attendant upon efforts toward ratification. In his _Ancient Jews and
Anti-Federalists_[i-363] he warned the traducers of the new Constitution
against voiding an instrument which in his opinion was as sound as the
frailty of human reason would allow it to be. In fact, said he, it
"astonishes me, ... to find this system approaching so near to
perfection as it does."[i-364] He may be said to have been
anti-federalistic to the extent that he feared a strong executive,
guarded jealously the legislative sphere, worried little about checks
and balances, sought to accelerate popular sovereignty; he was
federalistic to the extent that he opposed state localism with national
sovereignty, was not blind to the depravity of human nature and hence
felt the need for a vigorous coercive government. To M. Le Veillard he
confessed an almost Hamiltonian distrust of the multitude: The
Constitution "has ... met with great opposition in some States, for we
are at present a nation of politicians. And, though there is a general
dread of giving too much power to our _governors_, I think we are more
in danger from too little obedience in the _governed_."[i-365] He made
the same complaint a year later: "We have been guarding against an evil
that old States are most liable to, _excess of power_ in the rulers,
but our present danger seems to be _defect of obedience_ in the
subjects."[i-366] It is difficult to reconcile his inveterate distrust
of men with his activity in behalf of an almost universal franchise,
reluctance to sanction the principle of checks and balances, and belief
in a unicameral legislature; it is difficult to reconcile the Plutarchan
fervor with which he advocated the wisdom of following great leaders
with his fear of a vigorous executive. It is not improbable that those
ideas which are generally anti-federalistic in Franklin's political view
are in part the result of his hatred of proprietary abuses which he
witnessed as a provincial statesman during his middle age.
VII. FRANKLIN AS SCIENTIST AND DEIST
Jan Ingenhousz, the celebrated physician to Maria Theresa of Austria,
wrote a letter to Franklin on May 3, 1780, which doubtless caused the
patriarch of Passy to reflect--not without sadness of heart--on the
diversified fortune which time and circumstance had devised for him. The
physician (no friend to the American revolution) implored Franklin not
to abandon "entirely the world Nature whose laws made by the supreme
wisdom and is constant and unalterable as its legislature himself
[_sic_]." Ingenhousz lamented that Franklin, "a Philosopher so often and
so successfully employed in researches of the most intricate and the
most mysterious operations of Nature,"[i-367] should have given his time
to politics.
Franklin is now most commonly viewed as a utilitarian moralist, a
successful tradesman and printer, a shrewd propagandist and financier,
the diplomat of the Revolution, and if at all as a scientist, then only
as a virtuoso, fashioning devices, such as open stoves, bifocal
spectacles, and lightning rods, for practical uses. Probably few
general readers are aware that Franklin was a disinterested scientist in
the sense that he interrogated nature with an eye to discovering its
immutable laws. It is conversely supposed that Franklin himself was
unaware of any inclination to pursue natural science to the exclusion of
those political achievements which have identified him as one of the
wiliest and sagest diplomats of the Enlightenment.
It may be learned, however (not without astonishment), that Franklin
almost from the beginning of his participation in politics resented the
time given over to such activities, as so much time lost to his
speculations and research in natural science. As early as 1752 he
wistfully (though realistically) confessed that "business sometimes
obliges one to postpone philosophical amusements."[i-368] A month after
this, he wrote to Cadwallader Colden: "I congratulate you on the
prospect you have, of passing the remainder of life in philosophical
retirement."[i-369] In the midst of investigating waterspouts, he
observed to John Perkins: "How much soever my Inclinations lead me to
philosophical Inquiries, I am so engag'd in Business, public and
private, that those more pleasing pursuits [of natural science] are
frequently interrupted...."[i-370] He urged Dr. John Fothergill to give
himself "repose, delight in viewing the Operations of nature in the
vegetable creation."[i-371] In 1765, upon completing his negotiations in
behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly, he promised Lord Kames that he
would "engage in no other" political affairs.[i-372] To the notable
professor of physics of the University of Turin, Giambatista Beccaria,
he wrote in 1768 from London (where he had sought to have the Stamp Act
rescinded) that he had to "take away entirely" his "attention from
philosophical matters, though I have constantly cherished the hope of
returning home where I could find leisure to resume the studies that I
have shamefully put off from time to time."[i-373] Again, in 1779, he
confessed to Beccaria: "I find myself here [Passy] immers'd in Affairs,
which absorb my Attention, and prevent my pursuing those Studies in
which I always found the highest Satisfaction; and I am now grown so
old, as hardly to hope for a Return of that Leisure and Tranquillity so
necessary for Philosophical Disquisitions."[i-374] He longed (in 1782)
to have Congress release him so that he might "spend the Evening of Life
more agreeably in philosophic [devoted to natural science]
Leisure."[i-375] He who, John Winthrop claimed, "was good at starting
Game for Philosophers,"[i-376] acknowledged that he had thrown himself
on the public, which, "having as it were eaten my flesh, seemed now
resolved to pick my bones."[i-377] Reverend Manasseh Cutler visited
Franklin a few months before the patriarch's death. They ardently
discussed botany, Franklin boyish in his eagerness to show the Reverend
Mr. Cutler a massive book, containing "the whole of Linnaeus' Systema
Vegetabilies." "The Doctor seemed extremely fond, through the course of
the visit, of dwelling on Philosophical subjects, and particularly that
of natural History, while the other Gentlemen were swallowed up with
politics."[i-378] In a fictitious (?) conversation between Joseph II of
Austria and Franklin, the Newton of electricity is reported as
explaining that he was early in life attracted by natural philosophy:
"Necessity afterwards made me a politician.... I was Franklin, the
_Philosopher_ to the world, long after I had in fact, become Franklin
the Politician."[i-379] After reviewing the evidence, it seems
incredulous to doubt that, regardless of his achievements in other
fields, Franklin sought his greatest intellectual pleasure in scientific
research and speculation, and that his doctrines of scientific deism
antedated and conditioned his political, economic, and humanitarian
interests.
If Franklin's inventions have been justly praised, his affections for
the empirical scientific method and his philosophic interest in Nature's
laws have been unjustly ignored. He observed to Ebenezer Kinnersley
"that a philosopher cannot be too much on his guard in crediting their
["careless observers'"] relations of things extraordinary, and should
never build an hypothesis on any thing but clear facts and experiments,
or it will be in danger of soon falling ... like a house of
cards";[i-380] and to Abbé Soulavie, "You see I have given a loose to
imagination; but I approve much more your method of philosophizing,
which proceeds upon actual observation, makes a collection of facts, and
concludes no farther than those facts will warrant."[i-381] In 1782 he
wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, that he
longed to "sit down in sweet Society with my English philosophic
Friends, communicating to each other new Discoveries, and proposing
Improvements of old ones; all tending to extend the Power of Man over
Matter, avert or diminish the Evils he is subject to, or augment the
Number of his Enjoyments."[i-382] A careful study of his scientific
papers discloses that he was not untrained in the method of hypotheses
sustained or rejected by patient and laborious experimentation: not
fortuitously did he arrive at conclusions in electricity, which were
epochal in (1) "His rejection of the two-fluid theory of electricity
and substitution of the one-fluid theory; (2) his coinage of the
appropriate terms _positive_ and _negative_, to denote an excess or a
deficit of the common electric fluid; (3) his explanation of the Leyden
jar, and, notably, his recognition of the paramount rôle played by the
glass or dielectric; (4) his experimental demonstration of the identity
of lightning and electricity; and (5) his invention of the lightning
conductor for the protection of life and property, together with his
clear statement of its preventive and protective functions."[i-383] Not
only an inventor, Franklin inductively observed natural phenomena, and
drew conclusions until he had created a virtual _Principia_ of
electricity. His contemporaries were not loath to honor him as a second
Newton. Franklin, however, was in all of his researches under a
self-confessed yoke which doubtless tended to deny him access to the
profoundest reaches of scientific inquiry: from Philadelphia he wrote in
1753 to Cadwallader Colden, eminent mathematician (as well as versatile
scientist): "Your skill & Expertness in Mathematical Computations, will
afford you an Advantage in these Disquisitions [among them, researches
in electricity], that I lament the want of, who am like a Man searching
for some thing in a dark Room where I can only grope and guess; while
you proceed with a Candle in your Hand."[i-384]
In an effort to learn the _modus operandi_ of Franklin's philosophic
thought, let us now review its genetic development, its probable
sources, its relation to scientific deism, and the degree to which he
achieved that serene repose for which he ever strove. A pioneer American
rationalist, not without his claims to being "another Voltaire,"
Franklin as a youth read those works which were forming or interpreting
the thought patterns of the age. Born in an epoch presided over by a
Locke and a Newton, an epoch of rationalism and "supernatural"
rationalism, alike fed by physico-mathematical speculation. Franklin,
barely beyond adolescence, felt the impacts of the age of reason.
Scholars before and since M. M. Curtis have explained that "in religion
he was a Deist of the type of Lord Herbert of Cherbury."[i-385] M. Faÿ
has sought, without convincing documentary evidence, to interpret
Franklin's philosophic mind in terms of Pythagoreanism.[i-386] We may
find that these views are over simple and historically inadequate--even
wrong.
Franklin was reared "piously in the Dissenting way"[i-387] by a "pious
and prudent" Calvinistic father who died as he lived, with "entire
Dependence on his Redeemer."[i-388] "Religiously educated as a
Presbyterian,"[i-389] young Benjamin was taught that _Major est
Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenü capacitas_. He was
nurtured on the Bible and "books in polemic divinity," and he regularly
attended services at the Old South Church. Doubtless without reflection
he was led to identify goodness with the church and its worship. He was
a part of New England's bibliolatry. Not long before he was apprenticed
to his brother James he read Cotton Mather's _Bonifacius--An Essay upon
the Good that is to be Devised and Designed by those who desire to
Answer the Great End of Life, and to do good while they live_, and
Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects: or Effectual Ways for Advancing
the Interests of the Nation_. He confessed in 1784 that _Bonifacius_
"gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct
through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of
a _doer of good_ than on any other kind of reputation."[i-390] Mather,
as an exponent of Christian charity, urged that man help his neighbors
"with a rapturous assiduity,"[i-391] that he may discover the "ravishing
satisfaction which he might find in relieving the distresses of a poor
miserable neighbor."[i-392] It is ironic that Mather should have
apparently aided a young man to divorce himself from the strenuous
subtleties of theology. (Franklin was too young to gather that Mather
circumspectly warned against a covenant of works, and hence was Pauline
in his advocacy of _charity_ rather than of humanitarianism.) And from
Defoe's _Essays_ Franklin received more than a penchant for projects.
Like Mather, Defoe observed that "God Almighty has commanded us to
relieve and help one another in distress."[i-393] Defoe seemed to young
Franklin to dwell on fellow-service--to promise that the good man need
not have understood all of the dogma of Old South meetinghouse.
Apprenticed to James, Franklin admitted that he "now had access to
better books."[i-394] Whatever the extent of James's library in 1718, by
1722 the _New England Courant_ collection included Burnet's _History of
the Reformation_, _Theory of the Earth_, the _Spectator_ papers, _The
Guardian_, _Art of Thinking_ [Du Port Royal], _The Tale of a Tub_, and
the writings of Tillotson.[i-395] After reading most probably in these,
and, as we are told, in Tryon's _Way to Health_, Xenophon's
_Memorabilia_, digests of some of Boyle's lectures, Anthony Collins,
Locke, and Shaftesbury, Franklin became in his Calvinist religion a
"real doubter."[i-396] He became at the age of sixteen, as a result of
reading Boyle's Lectures,[i-397] a "thorough Deist."[i-398] We cannot be
certain of the Lectures read by Franklin, but we may observe Bentley's
_Folly of Atheism_ (1692) and Derham's _Physico-Theology_ (1711-1712),
which are representative of the series provided for by Boyle. Like
Mather's _The Christian Philosopher_ (1721)[i-399] they both employ
science and rationalism to reinforce (never as equivalent to or
substitute for) scriptural theology. Fed by Newtonian physics, Bentley
discovers in gravity "the great basis of all mechanism," the "immediate
_fiat_ and finger of God, and the executions of the divine law."[i-400]
Gravity, "the powerful cement which holds together this magnificent
structure of the world,"[i-401] is the result of the Deity "who _always
acts geometrically_." Borrowing from Cockburne, Ray, Bentley, and
Fénelon, Derham offers likewise to prove the existence and operations of
the Workman from his Work.[i-402]
It is unlikely that Boyle's Lectures (characterized by orthodox
rationalism, augmented by Newtonianism) would alone have precipitated in
Franklin a "thorough deism." Not improbably Locke, Shaftesbury, and
Anthony Collins (whom Franklin mentions reading) were most militant in
overthrowing his inherited bibliolatry. Although he does not say exactly
which of Collins's works he read, Collins's rationale is repeated
clearly enough in any one of his pieces. Warring against "crack-brain'd
Enthusiasts," the "prodigious Ignorance" and "Impositions of Priests,"
against defective scriptural texts, Collins defends "our natural
Notions" against the authoritarianism of priests. Vilifying the
authority of the surplice, he apotheosizes the authority of
reason.[i-403] He intensifies the English tradition of
every-man-his-own-priest, and exclaims "How uncertain Tradition
is!"[i-404] From this militant friend of John Locke, Franklin was
doubtless impregnated with an _odium theologicum_ and an exalted idea of
the sanctity of Reason.
Having read _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_,[i-405] Franklin
may have remembered that Locke there observed, "Nothing that is contrary
to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of
reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith,
wherein reason hath nothing to do."[i-406] Like Collins, Locke urged a
deistic rationale:
Since then the precepts of Natural Religion are plain, and
very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom to come to be
controverted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed
to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and
natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words;
methinks it would become us to be more careful and diligent
in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and
imperious, in imposing our own sense and interpretations of
the latter.[i-407]
In addition Franklin may have been influenced by Locke's implied
Newtonianism; he would suspect the subtleties of the Old South Church
when he read: "For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power
appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational
creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the
discovery of a Deity."[i-408] Like Newton, Locke inferred an infinite
and benevolent Geometrician from "the magnificent harmony of the
universe."
Franklin also read Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, which Warburton
quotes Pope as saying "had done more harm to revealed religion in
England than all the works of infidelity put together."[i-409] Although
he may have pondered over Shaftesbury's "virtuoso theory of
Benevolence," he was not one to be readily convinced of the innate
altruism of man. His Puritan heritage linked with an empirical realism
prevented him from becoming prey to Shaftesbury's a priori optimism. He
was aware of the potential danger of a complacent trust in natural
impulses, which often lead to
The love of sweet security in sin.
To what extent did Franklin's nascent humanitarianism--mildly provoked
by the neighborliness of Mather and Defoe--receive additional sanction
from Shaftesbury's doctrine that "compassion is the supreme form of
moral beauty, the neglect of it the greatest of all offenses against
nature's ordained harmony"?[i-410] Identifying self-love and social,
Shaftesbury saw the divine temper achieved through affection for the
public, the "universal good."[i-411] Born among men who were convinced
of the supremacy of scripture, Franklin would at first be astonished
(then perhaps liberated) upon reading in the _Characteristics_ that
"Religion excludes only perfect atheism."[i-412] From such a piece as
Shaftesbury's _An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit_ Franklin learned
that not all men preserved a union between theology and ethics,
scripture and religion. Although Shaftesbury occasionally indicated a
reverence for sacred scriptures, the totality of his thought was cast in
behalf of natural religion. He was convinced that the "Deity is
sufficiently revealed through natural Phenomena."[i-413] Extolling the
apprehension of the Deity through man's uniform reason, Shaftesbury
urbanely lampooned enthusiasm, that private revelation which threatened
to prevail against the _consensus gentium_.
By 1725 Franklin had divorced theology from morality and morality from
conscience, having punctuated his youth with faunish "errata."[i-414]
Although he was as a youth too much at ease in Zion, he did not lose
substantial (if then a theoretic) faith in the struggle between the law
of the spirit and the law of the members. Nurtured by the Bible, Bunyan,
Addison and Steele, Tryon, Socrates, and Xenophon--a blend of Christian
and classical traditions--he felt the reasonableness, if not the
saintliness, of curbing the resolute sway of his natural self.[i-415]
After five years with James, a year in Philadelphia where part of the
time he worked with Samuel Keimer,[i-416] a fanatic and bearded
Camisard, Franklin, through the duplicity of Governor Keith, found
himself in November, 1724, aboard the _London-Hope_, England-bound. It
would be unfair to Franklin were we to think him a primitive colonist to
whom England was an unreal, incalculable land. We remember that James
knew the London of Anne, Addison, Steele, Locke, and Newton. And we have
seen that the _New England Courant_ library was one of which no London
gentleman and scholar need have been ashamed. As a worker on this
newspaper Franklin had set up the names and some indications of the
thoughts of such men as Fénelon, Tillotson, Defoe, Swift, Butler, Bayle,
Isaac Watts, Blount, Burnet, Whiston, Temple, Trenchard and Gordon,
Denham, Garth, Dryden, Milton, Locke, Flamstead, and Newton.[i-417]
During his two years in London, working successively in the printing
houses of Samuel Palmer and James Watts, he mingled with many of the
leaders of the day. Probably because he had, while yet in America, read
(in the transactions of the Royal Society) of the virtuosi's interest in
asbestos, he wrote to Sir Hans Sloane, offering to show him purses made
of that novel stuff.[i-418] And we know that Sir Hans Sloane received
Franklin in his home at Bloomsbury Square. Before he met other notables
he published (what he called later an "erratum") _A Dissertation on
Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_ (1725).[i-419] Franklin
himself said this work was the result of his setting up Wollaston's _The
Religion of Nature Delineated_[i-420] at Palmer's and his not agreeing
with the author's "reasonings." Coming to Wollaston's work (with
Franklin's _Dissertation_ and _Articles of Belief_ in mind) we can,
however, see much that Franklin agreed with, general principles which do
little more than reflect the current patterns of thought. Like Franklin,
Wollaston saw Reason as "the great law of our nature."[i-421] With Locke
he denied innate ideas.[i-422] That part of _The Religion of Nature
Delineated_ in which he searched with laborious syllogistic reasoning
for the Ultimate Cause (which could not produce itself) may have been
boring to the less agile mind of the young printer. Wollaston, however,
apologized for his syllogistic gymnastics offered in proof of Deity
since "much more may those greater motions we see in the world, and the
phenomena attending them" afford arguments for such a proof:
I mean the motions of the planets and the heavenly bodies.
For _these_ must be put into motion, either by one Common
mighty Mover, acting upon them immediately, or by causes and
laws of His Appointment; or by their respective movers, who,
for reasons to which you can by this time be no stranger,
must depend upon some _Superior_, that furnished them with
the power of doing this.[i-423]