposed:
That a proper number of persons in a neighborhood, whose hearts God hath touched with a zeal to do good, should form themselves into a society, to meet when and where they shall agree, and to consider—"what are the disorders that we may observe rising among us; and what may be done, either by ourselves immediately, or by others through our advice, to suppress those disorders?"[i-82]
That a proper number of persons in a neighborhood, whose hearts God hath touched with a zeal to do good, should form themselves into a society, to meet when and where they shall agree, and to consider—"what are the disorders that we may observe rising among us; and what may be done, either by ourselves immediately, or by others through our advice, to suppress those disorders?"[i-82]
Since Franklin's father was a member of one of Mather's "Associated Families" and since Franklin as a boy read Mather'sEssayswith rapt attention,[i-83]and since hisRules for a Club Established for Mutual Improvementare amazingly congruent with Mather's rules proposed for his neighborly societies, it is not improbable that Franklin in part copied the plans of this older club. One also wonders whether Franklin remembered Defoe's suggestions inEssays upon Several Projects(1697) for the formation of "Friendly Societies" in which members covenanted to aid one another.[i-84]In addition, M. Faÿ has observed that the "ideal which this society [the Junto] adopted was the same that Franklin had discovered in the Masonic lodges of England."[i-85]Then, too, in London during the period of Desaguliers, Sir Hans Sloane, and Sir Isaac Newton, he would have heard much of the ideals and utility of the Royal Society. Many of the questions discussed by the Junto are suggestive of the calendar of the Royal Society:
Is sound an entity or body?How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?What is the reason that the tides rise higher in the Bay of Fundy, than the Bay of Delaware?
Is sound an entity or body?
How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?
What is the reason that the tides rise higher in the Bay of Fundy, than the Bay of Delaware?
How may smoky chimneys be best cured?Why does the flame of a candle tend upwards in a spire?[i-86]
How may smoky chimneys be best cured?
Why does the flame of a candle tend upwards in a spire?[i-86]
The Junto members, like Renaissance gentlemen, were determined to convince themselves that nothing valuable to the several powers of life should be alien to them. They were urged to communicate to one another anything significant "in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge."[i-87]Surely a humanistic catholicity of interest! Schemes for getting on materially, suggestions for improving the laws and protecting the "just liberties of the people,"[i-88]efforts to aid the strangers in Philadelphia (an embryonic association of commerce), curiosity in the latest remedies used for the sick and wounded: all were to engage the minds of this assiduously curious club. Above all, the members must be "serviceable tomankind, to their country, to their friends, or to themselves."[i-89]The intensity of the Junto's utilitarian purpose was matched only by its humanitarian bias. Members must swear that they "love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever,"[i-90]and that they believe no man should be persecuted "for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship." Also they must profess to "love truth for truth's sake," to search diligently for it and to communicate it to others. Tolerance, the empirical method, scientific disinterestedness, and humanitarianism had hardly gained a foothold in the colonies in 1728. On the other hand, the Junto members were urged, when throwing a kiss to the world, not to neglect their individual ethical development.[i-91]Franklin's humanitarianneighborliness is associated with a rigorous ethicism. The members were invited to report "unhappy effects of intemperance," of "imprudence, of passion, or of any other vice or folly," and also "happy effects of temperance, of prudence, of moderation." Franklin reflects sturdily here, and boundlessly elsewhere, the Greek and English emphasis on the Middle Way. If this is prudential, it is an elevated prudence.
The Philadelphia Library Company was born of the Junto and became "the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous."[i-92]The colonists, "having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries."[i-93]It is curious that although many articles have been written describing the Library Company no one seems to include a study of the climate of ideas represented in its volumes.[i-94]One must be careful not to credit Franklin with solely presiding over the ordering of books. At a meeting in 1732 of the company, Thomas Godfrey, probable inventor of the quadrant and he who learned Latin to read thePrincipia, notified the body that "Mr. Logan had let him know he would willingly give his advice of the choice of the books ... the Committee esteemingMr. Logan to be a Gentleman of universal learning, and the best judge of books in these parts, ordered that Mr. Godfrey should wait on him and request him to favour them with a catalogue of suitable books."[i-95]The first order included: Puffendorf'sIntroductionandLaws of Nature, Hayes upon Fluxions, Keill'sAstronomical Lectures, Sidney on Government, Gordon and Trenchard'sCato's Letters, theSpectator,Guardian,Tatler, L'Hospital'sConic Sections, Addison's works, Xenophon'sMemorabilia, Palladio, Evelyn, Abridgement of Philosophical Transactions, 'sGravesande'sNatural Philosophy, Homer'sOdysseyandIliad, Bayle'sCritical Dictionary, and Dryden'sVirgil. As a gift Peter Collinson included Newton'sPrincipiain the order. The ancient phalanxes were thoroughly routed! Then there is the MS "List of Books of the Original Philadelphia Library in Franklin's Handwriting"[i-96]which lends recruits to the modern battalions. Included in this list are: Fontenelle on Oracles, Woodward'sNatural History of FossilsandNatural History of the Earth, Keill'sExamination of Burnet's Theory of the Earth,Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Surgery at Paris, William Petty'sEssays, Voltaire'sElements of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, Halley'sAstronomical Tables, Hill'sReview of the Works of the Royal Society, Montesquieu'sSpirit of Laws, Burlamaqui'sPrinciples of Natural LawandPrinciples of Politic Law, Bolingbroke'sLetters on the Study and Use of History, and Conyer Middleton'sMiscellaneous Works. From the volumes owned by the Library Company in 1757 it would have been possible for an alert mind to discover all of the implications, philosophic and religious, of the rationale of science. No less could be found here the political speculations which were later to aid the colonists in unyoking themselves from England. The Library was an arsenal capable of supplyingweapons to rationalistic minds intent on besieging the fortress of Calvinism. Defenders of natural rights could find ammunition to wound monarchism; here authors could discover the neoclassic ideals ofcuriosa felicitas, perspicuity, order, and lucidity reinforced by the emphasis on clarity and correctness sponsored by the Royal Society and inherent in Newtonianism as well as Cartesianism. In short, the volumes contained the ripest fruition of scientific and rationalistic modernity. One can only conjecture the extent to which this library would perplex, astonish, and finally convert men to rationalism and scientific deism, and release them from bondage to throne and altar.
In 1743 Franklin wrote and distributed among his correspondentsA Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America. From a letter (Feb. 17, 1735/6) of William Douglass, one-time friend of Franklin's brother James, to Cadwallader Colden, we learn that some years before 1736, Colden "proposed the forming a sort of Virtuoso Society or rather Correspondence."[i-97]I. W. Riley suggests that Franklin owes Colden thanks for having stimulated him to form the American Philosophical Society.[i-98]There remains no convincing evidence, however, to disprove A. H. Smyth's observation that Franklin'sProposal"appears to contain the first suggestions, in anypublic form[editors' italics] for an American Philosophical Society." P. S. Du Ponceau has noted with compelling evidence that the philosophical society formed in 1744 was the direct descendant of Franklin's Junto.[i-99]That in part the Philadelphia Library Company was one of the factors inthe formation of the scientific society may be inferred from Franklin's request that it be founded in Philadelphia, which, "having the advantages of a good growing library," can "be the centre of the Society."[i-100]The most important factor, however, was obviously the desire to imitate the forms and ideals of the Royal Society of London. Both societies had as their purpose the improvement of "the common stock of knowledge"; neither was to be provincial or national in interests, but was to have in mind the "benefit of mankind in general." A study of Franklin'sProposalwill suggest the purpose of the Royal Society as interpreted by Thomas Sprat:
Their purpose is, in short, to make faithful Records, of all the Works of Nature, or Art, which can come within their reach: that so the present Age, and posterity, may be able to put a mark on the Errors, which have been strengthened by long prescription: to restore the Truths, that have lain neglected: to push on those, which are already known, to more various uses: and to make the way more passable, to what remains unreveal'd.[i-101]
Their purpose is, in short, to make faithful Records, of all the Works of Nature, or Art, which can come within their reach: that so the present Age, and posterity, may be able to put a mark on the Errors, which have been strengthened by long prescription: to restore the Truths, that have lain neglected: to push on those, which are already known, to more various uses: and to make the way more passable, to what remains unreveal'd.[i-101]
The Royal Society, no less than Franklin'sProposal, stressed the usefulness of its experimentation. Even as it sought "to overcome the mysteries of all the Works of Nature"[i-102]through experimentation and induction, the Baconian empirical method, so Franklin urged the cultivation of "all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life."[i-103]Though Franklin may have stopped short of theoretical science,[i-104]he was not only interested in makingdevices but also in discovering immutable natural laws on which he could base his mechanics for making the world more habitable, less unknown and terrifying. Interpreting natural phenomena in terms of gravity and the laws of electrical attraction and repulsion is to detract from the terror in a universe presided over by a providential Deity, exerting his wrath through portentous comets, "fire-balls flung by an angry God."
Franklin's program is no more miscellaneous, or seemingly pedestrian, than the practices of the Royal Society. As a discoverer of nature's laws and their application to man's use, Franklin, the Newton of electricity, appealed to fact and experiment rather than authority and suggested that education in science may serve, in addition to making the world more comfortable, to make it more habitable and less terrifying. The ideals of scientific research and disinterestedness were dramatized picturesquely by the Tradesman Franklin, who aided the colonist in becoming unafraid.
Although hisProposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania(1749) furnished the initial suggestion which created the Philadelphia Academy, later the college, and ultimately the University of Pennsylvania, it is easy to overestimate the real significance of Franklin's influence in these schemes unless we remember that political quarrels separated him from those who were nurturing the school in the 1750's. In 1759 Franklin wrote from London to his friend, Professor Kinnersley, concerning the cabal in the Academy against him: "The Trustees have reap'd the full Advantage of my Head, Hands, Heart and Purse, in getting through the first Difficulties of the Design, and when they thought they could do withoutme, they laid me aside."[i-105]After Franklin failed to secure Samuel Johnson,[i-106]Rev. William Smith was made Provost and Professor of Natural Philosophy of the Academy in 1754. He quoted Franklin as saying that the Academy had become "a narrow, bigoted institution, put into the hands of the Proprietary party as an engine of government."[i-107]
With Milton, Locke, Fordyce, Walker, Rollin, Turnbull, and "some others" as his sources, Franklin adapted the works of these pioneers in education to provincial uses. (One finds it difficult to discover any original ideas in theProposals.) Like Locke and Milton, he urged that education "supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."[i-108]Here he was unlike President Clap, who in 1754 explained that "the Original End and design of Colleges was to instruct and train up persons for the Work of the ministry.... The great design of founding this school [Yale] was to educate ministers in our own way."[i-109]As early as 1722, inDogood PaperNo. IV, Franklin caricatured sardonically the narrow theological curriculum of Harvard College.[i-110]Existing for the citizenry rather than the clergy, offering instruction in English as well as Latin and Greek, in mechanics, physical culture, natural history, gardening, mathematics, and arithmetic rather than in sectarian theology, Franklin's Academy was to be more secular and utilitarian than any other school in the provinces. Indeed, Rev. George Whitefield lamented the want of "aliquid Christi" in the curriculum, "to make it as useful as I would desire it might be."
Franklin stressed the need for the acquisition of a clear and concise literary style. He observed: "Reading should also betaught, and pronouncing, properly, distinctly, emphatically; not with an even Tone, whichunder-does, nor a theatrical, whichover-doesNature." Hence he reflected the virtues of neoclassic perspicuity and correctness. (These plans he more fully expressed in hisIdea of the English School, published in 1751.) As he grew older he apparently became less tolerant of the teaching of the ancient languages in colonial schools: inObservations Relative to the Intentions of the Original Founders of the Academy of Philadelphia(1789), he charged that the Latin school had swallowed the English and that he was hence "surrounded by the Ghosts of my dear departed Friends, beckoning and urging me to use the only Tongue now left us, in demanding that Justice to our Grandchildren, that our Children has [sic] been denied."[i-111]The Latin and Greek languages he considered "in no other light than as theChapeau brasof modern Literature."[i-112]Like Emerson's, his opposition was to linguistic study rather than to the classical ideas.
Although he emphasized the study of science and mechanics, it is important to observe that he kept his balance. He warned Miss Mary Stevenson in 1760: "There is ... a prudent Moderation to be used in Studies of this kind. The Knowledge of Nature may be ornamental, and it may be useful; but if, to attain an Eminence in that, we neglect the Knowledge and Practice of essential Duties, we deserve Reprehension."[i-113]Not without reserve did he champion the Moderns; remembering several provocative scientific observations in Pliny, he wrote to William Brownrigg (Nov. 7, 1773): "It has been of late too much the mode to slight the learning of the ancients."[i-114]He would not agree with the enthusiastic and trenchant disciple of themoderns, M. Fontenelle, that "We are under an obligation to the ancients for having exhausted almost all the false theories that could be found."[i-115]Although he would agree that the empirical method of acquiring knowledge is more reasonable than authoritarianism reared on syllogistic foundations, and with Cowley that
Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity ["Authority"],[i-116]
he was not blithely confident that science and the knowledge gained from experimentation would create a more rigorously moral race. He wrote to Priestley in 1782: "I should rejoice much, if I could once more recover the Leisure to search with you into the Works of Nature; I mean theinanimate, not theanimateor moral part of them, the more I discover'd of the former, the more I admir'd them; the more I know of the latter, the more I am disgusted with them."[i-117]He often suggested, "As Men grow more enlightened," but seldom did this clause carry more than an intellectual connotation. Progress in knowledge[i-118]did not on the whole suggest to Franklin progress in morals or the general progress of mankind.
Essentially classical in morality, extolling a temperance like that of Xenophon, Epictetus, Cicero, Socrates, and Aristotle, Franklin could not cheerily champion the moderns without serious reservations. Considering only progress in knowledge, man may be considered aspedetentim progredientes, but, Franklin thought, man seemed to have found it easier to conquer lightning than himself. If science and other contemporaneous knowledge detracted from cosmic terror, it did not solve the problem of the mystery of evil and sin: like Shakespeare, Franklin was perplexed by the inexplicability and ruthlessness of Man's potential and actual malevolence.[i-119]Thus in stressingutility and vocational adaptiveness, Franklin did not forget to stress the need for development of character, man's internal self, and here he did not find the ancients dispensable.[i-120]If unlike Socrates in his studies of physical nature, he was like the Athenian gadfly in his quest for moral perfection in the teeth of "perpetual temptation," in his strenuous and sober effort to know himself. Too little attention has been paid Franklin's Hellenic sobriety—even as it has had too meagre an influence. Let Molière challenge, "The ancients are the ancients, we are the people of today"; Franklin, although confident that he could learn more of physical nature from Newton than from Aristotle, was not convinced that the wisdom of Epictetus or the Golden Verses of Pythagoras were less salutary than the wit of his own age. A modern in his confidence in the progress of knowledge, Franklin, approaching the problem of morality, wisely saw the ancients and moderns as complementary. Aware of the continuity of the mind and race, he was not willing to dismiss the ancients as fit to be imitated. Yet he failed to discover in the welter of egoistic men any continuous moral progress, although, unlike the determinists, he thought that the individual could improve himself through self-knowledge and self-control. Unlike contemporary exponents of the "original genius" cult who scorned industrious rational study and conformity, Franklin as an educational theorist was the exponent of reason and of conscious intellectual industry and thrift; he would mediate between the study of nature and of man, and, like Aristotle, he would rely not so much upon individualistic self-expression as upon a purposefulimitationof those men in the past who had led useful and happy lives.
Uniting the "wit of Voltaire with the simplicity of Rousseau," Franklin achieved a style "only surpassed by the unimprovable Hobbes of Malmesbury, the paragon of perspicuity." Characterized by simplicity, order, and a trenchant pointedness, his prose style was "a principal means" of his "advancement."[i-122]
He was "extreamly ambitious ... to be a tolerable English writer." In theAutobiographyhe recalls that he read books in "polemic divinity," Plutarch'sLives(probably Dryden's translation),Pilgrims Progress, Defoe'sEssays upon Several Projects, Mather'sEssays to do Good, Xenophon'sMemorabilia,[i-123]theSpectatorpapers, and the writings of Shaftesbury and Collins.
Born in Boston, he knew the Bible,[i-124]characterized bythe apostle of Augustan correctness, Jonathan Swift, as possessing "that simplicity, which is one of the greatest perfections in any language." If Franklin did not achieve its "sublime eloquence," he approximated at intervals its directness and simplicity. In reading Defoe'sEssayshe learned that Queen Anne's England urged that writers be "as concise as possible" and avoid all "superfluous crowding in of insignificant words, more than are needful to express the thing intended." (It is possible that Defoe's efforts "to polish and refine the English tongue," to avoid "all irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced," influenced Franklin in favor of "correctness" and against provincialisms.) Defoe's "explicit, easy, free, and very plain" rhetoric is Franklin's.
After Franklin's father warned him that his arguments were not well-ordered and trenchantly expressed, he desperately sought to acquire a convincing prose style. In 1717 James, Franklin's elder brother, returned from serving a printer's apprenticeship in London. James had known and been attracted to Augustan England, the England of theTatler,Spectator, andGuardian. Familiar is Franklin's narrative of how he patterned his fledgling style on the pages of theSpectatorpapers, and learned to satisfy his father—and himself. Like the neoclassicists, Franklin learned to write by imitation, by respectfully subordinating himself to those he recognized as masters, and not, like the romanticists, by expressing his own ego in revolt against convention and conformity to traditional standards. The group who supplied copy for James'sNew England Courant, we are told, were trying to write like theSpectator. "The very look of an ordinary first page of theCourantis like that of theSpectatorpage."[i-125]In theDogood Papers(1722) and theBusy-Bodyseries (1728) Franklin's writings show a literal indebtedness to the style and even substance of theSpectator.[i-126]If, after theBusy-Bodyessays, Franklin's writings bear little resemblance to the elegance and glow of theSpectator, he did learn from it a long-remembered lesson in orderliness. From theSpectatorhe may have learned to temper wit with morality and morality with wit; he may have learned the neoclassic objection to the "unhappy Force of an Imagination, unguided by the Check of Reason and Judgment";[i-127]he may have acquired his distrust of foreign phrases when English ones were as good, or better, insisting on the use of native English undefiled. It is interesting but perhaps futile to conjecture to what degree Franklin at this time, on readingSpectatorNo. 160, "On Geniuses" (warning against a servile imitation of ancient authors, a warning which anticipates the cult of original geniuses of later decades), would have been predisposed against ancient literature and languages. If theSpectatorwas partially responsible for his pleasantries at the expense of Greek inDogood PaperNo. IV, his attitude toward the ancients is more ostensibly the result of his later preoccupation with the sciences,[i-128]and of contact with representatives of the deistic time-spirit whose faith in progress led them to underrate the past.
When Franklin went to live in London in 1724-1726, and became familiar with such men of science as Dr. Henry Pemberton and others, he must have become aware of ideals of prose style not a little unlike those practised by the preachers of his Boston. In Boston he had heard (and in the polemical works in his father's library, read) sermons couched in a style satirized inHudibrasas a "Babylonish dialect ... of patched and piebald languages" (ll. 93 ff.). Sensing the disparity between the seventeenth-centuryprose styles and the empirical, logical, and orderly method of science, the Royal Society not long after its inception inaugurated a campaign for a clarity akin to the pattern urged by Hobbes: "The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words,Reasonis the Pace, Encrease ofSciencetheway; and the benefit of man-kind theend. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are likeignes fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering among innumerable absurdities."[i-129]Summarizing the intent of the stylistic reformations instituted by the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat urged writers "to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words ... a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars."[i-130]It is asserted that the program of the Royal Society "called for stylistic reform as loudly as for reformation in philosophy. Moreover, this attitude was in the public mind indissolubly associated with the Society."[i-131]It is only reasonable to infer that Franklin (as a member of the Royal Society and as founder of the American Philosophical Society) was alive to the movement toward "undefiledplainness" which had for half a century been gathering momentum.[i-132]
Even as Cartesianism[i-133]in France is said to have fostered logic and lucidity of detail, and that which is universally valid and recognized by all men, and that art which is aloof to the non-human world, so in England may Newtonianism (which overthrew Cartesianism) have conditioned writers to develop a uniform style, purged of tenuous rhetorical devices. An age characterized by a worship of reason, which was supposed to be identical in all men, an age deferring to the general mind of man, would be hostile to the rhetorical caprices of those expressing their private, idiosyncratic enthusiasms. If the neoclassic apotheosis of simplicity and freedom from intricacy was the result of a "rationalistic anti-intellectualism,"[i-134]expressed in terms of hostility to belabored proof of ideas known to the general will, then it would seem that one of the factors sturdily conditioning this hostility was Newtonian science. Admitting thatreasonleads to uniformitarianism, one may recall that the processes of science are discoverable by reason, and that such a cosmologist as Newton illustrated mathematically and empirically a system, grand in its lucidity, and capable of being apprehended by all through reason. If the deistic fear of "enthusiasm" in religion—the individual will prevailing against theconsensus gentium—parallels, according to Professor Lovejoy, the neoclassic fear of feeling and the unrestrained play of imagination in art, then Newtonian science, as it reinforced deism, was no negligible factor in discrediting enthusiasm, and hence indirectly militating against originality, emotion, and the unchecked imagination. Is it not conceivable that the Newtonian[i-135]cosmology, popularizedby a vast discipleship, challenged the scientists and men of letters alike to achieve a corresponding order, clarity, and simplicity in poetry and prose?
After Franklin's return from London, he reinforced his Addison-like style with the rhetorical implications of science and Newtonianism: in hisPreface(1729) to thePennsylvania Gazettehe observed that an editor ought to possess a "great Easiness and Command of Writing and Relating Things clearly and intelligibly, and in few Words."[i-136]Good writing, in Franklin's opinion, "should proceed regularly from things known to things unknown [surely the method of all inductive reasoning and science] distinctly and clearly without confusion. The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood. Nothing should be expressed in two words that can be as well expressed in one; that is, no synonyms should be used, or very rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness; the words should be so placed as to be agreeable to the ear in reading; summarily it should be smooth, clear, and short, for the contrary qualities are displeasing."[i-137]Like the members of the Royal Society, Franklin would bring the words of written discourse "as near as possible to the spoken."[i-138]In 1753 he observed: "If my Hypothesis [concerning waterspouts] is not the Truth itself it is [at] least as naked: For I have not with some of our learned Moderns, disguis'd my Nonsense in Greek, cloth'd it in Algebra or adorn'd it with Fluxions. You have it in puris naturalibus."[i-139]He briefly summarized his rhetorical ideal, in a letter to Hume: "In writings intended for persuasionand for general information, one cannot be too clear; and every expression in the least obscure is a fault."[i-140]
Unlike Jefferson, "no friend to what is calledpurism, but a zealous one" to neology, Franklin had an inveterate antipathy toward the use of colloquialisms, provincialisms, and extravagant innovations.[i-141]In another letter to Hume, he hoped that "we shall always in America make the best English of this Island [Britain] our standard."[i-142]If he did not hold the typical eighteenth-century view that "English must be subjected to a process of classical regularizing,"[i-143]neither did he, with his friend Joseph Priestley, espouse the idea of correctness, dependent only on usage. In general, he seems to have had a tendency toward purism; it is not unlikely that as a youth he was influenced by Swift'sProposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue.[i-144]Striving for correctness, andthe avoidance of "affected Words or high-flown Phrases"[i-145]he approximated thecuriosa felicitasof the neoclassicists.[i-146]
A solid neoclassicist[i-147]in style. Franklin accepted the canon of imitation as it was imperfectly understood in the eighteenth century. To the extent, however, that the models were conceived of as approximating theconsensus gentium, fragments illustrating universal reason, there may be little disparity between neoclassic imitation and Aristotle's use of the term in the sense of imitating a higher ethical reality. His own life, Franklin thought, (with the exception of a few "errata") was "fit to be imitated."[i-148]A. H. Smyth notes, perhaps extravagantly, "Nothing but the 'Autobiography' of Benvenuto Cellini, or the 'Confessions' of Rousseau, can enter into competition with it."[i-149]This may suggest a clue to the durable nature of Franklin's life-tale. Cellini, it is true, was tremendously alive to Benvenuto, even as Michel de Montaigne was interested in his own whims, but neither Cellini, nor Montaigne, nor Franklin, could have penned theConfessions, the thesis of which is that if Rousseau is not better than other men at least he is different. Cellini, Montaigne, and Franklin, on the other hand, while allowing us to see their fancies and singular biases, tended to emphasizethose qualities which they held in common with their age, nation, and even the continuity of mankind. Montaigne, it will be remembered, sought to expressla connaissance de l'homme en général. With no aspirations to become an original genius, Franklin, both in his prose style and his yearning for perfection, sought the guidance of models, which he conceived as embodying universal reason. Had he been a writer of epics[i-150]he would with Pope have acquired "from ancient rules a just esteem"—when the rules were, in his mind, "according to nature."
Likewise Franklin is representative of the Enlightenment in his description of the province of the imagination. It is an axiom that "the belief that the imagination ought to be kept in check by reason, pervades the critical literature of the first half of the eighteenth century."[i-151]Franklin observes that poetasters above all need instruction on how to govern "Fancy [Imagination] with Judgement."[i-152]He implies that imagination is a power lending an air of unreality to a creation, often like "the Effect of some melancholy Humour."[i-153]He feared that the unchecked fancy would vitiate his ideals of simplicity and correctness, and a sober and practical argument.
Posing as no original genius independent of the wisdom of the ages,[i-154]confessing that "from a child" he "was fond of reading" and that as a youth "reading was the only amusement" he allowed himself, Franklin was not backward in cataloguing many of the authors who helped to motivate his thought. He seems to have been acquainted with portions of Plato, Aesop, Pliny, Xenophon, Herodotus, Epictetus, Vergil, Horace, Tacitus, Seneca, Sallust, Cicero, Tully, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Bacon, Dryden, Tillotson, Rabelais,[i-155]Bunyan, Fénelon, Chevalier de Ramsay,[i-156]Pythagoras, Waller, Defoe, Addison and Steele, William Temple, Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Boyle, Algernon Sidney, Trenchard and Gordon,[i-157]Young, Mandeville, Locke, Shaftesbury, Collins, Bolingbroke, Richardson, Whiston, Watts, Thomson, Burke, Cowper, Darwin, Rowe, Rapin, Herschel, Paley, Lord Kames, Adam Smith, Hume, Robertson, Lavoisier, Buffon, Dupont de Nemours, Whitefield, Pemberton, Blackmore, John Ray, Petty, Turgot, Priestley, Paine, Mirabeau, Quesnay, Raynal, Morellet, and Condorcet, to suggest only the more prominent.[i-158]Such a catalogue tends to discredit the all too common idea that the untutored tradesman was torpid to the information and wisdom found in books.
If his prose style shows none of the delicate rhythms and haunting imagery of the prose born of the romantic movement, it is nevertheless far from pedestrian. If it seems devoid of imaginative splendor, it is not lacking in force and persuasion.[i-159]After one has noted Franklin's canon of simplicityand order, his insistence on correctness, his assumed role asCensor Morum, his acceptance of the doctrine of imitation and the use of imagination guided by reason, one returns to the question of the degree to which the ideals of rhetoric fostered by the men of science may have helped to motivate Franklin's prose style, and to what degree his acceptance of deism augmented by Newtonianism may have furnished him with a rationale which lent sanction to his demand for a simple style.
Sir Humphrey Davy found in Franklin's scientific papers a language lucid and decorous, "almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine"[i-160]they contain. S. G. Fisher buoyantly maintained that Franklin's "is the most effective literary style ever used by an American." After reading Franklin's paper on stoves he was "inclined to lay down the principle that the test of literary genius is the ability to be fascinating about stoves."[i-161]Whether he writes soberly (albeit tempered by Gallic fancy) of the mutability of life, as inThe Ephemera, or of sophisticated social amenities, as in the letters to Madame Brillon and Madame Helvétius, or in his memoirs, in which solid fact follows solid fact, sifted by the years of good fortune, Franklin's style never loses its compelling charm and vigor. If he never wrote (or uttered) less than was demanded by the nature of his subject, neither would he have disgusted the Clerk of Oxenford who
Nought o word spak he more than was nede.
He was no formal literary critic such as Boileau, Lessing, or Coleridge, and no acknowledged arbiter of taste, such as Dr. Johnson. Yet Franklin, in voluminous practice, enjoying tremendous international vogue, proved that his theories bore the acid test of effectiveness. Indirectly he challenged his readers to honor principles of rhetoric which could so trenchantly serve the demands of his catholic pen, and make him one of the most widely read of all Americans.
Franklin was a printer chiefly because of two proclivities which were basic in his personality from childhood to old age—a bent toward practical mechanics ("handiness") and a fondness for reading (bookishness). Further, he was a journalist and publisher chiefly because he was a printer.
A thorough printer is both an artisan and an artist; he has both the manual dexterity of a good workman and the aesthetic appreciation of the amateur of beauty. Franklin always took pride in his ability to handle the printer's tools, from the time when, at the age of twelve, he became "a useful hand"[i-162]in the print shop of his brother James, until the very end of his life. One of the pleasantest anecdotes of the old printer is that which tells of his visit to the famous Didot printing establishment in Paris, when he stepped up to a press, and motioning the printer aside, himself took possession of the machine and printed off several sheets. Then the American ambassador smiled at the gaping printers and said, "Do not be astonished, Sirs, it is my former business."[i-163]
Even in his boyhood, it was a pleasure to Franklin "to see good workmen handle their tools," and he tells in his autobiography how much this feeling for tools meant to him throughout his life.[i-164]His flair for invention, though founded on this same"handiness," was not always directed toward the production of tools; but in the two fields of "philosophical" experimentation and the printing trade, his dexterity and cleverness in making needful instruments and devices were invaluable.
Partly because of the fact that printers' supplies must be imported from England, and partly because of his natural tool-mindedness, Franklin manufactured more of his own supplies than any other American commercial printer before or since. He cast type, made paper molds, mixed inks, made contributions to press building, did engraving, forwarded experiments in stereotyping, and worked at logotypy. Long after he had retired from the printing business. Franklin continued to influence developments in that field. It is a common saying among printers that one never forgets the smell of printer's ink. Franklin kept touch with his former business through various partnerships, through correspondence with printer friends, through the establishment of a private press in his home at Passy during his ambassadorship to France, and through his personal supervision of the education of his grandson in "the art preservative of arts." "I am too old to follow printing again myself," he wrote to a friend, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye."[i-165]
As to just how adept Franklin was on the distinctively aesthetic side of printing, critics must differ. It has been customary to assume that the output of his shop was far superior to that of the several other printing houses in the colonies.[i-166]Such broad generalizations are misleading, however; and it is certainly possibleto find Parks and even Bradford imprints which compare favorably enough with some of Franklin's. In typography, the phase of printing which affords the widest aesthetic scope, Franklin was by no means a genius. William Parks, of Annapolis and later of Williamsburg, was at least Franklin's peer during the seventeen-thirties and 'forties in the artistic arrangement of type; and William Goddard, who practiced the art a little later in several of the colonies, was his superior. Yet Franklin was an outstanding printer in a region blessed with few good presses. The difference between him and most of the other colonial printers may be stated thus: Franklin maintained a high average of workmanlike (though not inspired) performance, while his contemporaries were inclined to be slovenly, inaccurate, and generally careless.
In the later years of his life Franklin gave no little attention to fine printing, though as a dilettante rather than as a commercial printer. In France he was friendly with François Ambroise Didot, the greatest French printer of his times, and put his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache to school in Didot's establishment. With Pierre Simon Fournier, who ranked next to Didot among French printers, Franklin corresponded from time to time. In England the American printer maintained touch with prominent practitioners of his craft from the time of his first visit abroad until his death. Samuel Palmer, Franklin's first London employer, was but a mediocre printer; but John Watts, to whose house the young American went after a year at Palmer's, stood much higher in his vocation.[i-167]Both Watts and Palmer were patrons of William Caslon, from whom Franklin later bought type. But John Baskerville, Caslon's rival, was the founder whom Franklin did most to encourage and to bring to the attention of discriminating printers. The English printer with whom Franklin was upon the terms ofgreatest intimacy—and that for many years—was William Strahan, member of Parliament, King's Printer, and a successful publisher. Strahan was a man of parts, a great letter writer, and a friend of David Hume and Samuel Johnson. The latter referred to the Strahan shop as "the greatest printing house in London."[i-168]Another correspondent was John Walter, logotyper, press builder, and founder of the LondonTimes.[i-169]In all his letters to his printer friends, Franklin shows not only a lively interest in improvements and inventions for the trade, but also an increasing interest in the artistic side of printing and type-founding.
The "bookish inclination" which Franklin credits in theAutobiographywith being the quality that decided his father to make a printer of him, appertained to the trade because printers were commonly publishers and sellers of books and pamphlets, and often editors and publishers of newspapers. How the young Franklin satisfied his literary urge in the print shop of his brother James is a familiar story, and his theories of writing are traced in another section of this Introduction. The contribution to literature which he made as a publisher of original books is negligible, but he did his part both as publisher and bookseller to spread that bookishness to which he felt that he owed much of his own success. Like all publishers before and since, he was forced by his customers to issue books of a lower sort than he could fully approve in order to float editions of more desirable works: he tells plaintively of his public's preference for "Robin Hood's Songs" over the Psalms of his beloved Watts.[i-170]In stillanother way, Franklin promoted the bookishness of his community: he founded the first of American circulating libraries, and he built up for himself one of the largest private libraries in the country.[i-171]