Produced by Mark C. Orton, Christine Aldridge and the
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Transcriber's Notes:
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_
Words with gesperrt (wide) letter spacing are surrounded with =equals=
2. The editor of the original book marked some mispelled words with
[_sic_], and these have been retained as written, uncorrected.
Additional words found to be mispelled have been corrected and are
listed under "Spelling Corrections" at the end of this e-text.
Additionally this work contains a large number of word spelling
variations found to be valid in Webster's English Dictionary as well
as several unverified spellings that appear multiple times and
inconsistant word capitalization and hyphenation, all of which have
been retained as printed. The interested reader will find an
alphabetic "Word Variations" list at the end of this e-text.
3. Numbered footnotes in Sections I-VII of the Introduction have been
relocated to the end of the Introduction and marked with an "i-".
Lettered footnotes in the "Selections" have been relocated directly
under the paragraph they pertain to.
4. Additional Transcriber's Notes are located at the "Poor Richards
Almanack" facsimile reproduction beginning on page 225, and at the
end of this e-text.
* * * * *
*
AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES
*
HARRY HAYDEN CLARK
_General Editor_
*
AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES
_Volumes of representative selections, prepared by American scholars
under the general editorship of Harry Hayden Clark, University of
Wisconsin._
_Volumes now ready are starred._
AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS, _Raymond Adams, University of North
Carolina_
*WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, _Tremaine McDowell, University of Minnesota_
*JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, _Robert E. Spiller, Swarthmore College_
*JONATHAN EDWARDS, _Clarence H. Faust, University of Chicago, and Thomas
H. Johnson, Hackley School_
*RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Frederic I. Carpenter, Harvard University_
*BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, _Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson,
University of Iowa_
*ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THOMAS JEFFERSON, _Frederick C. Prescott,
Cornell University_
BRET HARTE
*NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, _Austin Warren, Boston University_
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, _Robert Shafer, University of Cincinnati_
*WASHINGTON IRVING, _Henry A. Pochmann, Mississippi State College_
HENRY JAMES, _Lyon Richardson, Western Reserve University_
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
*HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, _Odell Shepard, Trinity College_
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, _Norman Foerster, University of Iowa, and Harry H.
Clark, University of Wisconsin_
HERMAN MELVILLE, _Willard Thorp, Princeton University_
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
THOMAS PAINE, _Harry H. Clark, University of Wisconsin_
FRANCIS PARKMAN, _Wilbur L. Schramm, University of Iowa_
*EDGAR ALLAN POE, _Margaret Alterton, University of Iowa, and Hardin
Craig, Stanford University_
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, _Claude Jones, Johns Hopkins University_
*SOUTHERN POETS, _Edd Winfield Parks, University of Georgia_
SOUTHERN PROSE, _Gregory Paine, University of North Carolina_
*HENRY DAVID THOREAU, _Bartholow Crawford, University of Iowa_
*MARK TWAIN, _Fred Lewis Pattee, Rollins College_
*WALT WHITMAN, _Floyd Stovall, University of Texas_
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
[Illustration: _Pen drawing by Kerr Eby, after an engraving by Mason
Chamberlin_
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
ÆT. 56]
Benjamin Franklin
REPRESENTATIVE SELECTIONS, WITH
INTRODUCTION, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND NOTES
BY
FRANK LUTHER MOTT
_Director, School of Journalism
University of Iowa_
AND
CHESTER E. JORGENSON
_Instructor in English
University of Iowa_
[Illustration]
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
_New York_ · _Cincinnati_ · _Chicago_
_Boston_ · _Atlanta_
COPYRIGHT, 1936, BY
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
MOTT AND JORGENSON'S FRANKLIN
W.P.I.
MADE IN U.S.A.
_PREFACE_
Benjamin Franklin's reputation in America has been singularly
distorted by the neglect of his works other than his _Autobiography_
and his most utilitarian aphorisms. If America has contented herself
with appraising him as "the earliest incarnation of 'David Harum,'" as
"the first high-priest of the religion of efficiency," as "the first
Rotarian," it may be that this aspect of Franklin is all that an
America plagued by growing pains, by peopling and mechanizing three
thousand miles of frontier, has been able to see. That facet of
Franklin's mind and mien which allowed Carlyle to describe him as "the
Father of all Yankees" was appreciated by Sinclair Lewis's George F.
Babbitt: "Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this
Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction." But
this is not the Franklin of "imperturbable common-sense" honored by
Matthew Arnold as "the very incarnation of sanity and clear-sense, a
man the most considerable ... whom America has yet produced." Nor is
this the Franklin who emerges from his collected works (and the
opinions of his notable contemporaries) as an economist, political
theorist, educator, journalist, scientific deist, and disinterested
scientist. If he wrote little that is narrowly belles-lettres, he need
not be ashamed of his voluminous correspondence, in an age which saw
the fruition of the epistolary art. The Franklin found in his
collected and uncollected writings is, as the following Introduction
may suggest, not the Franklin who too commonly is synchronized
exclusively with the wisdom and wit of _Poor Richard_.
Since the present interpretation of the growth of Franklin's mind, with
stress upon its essential unity in the light of scientific deism,
tempered by his debt to Puritanism, classicism, and neoclassicism, may
seem somewhat novel, the editors have felt it desirable to document
their interpretation with considerable fullness. It is hoped that the
reader will withhold judgment as to the validity of this interpretation
until the documentary evidence has been fully considered in its genetic
significance, and that he will feel able to incline to other
interpretations only in proportion as they can be equally supported by
other evidence. The present interpretation is also supported by the
Selections following--the fullest collection hitherto available in one
volume--which offer, the editors believe, the essential materials for a
reasonable acquaintance with the growth of Franklin's mind, from youth
to old age, in its comprehensive interests--educational, literary,
journalistic, economic, political, scientific, humanitarian, and
religious.
With the exception of the selections from the _Autobiography_, the works
are arranged in approximate chronological order, hence inviting a
necessarily genetic study of Franklin's mind. The _Dissertation on
Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_, never before printed in an
edition of Franklin's works or in a book of selections, is here printed
from the London edition of 1725, retaining his peculiarities of italics,
capitalization, and punctuation. Attention is also drawn to the
photographically reproduced complete text of _Poor Richard Improved_
(1753), graciously furnished by Mr. William Smith Mason. _The Way to
Wealth_ is from an exact reprint made by Mr. Mason, and with his
permission here reproduced. One of the editors is grateful for the
privilege of consulting Mr. Mason's magnificent collection of Franklin
correspondence (original MSS), especially the Franklin-Galloway and
Franklin-Jonathan Shipley (Bishop of St. Asaph) unpublished
correspondence. With Mr. Mason's generous permission the editors
reproduce fragments of this correspondence in the Introduction.
The bulk of the selections have been printed from the latest, standard
edition, _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_, collected and edited with
a Life and Introduction by Albert Henry Smyth (10 vols., 1905-1907). For
permission to use this material the editors are grateful to The
Macmillan Company, publishers. The editors are indebted to Dr. Max
Farrand, Director of the Henry E. Huntington Library, for permission to
reprint part of Franklin's MS version of the _Autobiography_.
Chester E. Jorgenson is preparing an analysis and interpretation of
Franklin's brand of scientific deism, its sources and relation to his
economic, political, and literary theories and practice. Fragments of
this projected study are included, especially in Section VII of the
following Introduction. For the past two years Mr. Jorgenson has enjoyed
the kindness and generosity of Mr. William Smith Mason, and has incurred
an indebtedness which cannot be expressed adequately in print.
The work of the editors has been vastly eased by Beata Prochnow
Jorgenson's assistance in typing, proofreading, et cetera. They are
extremely grateful to Professor Harry Hayden Clark for incisive
suggestions and valuable editorial assistance.
F. L. M.
C. E. J.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. Franklin's Milieu: The Age of Enlightenment, xiii
II. Franklin's Theories of Education, xxxii
III. Franklin's Literary Theory and Practice, xlvi
IV. Franklin as Printer and Journalist, lvii
V. Franklin's Economic Views, lxiv
VI. Franklin's Political Theories, lxxxii
VII. Franklin as Scientist and Deist, cx
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, cxlii
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Works, cli
II. Collections and Reprints, cliii
III. Biographies, clv
IV. Biographical and Critical Studies, clviii
V. The Age of Franklin, clxxiv
VI. Bibliographies and Check Lists, clxxxvi
SELECTIONS
_From the_ Autobiography, 3
Dogood Papers, No. I (1722), 96
Dogood Papers, No. IV (1722), 98
Dogood Papers, No. V (1722), 102
Dogood Papers, No. VII (1722), 105
Dogood Papers, No. XII (1722), 109
Editorial Preface to the _New England Courant_ (1723), 111
A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), 114
Rules for a Club Established for Mutual Improvement (1728), 128
Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (1728), 130
The Busy-Body, No. 1 (1728/9), 137
The Busy-Body, No. 2 (1728/9), 139
The Busy-Body, No. 3 (1728/9), 141
The Busy-Body, No. 4 (1728/9), 145
Preface to the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ (1729), 150
A Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio (1730), 152
A Second Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio (1730), 156
A Witch Trial at Mount Holly (1730), 161
An Apology for Printers (1731), 163
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1733), 169
A Meditation on a Quart Mugg (1733), 170
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1734), 172
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1735), 174
Hints for Those That Would Be Rich (1736), 176
To Josiah Franklin (April 13, 1738), 177
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1739), 179
A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British
Plantations in America (1743), 180
Shavers and Trimmers (1743), 183
To the Publick (1743), 186
Preface to Logan's Translation of "Cato Major" (1743/4), 187
To John Franklin, at Boston (March 10, 1745), 188
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1746), 189
The Speech of Polly Baker (1747), 190
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1747), 193
To Peter Collinson (August 14, 1747), 194
Preface to _Poor Richard Improved_ (1748), 195
Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), 196
To George Whitefield (July 6, 1749), 198
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in
Pensilvania (1749), 199
Idea of the English School (1751), 206
To Cadwallader Colden Esq., at New York (1751), 213
Exporting of Felons to the Colonies (1751), 214
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of
Countries, Etc. (1751), 216
To Peter Collinson (October 19, 1752), 223
_Poor Richard Improved_ (1753)--facsimile reproduction, 225
To Joseph Huey (June 6, 1753), 261
Three Letters to Governor Shirley (1754), 263
To Miss Catherine Ray, at Block Island (March 4, 1755), 270
To Peter Collinson (August 25, 1755), 272
To Miss Catherine Ray (September 11, 1755), 274
To Miss Catherine Ray (October 16, 1755), 277
To Mrs. Jane Mecom (February 12, 1756), 278
To Miss E. Hubbard (February 23, 1756), 278
To Rev. George Whitefield (July 2, 1756), 279
The Way to Wealth (1758), 280
To Hugh Roberts (September 16, 1758), 289
To Mrs. Jane Mecom (September 16, 1758), 291
To Lord Kames (May 3, 1760), 293
To Miss Mary Stevenson (June 11, 1760), 295
To Mrs. Deborah Franklin (June 27, 1760), 298
To Jared Ingersoll (December 11, 1762), 300
To Miss Mary Stevenson (March 25, 1763), 301
To John Fothergill, M.D. (March 14, 1764), 304
To Sarah Franklin (November 8, 1764), 307
_From_ A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster
County (1764), 308
To the Editor of a Newspaper (May 20, 1765), 315
To Lord Kames (June 2, 1765), 318
Letter Concerning the Gratitude of America (January 6, 1766), 321
To Lord Kames (April 11, 1767), 325
To Miss Mary Stevenson (September 14, 1767), 330
On the Labouring Poor (1768), 336
To Dupont de Nemours (July 28, 1768), 340
To John Alleyne (August 9, 1768), 341
To the Printer of the _London Chronicle_ (August 18, 1768), 343
Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth (1769), 345
To Miss Mary Stevenson (September 2, 1769), 347
To Joseph Priestley (September 19, 1772), 348
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (September 26, 1772), 349
To Peter Franklin (undated), 351
On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor (undated), 355
An Edict by the King of Prussia (1773), 358
Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small
One (1773), 363
To William Franklin (October 6, 1773), 371
Preface to "An Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer" (1773), 374
A Parable against Persecution, 379
A Parable on Brotherly Love, 380
To William Strahan (July 5, 1775), 381
To Joseph Priestley (July 7, 1775), 382
To a Friend in England (October 3, 1775), 383
To Lord Howe (July 30, 1776), 384
The Sale of the Hessians (1777), 387
Model of a Letter of Recommendation (April 2, 1777), 389
To ---- (October 4, 1777), 390
To David Hartley (October 14, 1777), 390
A Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony
and America, 394
To Charles de Weissenstein (July 1, 1778), 397
The Ephemera (1778), 402
To Richard Bache (June 2, 1779), 404
Morals of Chess (1779), 406
To Benjamin Vaughan (November 9, 1779), 410
The Whistle (1779), 412
The Lord's Prayer (1779?), 414
The Levée (1779?), 417
Proposed New Version of the Bible (1779?), 419
To Joseph Priestley (February 8, 1780), 420
To George Washington (March 5, 1780), 421
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (October 8, 1780), 422
To Richard Price (October 9, 1780), 423
Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout (1780), 424
The Handsome and Deformed Leg (1780?), 430
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (undated), 432
To David Hartley (December 15, 1781), 434
Supplement to the Boston _Independent Chronicle_ (1782), 434
To John Thornton (May 8, 1782), 443
To Joseph Priestley (June 7, 1782), 443
To Jonathan Shipley (June 10, 1782), 445
To James Hutton (July 7, 1782), 447
To Sir Joseph Banks (September 9, 1782), 448
Information to Those Who Would Remove to America (1782?), 449
Apologue (1783?), 458
To Sir Joseph Banks (July 27, 1783), 459
To Mrs. Sarah Bache (January 26, 1784), 460
An Economical Project (1784?), 466
To Samuel Mather (May 12, 1784), 471
To Benjamin Vaughan (July 26, 1784), 472
To George Whately (May 23, 1785), 479
To John Bard and Mrs. Bard (November 14, 1785), 481
To Jonathan Shipley (February 24, 1786), 481
To ---- (July 3, 1786?), 484
Speech in the Convention; On the Subject of Salaries (1787), 486
Motion for Prayers in the Convention (1787), 489
Speech in the Convention at the Conclusion of Its
Deliberations (1787), 491
To the Editors of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ (1788), 493
To Rev. John Lathrop (May 31, 1788), 496
To the Editor of the _Federal Gazette_ (1788?), 496
To Charles Carroll (May 25, 1789), 500
An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania,
viz. the Court of the Press (1789), 501
An Address to the Public (1789), 505
To David Hartley (December 4, 1789), 506
To Ezra Stiles (March 9, 1790), 507
On the Slave-Trade (1790), 510
Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, 513
An Arabian Tale, 519
A Petition of the Left Hand (date unknown), 520
Some Good Whig Principles (date unknown), 521
The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams, 523
NOTES, 529
_INTRODUCTION_
I. FRANKLIN'S MILIEU: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Benjamin Franklin's reputation, according to John Adams, "was more
universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and
his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them."[i-1]
The historical critic recognizes increasingly that Adams was not
thinking idly when he doubted whether Franklin's panegyrical and
international reputation could ever be explained without doing "a
complete history of the philosophy and politics of the eighteenth
century." Adams conceived that an explication of Franklin's mind and
activities integrated with the thought patterns of the epoch which
fathered him "would be one of the most important that ever was written;
much more interesting to this and future ages than the 'Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire.'" And such a historical and critical colossus is
still among the works hoped for but yet unborn. Too often, even in the
scholarly mind, Franklin has become a symbol, and it may be confessed,
not a winged one, of the self-made man, of New-World practicality, of
the successful tradesman, of the Sage of _Poor Richard_ with his
penny-saving economy and frugality. In short, the Franklin legend fails
to transcend an allegory of the success of the _doer_ in an America
allegedly materialistic, uncreative, and unimaginative.
It is the purpose of this essay to show that Franklin, the American
Voltaire,--always reasonable if not intuitive, encyclopedic if not
sublimely profound, humane if not saintly,--is best explained with
reference to the Age of Enlightenment, of which he was the completest
colonial representative. Due attention will, however, be paid to other
factors. And therefore it is necessary to begin with a brief survey of
the pattern of ideas of the age to which he was responsive. Not without
reason does one critic name him as "the most complete representative of
his century that any nation can point to."[i-2]
When Voltaire, "the patriarch of the _philosophes_," in 1726 took refuge
in England, he at once discovered minds and an attitude toward human
experience which were to prove the seminal factors of the Age of
Enlightenment. He found that Englishmen had acclaimed Bacon "the father
of experimental philosophy," and that Newton, "the destroyer of the
Cartesian system," was "as the Hercules of fabulous story, to whom the
ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes." Voltaire then paused
to praise Locke, who "destroyed innate ideas," Locke, than whom "no man
ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius, or was a more acute
logician." Bacon, Newton, and Locke brooded over the currents of
eighteenth-century thought and were formative factors of much that is
most characteristic of the Enlightenment.
To Bacon was given the honor of having distinguished between the
fantasies of old wives' tales and the certainty of empiricism. Moved by
the ghost of Bacon, the Royal Society had for its purpose, according to
Hooke, "To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful
Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practises, Engynes and Inventions by
Experiments."[i-3] The zeal for experiment was equaled only by its
miscellaneousness. Cheese making, the eclipses of comets, and the
intestines of gnats were alike the objects of telescopic or microscopic
scrutiny. The full implication of Baconian empiricism came to fruition
in Newton, who in 1672 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Bacon
was not the least of those giants upon whose shoulders Newton stood. To
the experimental tradition of Kepler, Brahe, Harvey, Copernicus,
Galileo, and Bacon, Newton joined the mathematical genius of Descartes;
and as a result became "as thoroughgoing an empiricist as he was a
consummate mathematician," for whom there was "no _a priori_
certainty."[i-4] At this time it is enough to note of Newtonianism, that
for the incomparable physicist "science was composed of laws stating the
mathematical behaviour of nature solely--laws clearly deducible from
phenomena and exactly verifiable in phenomena--everything further is to
be swept out of science, which thus becomes a body of absolutely certain
truth about the doings of the physical world."[i-5] The pattern of ideas
known as Newtonianism may be summarized as embracing a belief in (1) a
universe governed by immutable natural laws, (2) which laws constitute a
sublimely harmonious system, (3) reflecting a benevolent and all-wise
Geometrician; (4) thus man desires to effect a correspondingly
harmonious inner heaven; (5) and feels assured of the plausibility of an
immortal life. Newton was a believer in scriptural revelation. It is
ironical that through his cosmological system, mathematically
demonstrable, he lent reinforcement to deism, the most destructive
intellectual solvent of the authority of the altar.
Deists, as defined by their contemporary, Ephraim Chambers (in his
_Cyclopædia ..._, London, 1728), are those "whose distinguishing
character it is, not to profess any particular form, or system of
religion; but only to acknowledge the existence of a God, without
rendering him any external worship, or service. The Deists hold, that,
considering the multiplicity of religions, the numerous pretences to
revelation, and the precarious arguments generally advanced in proof
thereof; the best and surest way is, to return to the simplicity of
nature, and the belief of one God, which is the only truth agreed to by
all nations." They "reject all revelations as an imposition, and believe
no more than what natural light discovers to them...."[i-6] The
"simplicity of nature" signifies "the established order, and course of
natural things; the series of second causes; or the laws which God has
imposed on the motions impressed by him."[i-7] And attraction, a kind of
_conatus accedendi_, is the crown, according to the eighteenth century,
of the series of secondary causes. Hence, Newtonian physics became the
surest ally of the deist in his quest for a religion, immutable and
universal. The Newtonian progeny were legion: among them were Boyle,
Keill, Desaguliers, Shaftesbury, Locke, Samuel Clarke, 'sGravesande,
Boerhaave, Diderot, Trenchard and Gordon, Voltaire, Gregory, Maclaurin,
Pemberton, and others. The eighteenth century echoed Fontenelle's eulogy
that Newtonianism was "sublime geometry." If, as Boyle wrote,
mathematical and mechanical principles were "the alphabet, in which God
wrote the world," Newtonian science and empiricism were the lexicons
which the deists used to read the cosmic volume in which the universal
laws were inscribed. And the deists and the liberal political theorists
"found the fulcrum for subverting existing institutions and standards
only in the laws of nature, discovered, as they supposed, by
mathematicians and astronomers."[i-8]
Complementary to Newtonian science was the sensationalism of John Locke.
Conceiving the mind as _tabula rasa_, discrediting innate ideas, Lockian
psychology undermined such a theological dogma as total depravity--man's
innate and inveterate malevolence--and hence was itself a kind of
_tabula rasa_ on which later were written the optimistic opinions of
those who credited man's capacity for altruism. If it remained for the
French _philosophes_ to deify Reason, Locke honored it as the crowning
experience of his sensational psychology.[i-9] Then, too, as Miss Lois
Whitney has ably demonstrated, Lockian psychology "cleared the ground
for either primitivism or a theory of progress."[i-10] In addition, his
social compact theory, augmenting seventeenth-century liberalism,
furnished the political theorists of the Enlightenment with "the
principle of Consent"[i-11] in their antipathy for monarchial
obscurantism. Locke has been described as the "originator of a
psychology which provided democratic government with a scientific
basis."[i-12] The full impact of Locke will be felt when philosophers
deduce that if sensations and reflections are the product of outward
stimuli--those of nature, society, and institutions--then to reform man
one needs only to reform society and institutions, or remove to some
tropical isle. We remember that the French Encyclopedists, for example,
were motivated by their faith in the "indefinite malleability of human
nature by education and institutions."[i-13]
"With the possible exception of John Locke," C. A. Moore observes,
"Shaftesbury was more generally known in the mid-century than any other
English philosopher."[i-14] Shaftesbury's a priori "virtuoso theory of
benevolence" may be viewed as complementary to Locke's psychology to the
extent that both have within them the implication that through education
and reform man may become perfectible. Both tend to undermine social,
political, and religious authoritarianism. Shaftesbury's insistence upon
man's innate altruism and compassion, coupled with the deistic and
rationalistic divorce between theology and morality, resulted in the
dogma that the most acceptable service to God is expressed in kindness
to God's other children and helped to motivate the rise of
humanitarianism.
The idea of progress[i-15] was popularized (if not born) in the
eighteenth century. It has been recently shown that not only the
results of scientific investigations but also Anglican defenses of
revealed religion served to accelerate a belief in progress. In answer
to the atheists and deists who indicted revealed religion because
revelation was given so late in the growth of the human family and hence
was not eternal, universal, and immutable, the Anglican apologists were
forced into the position of asserting that man enjoyed a progressive
ascent, that the religious education of mankind is like that of the
individual. If, as the deists charged, Christ appeared rather belatedly,
the apologists countered that he was sent only when the race was
prepared to profit by his coming. God's revelations thus were adjusted
to progressive needs and capacities.[i-16]
Carl Becker has suggestively dissected the Enlightenment in a series of
antitheses between its credulity and its skepticism. If the
eighteenth-century philosopher renounced Eden, he discovered Arcadia in
distant isles and America. Rejecting the authority of the Bible and
church, he accepted the authority of "nature," natural law, and reason.
Although scorning metaphysics, he desired to be considered
philosophical. If he denied miracles, he yet had a fond faith in the
perfectibility of the species.[i-17]
Even as Voltaire had his liberal tendencies stoutly reinforced by
contact with English rationalism and deism,[i-18] so were the other
French _philosophes_, united in their common hatred of the Roman
Catholic church, also united in their indebtedness to exponents of
English liberalism, dominated by Locke and Newton. If, as Madame de
Lambert wrote in 1715, Bayle more than others of his age shook "the Yoke
of authority and opinion," English free thought powerfully reinforced
the native French revolt against authoritarianism. After 1730 English
was the model for French thought.[i-19] Nearly all of Locke's works had
been translated in France before 1700. Voltaire's affinity for the
English mind has already been touched on. D'Alembert comments, "When we
measure the interval between a Scotus and a Newton, or rather between
the works of Scotus and those of Newton, we must cry out with Terence,
_Homo homini quid præstat_."[i-20]
Any doctrine was intensely welcome which would allow the Frenchman to
regain his natural rights curtailed by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, by the inequalities of a state vitiated by privileges, by an
economic structure tottering because of bankruptcy attending
unsuccessful wars and the upkeep of a Versailles with its dazzling
ornaments, and by a religious program dominated by a Jesuit rather than
a Gallican church.[i-21] Economic, political, and religious abuses were
inextricably united; the spirit of revolt did not feel obliged to
discriminate between the authority of the crown and nobles and the
authority of the altar. Graphic is Diderot's vulgar vituperation: he
would draw out the entrails of a priest to strangle a king!
Let us now turn to the American backgrounds. The bibliolatry of colonial
New England is expressed in William Bradford's resolve to study
languages so that he could "see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of
God in all their native beauty."[i-22] In addition to furnishing the new
Canaan with ecclesiastical and political precedent, Scripture provided
"not a partiall, but a perfect rule of Faith, and manners." Any dogma
contravening the "ancient oracle" was a weed sown by Satan and fit only
to be uprooted and thrown in the fire. The colonial seventeenth century
was one which, like John Cotton, regularly sweetened its mouth "with a
piece of Calvin." One need not be reminded that Calvinism was
inveterately and completely antithetical to the dogma of the
Enlightenment.[i-23] Calvinistic bibliolatry contended with "the sacred
book of nature." Its wrathful though just Deity was unlike the
compassionate, virtually depersonalized Deity heralded in the eighteenth
century, in which the Trinity was dissolved. The redemptive Christ
became the amiable philosopher. Adam's universally contagious guilt was
transferred to social institutions, especially the tyrannical forms of
kings and priests. Calvin's forlorn and depraved man became a creature
naturally compassionate. If once man worshipped the Deity through
seeking to parallel the divine laws scripturally revealed, in the
eighteenth century he honored his benevolent God, who was above
demanding worship, through kindnesses shown God's other children. The
individual was lost in society, self-perfection gave way to
humanitarianism, God to Man, theology to morality, and faith to reason.
The colonial seventeenth century was politically oligarchical: when
Thomas Hooker heckled Winthrop on the lack of suffrage, Winthrop with no
compromise asserted that "the best part is always the least, and of that
best part the wiser part is always the lesser."[i-24] If the
seventeenth-century college was a cloister for clerical education, the
Enlightenment sought to train the layman for citizenship.
With the turn of the seventeenth century several forces came into
prominence, undermining New England's Puritan heritage. Among those
relevant for our study are: the ubiquitous frontier, and the rise of
Quakerism, deism, Methodism, and science. The impact of the frontier was
neglected until Professor Turner called attention to its existence; he
writes that "the most important effect of the frontier has been in the
promotion of democracy here and in Europe.... It produces antipathy to
control, and particularly to any direct control.... The frontier
conditions prevalent in the colonies are important factors in the
explanation of the American Revolution...."[i-25] In the period included
in our survey the frontier receded from the coast to the fall line to
the Alleghenies: at each stage it "did indeed furnish a new field of
opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and
freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its
restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have
accompanied the frontier."[i-26] One recalls the spirited satire on
frontier conditions, as the above aspects give birth to violence and
disregard for law, in Hugh Brackenridge's _Modern Chivalry_. Under the
satire one feels the justness of the attack, intensified by our
knowledge that Brackenridge grew up "in a democratic Scotch-Irish
back-country settlement." If the frontiersmen during the eighteenth
century did not place their dirty boots on their governors' desks, they
were partially responsible for an inveterate spirit of revolt, shown so
brutally in the "massacres" provoked by the "Paxton boys" of
Pennsylvania. One is not unprepared to discover resentment against the
forms of authority in a territory in which a strong back is more
immediately important than a knowledge of debates on predestination.
Granting the importance of the frontier in opposing the theocratic Old
Way, it must be considered in terms of other and more complex factors.
Reinforcing Edwards's Great Awakening, George Whitefield, especially in
the Middle Colonies, challenged the growing complacence of colonial
religious thought with his insistence that man "is by nature half-brute
and half-devil." It has been suggested that Methodism in effect allied
itself with the attitudes of Hobbes and Mandeville in attacking man's
nature, and hence by reaction tended to provoke "a primitivism based on
the doctrine of natural benevolence."[i-27]
The "New English Israel" was harried by the Quakers,[i-28] who preached
the priesthood of all believers and the right of private judgment. They
denied the total depravity of the natural man and the doctrine of
election; they gloried in a loving Father, and scourged the
ecclesiastical pomp and ceremony of other religions. They were possessed
by a blunt enthusiasm which held the immediate private revelation
anterior to scriptural revelation. Faithful to the inner light, the
Quakers seemed to neglect Scripture. Although the less extreme Quakers,
such as John Woolman, did not blind themselves to the need for personal
introspection and self-conquest, Quakerism as a movement tended to place
the greater emphasis on morality articulate in terms of fellow-service,
and lent momentum to the rise of humanitarianism expressed in prison
reform and anti-slavery agitation. Also one may wonder to what extent
colonial Quakerism tended to lend sanction to the rising democratic
spirit.
In the person of Cotton Mather, until recently considered a bigoted
incarnation of the "Puritan spirit ... become ossified," are discovered
forces which, when divorced from Puritan theology, were to become the
sharpest wedges splintering the deep-rooted oak of the Old Way. These
forces were the authority of reason and science. In _The Christian
Philosopher_,[i-29] basing his attitude on the works of Ray, Derham,
Cheyne, and Grew,[i-30] Mather attempted to shatter the Calvinists'
antithesis between science and theology, asserting "that [Natural]
Philosophy is no Enemy, but a mighty and wondrous Incentive to
Religion."[i-31] He warned that since even Mahomet with the aid of
reason found the Workman in his Work, Christian theologians should fear
"lest a Mahometan be called in for thy Condemnation!"[i-32] Studying
nature's sublime order, one must be blind if his thoughts are not
carried heavenward to "admire that Wisdom itself!" Although Mather
mistrusted Reason, he accepted it as "the voice of God"--an experience
which enabled him to discover the workmanship of the Deity in nature.
Magnetism, the vegetable kingdom, the stars infer a harmonious order, so
wondrous that only a God could have created it. If Reason is no complete
substitute for Scripture it offers enough evidence to hiss atheism out
of the world: "A Being that must be superior to Matter, even the Creator
and Governor of all Matter, is everywhere so conspicuous, that there can
be nothing more monstrous than to deny the God that is above."[i-33] Sir
Isaac Newton with his mathematical and experimental proof of the sublime
universal order strung on invariable secondary causes, Mather confessed,
is "our perpetual Dictator."[i-34] Conceiving of science as a rebuke to
the atheist, and a natural ally to scriptural theology, Mather, like a
Newton himself, juxtaposed rationalism and faith in one pyramidal
confirmation of the existence, omnipotence, and benevolence of God. Here
were variations from Calvinism's common path which, when augmented by
English and French liberalism, by the influence of Quakerism and the
frontier, were to give rise to democracy, rationalism, and scientific
deism. The Church of England through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries had "pursued a liberal latitudinarian policy which, as a mode
of thought, tended to promote deism by emphasizing rational religion and
minimizing revelation."[i-35] It was to be expected that in colonies
created by Puritans (or even Quakers), deism would have a less
spectacular and extensive success than it appears to have had in the
mother country. If militant deism remained an aristocratic cult until
the Revolution,[i-36] scientific rationalism (Newtonianism) long before
this, from the time of Mather, became a common ally of orthodoxy. If a
"religion of nature" may be defined with Tillotson as "obedience to
Natural Law, and the performance of such duties as Natural Light,
without any express and supernatural revelation, doth dictate to man,"
then it was in the colonies, prior to the Revolution, more commonly a
buttress to revealed religion than an equivalent to it.
Lockian sensism and Newtonian science were the chief sources of that
brand of colonial rationalism which at first complemented orthodoxy, and
finally buried it among lost causes. The Marquis de Chastellux was
astounded when he found on a center table in a Massachusetts inn an
"Abridgment of Newton's Philosophy"; whereupon he "put some questions"
to his host "on physics and geometry," with which he "found him well
acquainted."[i-37] Now, even a superficial reading of the eighteenth
century discloses countless allusions to Newton, his popularizers, and
the implications of his physics and cosmology. As Mr. Brasch suggests,
"From the standpoint of the history of science," the extent of the vogue
of Newtonianism "is yet very largely unknown history."[i-38]
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 the _Principia_ and a copy of
the _Optics_, 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 this standard 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's _Natural Philosophy_ was wisely substituted. Rector
Thomas Clap used Wollaston's _Religion of Nature Delineated_ as 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
transplant from 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 seen
Attraction 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 the _Boston
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's _Natural Philosophy_, at which time,
Cajori observes, "the teachings of Newton had at last secured a firm
footing there."[i-54] The year after his election he secured a copy of
the _Principia_ (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, whose tender 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 his _Essays 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.
II. FRANKLIN'S THEORIES OF EDUCATION