that time Pennsylvania had no college, and the schools for children were
mostly of an elementary kind. Franklin, in making this very sweeping
assertion, may have intended one of his deep, sly jokes. It was the only
school of philosophy in the province, and in that sense undoubtedly the
best.
It was a sort of small debating club, in which the members educated one
another by discussion; and Franklin's biographer, Parton, supposes that
it was in part suggested by Cotton Mather's benefit societies, which
were well known in Boston when Franklin was a boy.
The first members of the Junto were eleven in number, young workmen like
Franklin, four of them being printers. The others were Joseph
Brientnal, a copier of deeds; Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught
mathematician, inventor of the quadrant now known as Hadley's; Nicholas
Scull; William Parsons, a shoemaker; William Maugridge, a carpenter;
William Coleman, a merchant's clerk; and Robert Grace, a witty, generous
young gentleman of some fortune. The Junto was popularly known as the
Leather-Apron Club, and Franklin has told us in his Autobiography of its
methods and rules:
"We met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required
that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more
queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy,
to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce
and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased.
Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and
to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth,
without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to
prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or
direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and
prohibited under small pecuniary penalties."
From other sources we learn that when a new member was initiated he
stood up and, with his hand on his breast, was asked the following
questions:
"1. Have you any particular disrespect to any present member?
Answer: I have not.
"2. Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general of
what profession or religion soever? Answer: I do.
"3. Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body,
name, or goods for mere speculative opinions or his external way
of worship? Answer: No.
"4. Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavor
impartially to find and receive it yourself and communicate it
to others? Answer: Yes."
At every meeting certain questions were read, with a pause after each
one; and these questions might very well have been suggested by those of
the Mather benefit societies. The first six are sufficient to give an
idea of them all:
"1. Have you met with anything in the author you last read,
remarkable or suitable to be communicated to the Junto,
particularly in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels,
mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?
"2. What new story have you lately heard, agreeable for telling
in conversation?
"3. Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business
lately, and what have you heard of the cause?
"4. Have you lately heard of any citizen's thriving well, and by
what means?
"5. Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or
elsewhere, got his estate?
"6. Do you know of a fellow-citizen, who has lately done a
worthy action, deserving praise and imitation; or who has lately
committed an error, proper for us to be warned against and
avoid?"
The number of members was limited to twelve, and Franklin always opposed
an increase. Instead of adding to the membership, he suggested that each
member form a similar club, and five or six were thus organized, with
such names as The Vine, The Union, The Band. The original club is said
to have continued for forty years. But it did not keep up its old
character. Its original purpose had been to educate its members, to
supply the place of the modern academy or college; but when the members
became older and their education more complete, they cared no longer for
self-imposed tasks of essay-writing and formal debate on set questions.
They turned it into a social club, or, rather, they dropped its
educational and continued its social side,--for it had always been
social, and even convivial, which was one of the means adopted for
keeping the members together and rendering their studies easy and
pleasant.
A list of some of the questions discussed by the Junto has been
preserved, from which a few are given as specimens:
"Is sound an entity or body?
"How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?
"Is self-interest the rudder that steers mankind?
"Which is the best form of government, and what was that form
which first prevailed among mankind?
"Can any one particular form of government suit all mankind?
"What is the reason that the tides rise higher in the Bay of
Fundy than in the Bay of Delaware?"
The young men who every Friday evening debated such questions as these
were certainly acquiring an education which was not altogether an
inferior substitute for that furnished by our modern institutions
endowed with millions of dollars and officered by plodding professors
prepared by years of exhaustive study. But the plodding professors and
the modern institutions are necessary, because young men, as a rule,
cannot educate themselves. The Junto could not have existed without
Franklin. He inspired and controlled it. His personality and energy
pervaded it, and the eleven other members were but clay in his hands.
His rare precocity and enthusiasm inspired a love for and an interest in
study which money, apparatus, and professors often fail to arouse.
The Junto debated the question of paper money, which was then agitating
the Province of Pennsylvania, and Franklin was led to write and publish
a pamphlet called "A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a
Paper Currency," a very crude performance, showing the deficiencies of
his self-education. The use of the word modest in the title was in
pursuance of the shrewd plan he had adopted of affecting great humility
in the expression of his opinions. But his description in his
Autobiography of the effect of this pamphlet is by no means either
modest or humble:
"It was well received by the common people in general; but the
rich men disliked it, for it increased and strengthened the
clamor for more money, and they happening to have no writers
among them that were able to answer it their opposition
slackened, and the point was carried by a majority in the
House."
In other words, he implies that the boyish debate of twelve young
workingmen, resulting in the publication of a pamphlet by one of them,
was the means of passing the Pennsylvania paper-money act of 1729. His
biographers have echoed his pleasant delusion, and this pamphlet, which
in reality contains some of the most atrocious fallacies in finance and
political economy, has been lauded as a wonder, the beginning of modern
political economy, and the source from which Adam Smith stole the
material for his "Wealth of Nations."[2]
In spite of all his natural brightness and laudable efforts for his own
improvement, he was but half educated and full of crude enthusiasm. He
was only twenty-three, and nothing more could be expected.
Fifteen or twenty years afterwards, with added experience, Franklin
became a very different sort of person. The man of forty, laboriously
investigating science, discovering the secrets of electricity, and
rejecting everything that had not been subjected to the most rigid
proof, bore but little resemblance to the precocious youth of
twenty-three, the victim of any specious sophism that promised a
millennium. But he never fully apologized to the world for his
paper-money delusion, contenting himself with saying in his
Autobiography, "I now think there are limits beyond which the quantity
may be hurtful."
Three years after the publication of his pamphlet on paper money he
began to study modern languages, and soon learned to read French,
Italian, and Spanish. An acquaintance who was also studying Italian
often tempted him to play chess. As this interfered with the Italian
studies, Franklin arranged with him that the victor in any game should
have the right to impose a task, either in grammar or translation; and
as they played equally, they beat each other into a knowledge of the
language.
After he had become tolerably well acquainted with these modern
languages he happened one day to look into a Latin Testament, and found
that he could read it more easily than he had supposed. The modern
languages had, he thought, smoothed the way for him, and he immediately
began to study Latin, which had been dropped ever since, as a little
boy, he had spent a year in the Boston Grammar School.
From this circumstance he jumped to the conclusion that the usual method
pursued in schools of studying Latin before the modern languages was all
wrong. It would be better, he said, to begin with the French, proceed to
the Italian, and finally reach the Latin. This would be beginning with
the easiest first, and would also have the advantage that if the pupils
should quit the study of languages, and never arrive at the Latin, they
would have acquired another tongue or two which, being in modern use,
might be serviceable to them in after-life.
This suggestion, though extravagantly praised, has never been adopted,
for the modern languages are now taught contemporaneously with Latin. It
was an idea founded exclusively on a single and very unusual experience,
without any test as to its general applicability. But all Franklin's
notions of education were extremely radical, because based on his own
circumstances, which were not those of the ordinary youth, to whom all
systems of education have to be adapted.
He wished to entirely abolish Latin and Greek. They had been useful, he
said, only in the past, when they were the languages of the learned and
when all books of science and important knowledge were written in them.
At that time there had been a reason for learning them, but that reason
had now passed away. English should be substituted for them, and its
systematic study would give the same knowledge of language-structure and
the same mental training that were supposed to be attainable only
through Latin and Greek. His own self-education had been begun in
English. He had analyzed and rewritten the essays in Addison's
_Spectator_, and, believing that in this way he had acquired his own
most important mental training, he concluded that the same method should
be imposed on every one. He wished to set up the study of that author
and of Pope, Milton, and Shakespeare as against Cicero, Virgil, and
Homer.
One of our most peculiar American habits is that every one who has a pet
fancy or experience immediately wants it adopted into the public school
system. We not uncommonly close our explanation of something that
strikes us as very important by declaring, "and I would have it taught
in the public schools." It has even been suggested that the game of
poker should be taught as tending to develop shrewdness and observation.
Franklin's foundation for all education was English. He would have also
French, German, or Italian, and practical subjects,--natural science,
astronomy, history, government, athletic sports, good manners, good
morals, and other topics; for when one is drawing up these ideal schemes
without a particle of practical experience in teaching it is so easy to
throw in one thing after another which seems noble or beautiful for boys
and girls to know. But English he naturally thought from his own
experience was the gate-way to everything.
In the course of his life Franklin received the honorary degree of
doctor of laws from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Edinburgh, and St Andrew's,
and he founded a college. It has been said in support of his peculiar
theories of education that when, in 1776, the Continental Congress,
which was composed largely of college graduates, was considering who
should be sent as commissioner to France, the only member who knew
enough of the language to be thoroughly eligible was the one who had
never been near a college except to receive honorary degrees for public
services he had performed without the assistance of a college training.
This is, of course, an interesting statement; but as an argument it is
of no value. Franklin could read French, but could not speak it, and he
had to learn to do so after he reached France. By his own confession he
never was able to speak it well, and disregarded the grammar
altogether,--a natural consequence of being self-taught. John Adams and
other members of the Congress could read French as well as Franklin; and
when, in their turn, they went to France, they learned to speak it as
fluently as he.
In 1743 Franklin attempted to establish an academy in Philadelphia. The
higher education was very much neglected at that time in the middle
colonies. The nearest colleges were Harvard and Yale, far to the north
in New England, and William and Mary, far to the south in Virginia. The
Presbyterians had a few good schools in Pennsylvania of almost the grade
of academies, but none in Philadelphia. The Quakers, as a class, were
not interested in colleges or universities, and confined their efforts
to elementary schools. People were alarmed at the ignorance in which not
only the masses but even the sons of the best citizens were growing up,
and it was the general opinion that those born in the colony were
inferior in intelligence to their fathers who had emigrated from
England.
Franklin's efforts failed in 1743 because there was much political
agitation in the province and because of the preparations for the war
with Spain in which England was about to engage; but in 1749 he renewed
his attempt, and was successful. He was then a man of forty-three, had
been married thirteen years, and had children, legitimate and
illegitimate, to be educated. The Junto supported him, and in aid of his
plan he wrote a pamphlet called "Proposals relating to the Education of
Youth in Pennsylvania."
In this pamphlet he could not set forth his extreme views of education
because even the most liberal people in the town were not in favor of
them. Philadelphia was at that time the home of liberal ideas in the
colonies. Many people were in favor of altering the old system of
education and teaching science and other practical subjects in addition
to Latin and Greek; but they did not favor abolishing the study of these
languages, and they could not see the necessity of making English so
all-important as Franklin wished. He was compelled, therefore, to
conform his arguments to the opinions of those from whom he expected
subscriptions, and he did this with his usual discretion, making,
however, the English branches as important as was possible under the
circumstances.
The result of the pamphlet was that five thousand pounds were
subscribed, and the academy started within a year, occupying a large
building on Fourth Street, south of Arch, which had been built for the
use of George Whitefield, the famous English preacher. It supplied a
real need of the community and had plenty of pupils. Within six years it
obtained a charter from the proprietors of the province, and became a
college, with an academy and a charitable school annexed.
A young Scotchman, the Rev. William Smith, was appointed to govern the
institution, and was called the provost. He had very advanced opinions
on education, holding much the same views as were expressed in
Franklin's proposals; but he was not in accord with Franklin's extreme
ideas.[3] Those who intended to become lawyers, doctors, or clergymen
should be taught to walk in the old paths and to study Latin and Greek;
but the rest were to be deluged with a knowledge of accounts,
mathematics, oratory, poetry, chronology, history, natural and mechanic
philosophy, agriculture, ethics, physics, chemistry, anatomy, modern
languages, fencing, dancing, religion, and everything else that by any
chance might be useful.
Thus the academy founded by Franklin became the College of
Philadelphia, and as managed by Provost Smith it was a very good one and
played a most interesting part in the life and politics of the colony.
Its charter was revoked and its property confiscated during the
Revolution, and another college was created, called the University of
the State of Pennsylvania, which was worthless. Eleven years afterwards
the old college was restored to its rights, and soon after that it was
combined with the State University, and the union of the two produced
the present University of Pennsylvania.[4] It should, however, have been
called Franklin University, which would have been in every way a better
name.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, p. 80.
[3] Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, p. 141.
[4] Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, pp. 374-377, 381.
III
RELIGION AND MORALS
Franklin's father and mother were Massachusetts Puritans who, while not
conspicuously religious, attended steadily to their religious duties.
They lived in Milk Street, Boston, near the Old South Church, and little
Benjamin was carried across the street the day he was born and baptized
in that venerable building.
He was born on Sunday, January 6, 1706 (Old Style), and if it had
occurred in one of the Massachusetts towns where the minister was very
strict, baptism might have been refused, for some of the Puritans were
so severe in their views of Sabbath-keeping that they said a child born
on the Sabbath must have been conceived on the Sabbath, and was
therefore hopelessly unregenerate.[5]
These good men would have found their theory fully justified in
Franklin, for he became a terrible example of the results of Sabbath
birth and begetting. As soon as opportunity offered he became a most
persistent Sabbath-breaker. While he lived with his parents he was
compelled to go to church; but when apprenticed to his elder brother,
and living away from home, he devoted Sunday to reading and study. He
would slip off to the printing-office and spend nearly the whole day
there alone with his books; and during a large part of his life Sunday
was to him a day precious for its opportunities for study rather than
for its opportunities for worship.
His persistence in Sabbath-breaking was fortified by his entire loss of
faith in the prevailing religion.
"I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho'
some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as _the eternal
decrees of God_, _election_, _reprobation_, etc., appeared to me
unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself
from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying
day, I never was without some religious principles. I never
doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made
the world and governed it by his Providence; that the most
acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our
souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and
virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter." (Bigelow's Works of
Franklin, vol. i. p. 172.)
It will be observed that he speaks of himself as having been educated a
Presbyterian, a term which in his time was applied to the Puritans of
Massachusetts. We find Thomas Jefferson also describing the New
Englanders as Presbyterians, and in colonial times the Quakers in
Pennsylvania used the same term when speaking of them. But they were not
Presbyterians in the sense in which the word is now used, and their
religion is usually described as Congregationalism.
In the earlier part of his Autobiography Franklin describes more
particularly how he was led away from the faith of his parents. Among
his father's books were some sermons delivered on the Boyle foundation,
which was a fund established at Oxford, England, by Robert Boyle for
the purpose of having discourses delivered to prove the truth of
Christianity. Franklin read some of these sermons when he was only
fifteen years old, and was very much interested in the attacks made in
them on the deists, the forerunners of the modern Unitarians. He thought
that the arguments of the deists which were quoted to be refuted were
much stronger than the attempts to refute them.
Shaftesbury and Collins were the most famous deistical writers of that
time. Their books were in effect a denial of the miraculous part of
Christianity, and whoever accepted their arguments was left with a
belief only in God and the immortality of the soul, with Christianity a
code of morals and beautiful sentiments instead of a revealed religion.
From reading quotations from these authors Franklin was soon led to read
their works entire, and they profoundly interested him. Like their
successors, the Unitarians, they were full of religious liberty and
liberal, broad ideas on all subjects, and Franklin's mind tended by
nature in that direction.
It seems that Franklin's brother James was also a liberal. He had been
employed to print a little newspaper, called the _Boston Gazette_, and
when this work was taken from him, he started a newspaper of his own,
called the _New England Courant_. His apprentice, Benjamin, delivered
copies of it to the subscribers, and before long began to write for it.
The _Courant_, under the guidance of James Franklin and his friends,
devoted itself to ridiculing the government and religion of
Massachusetts. A description of it, supposed to have been written by
Cotton Mather, tells us that it was "full-freighted with nonsense,
unmanliness, raillery, profaneness, immorality, arrogance, calumnies,
lies, contradictions, and what not, all tending to quarrels and
divisions and to debauch and corrupt the minds and manners of New
England." Among other things, the _Courant_, as Increase Mather informs
us, was guilty of saying that "if the ministers of God approve of a
thing, it is a sign it is of the devil; which is a horrid thing to be
related." Its printer and editor was warned that he would soon, though a
young man, have to appear before the judgment-seat of God to answer for
things so vile and abominable.
Some of the Puritan ministers, under the lead of Cotton Mather, were at
that time trying to introduce inoculation as a preventive of small-pox,
and for this the _Courant_ attacked them. It attempted to make a
sensation out of everything. Increase Mather boasted that he had ceased
to take it. To which the _Courant_ replied that it was true he was no
longer a subscriber, but that he sent his grandson every week to buy it.
It was a sensational journal, and probably the first of its kind in this
country. People bought and read it for the sake of its audacity. It was
an instance of liberalism gone mad and degenerated into mere radicalism
and negation.
Some of the articles attributed to Franklin, and which were in all
probability written by him, were violent attacks on Harvard College,
setting forth the worthlessness of its stupid graduates, nearly all of
whom went into the Church, which is described as a temple of ambition
and fraud controlled by money. There is a touch of what would now be
called Socialism or Populism in these articles, and it is not surprising
to find the author of them afterwards writing a pamphlet in favor of an
inflated paper currency.
The government of Massachusetts allowed the _Courant_ to run its wicked
course for about a year, and then fell upon it, imprisoning James
Franklin for a month in the common jail. Benjamin conducted the journal
during the imprisonment of his brother, who was not released until he
had humbly apologized. The _Courant_ then went on, and was worse than
ever, until an order of council was issued forbidding its publication,
because it had mocked religion, brought the Holy Scriptures into
contempt, and profanely abused the faithful ministers of God, as well as
His Majesty's government and the government of the province.