than in his schemes of education, both self and formal. One may deduce a
pattern of educational principles not undeservedly called Franklin's
_theories_ of 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]), his _Proposal for Promoting Useful
Knowledge among the British Plantations in America_, calling for a
scientific society of ingenious men or virtuosi, his _Proposals Relating
to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania_ and _Idea 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 which _transcend_ the 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 his
_Essays to do Good_ proposed:
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's _Essays_ with rapt
attention,[i-83] and since his _Rules for a Club Established for Mutual
Improvement_ are 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 in _Essays 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?
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 to
_mankind_, 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 humanitarian neighborliness 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 the
_Principia_, notified the body that "Mr. Logan had let him know he would
willingly give his advice of the choice of the books ... the Committee
esteeming Mr. 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's _Introduction_ and
_Laws of Nature_, Hayes upon Fluxions, Keill's _Astronomical Lectures_,
Sidney on Government, Gordon and Trenchard's _Cato's Letters_, the
_Spectator_, _Guardian_, _Tatler_, L'Hospital's _Conic Sections_,
Addison's works, Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, Palladio, Evelyn, Abridgement
of Philosophical Transactions, 'sGravesande's _Natural Philosophy_,
Homer's _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_, Bayle's _Critical Dictionary_, and
Dryden's _Virgil_. As a gift Peter Collinson included Newton's
_Principia_ in 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's
_Natural History of Fossils_ and _Natural History of the Earth_, Keill's
_Examination of Burnet's Theory of the Earth_, _Memoirs of the Royal
Academy of Surgery at Paris_, William Petty's _Essays_, Voltaire's
_Elements of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy_, Halley's _Astronomical
Tables_, Hill's _Review of the Works of the Royal Society_,
Montesquieu's _Spirit of Laws_, Burlamaqui's _Principles of Natural Law_
and _Principles of Politic Law_, Bolingbroke's _Letters on the Study and
Use of History_, and Conyer Middleton's _Miscellaneous 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
supplying weapons 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
of _curiosa 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 correspondents _A
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's
_Proposal_ "appears to contain the first suggestions, in any _public
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 in the 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's _Proposal_ will 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]
The Royal Society, no less than Franklin's _Proposal_, 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 making devices 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 his _Proposals 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 without me, 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 the _Proposals_.) 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, in
_Dogood Paper_ No. 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 be taught, and
pronouncing, properly, distinctly, emphatically; not with an even Tone,
which _under-does_, nor a theatrical, which _over-does_ Nature." Hence
he reflected the virtues of neoclassic perspicuity and correctness.
(These plans he more fully expressed in his _Idea 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:
in _Observations 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 the _Chapeau bras_ of
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 the moderns, 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 the
_inanimate_, not the _animate_ or 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 as _pedetentim
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 stressing utility 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 purposeful _imitation_ of those men in the
past who had led useful and happy lives.
III. FRANKLIN'S LITERARY THEORY AND PRACTICE[i-121]
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
the _Autobiography_ he recalls that he read books in "polemic divinity,"
Plutarch's _Lives_ (probably Dryden's translation), _Pilgrims Progress_,
Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects_, Mather's _Essays to do Good_,
Xenophon's _Memorabilia_,[i-123] the _Spectator_ papers, and the
writings of Shaftesbury and Collins.
Born in Boston, he knew the Bible,[i-124] characterized by the 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's _Essays_ he 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.