Benjamin Franklin
(1706–1790)
Benjamin Franklin was born in the capital of New England Puritanism, Boston, just as Puritanism was dying out. He left Boston at the age of seventeen, but Puritan ideals stayed with him. As Puritans hoped to be made pure by God’s grace, he tried to make himself morally perfect by self-discipline. He failed to do so, but he did carry out another kind of self-transformation. By cleverness and hard work he changed himself from the poorly educated son of a candle- and soap-maker into a world-famous scientist, diplomat, philosopher, and writer.
A few paragraphs cannot describe, but only list, Franklin’s many interests and accomplishments. He made his living mostly as a hard-working Philadelphia printer. But he also helped improve the city’s pavements, street lighting, sanitation, fire companies, and police; ran a magazine and a newspaper; founded or helped to found a debating club, a hospital, the American Philosophical Society, the first circulating library in America, and the college that became the University of Pennsylvania; studied earthquakes, ocean currents, and wind; improved or invented the lightning rod, bifocal eyeglasses, a device for lifting books off high shelves, a rocking chair that could swat flies, a musical instrument made of moistened glass bowls called the armonica, and a stove that was sold throughout America and Europe; addressed the English House of Commons on the Stamp Act, drew an important political cartoon, and served as first Postmaster General of America; assisted in creating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; discovered the laws of electricity (for which he won honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale and a gold medal from the English Royal Academy); and became perhaps the first American millionaire.
Franklin was also a brilliant writer. Following his belief that writing should be clear and concise, he perfected the Puritan plain style. He kept a huge correspondence and wrote on everything from love to musical harmony to chess. Most popular among his earlier works were the Poor Richard almanacs, noted for their witty sayings. (According to one story, the Continental Congress was afraid to let him draft the Declaration of Independence because he might slip a joke into it.) During the war he wrote cutting satires on British policy such as "An Edict by the King of Prussia." In 1771 he began his Autobiography. Although never completed, the Autobiography has been translated into a dozen languages and read by millions.
The contrast between Franklin’s humble beginnings and his vast success has made him a symbol of America. And like America, he has had his critics. Some have questioned his sincerity: he praised reason, but once called it an unreliable guide; he wished to benefit humankind, but described people as half useless and almost half mischievous. Such inconsistencies can be viewed as a sign of Franklin’s belief in self-development. He refused to be held to outmoded opinions. Viewed less favorably, his inconsistencies suggest opportunism, a willingness to please in order to get ahead. Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick, made a catalog of Franklin’s roles and concluded that Franklin had been everything except a poet. Actually Franklin did write some poems, but Melville’s meaning is clear: although Franklin mastered the practical side of life, he ignored the soul.
Franklin’s admirers, then, have seen him as resourceful and adaptable, a proof of the opportunities for success in America. His critics have seen him as a man who spent his life getting ahead without asking where he was going. No one can deny, however, that he lived with fabulous energy—perhaps growing, perhaps not, but always changing, always new.
