Benjamin Franklin: Representative Selections

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]

With Newtonian rapture he marveled at "the grandness of this fabric of the world,"[i-424] at "the chorus of planets moving periodically, by uniform laws." Rapt in wonder, he gazed "up to the fixt stars, that radiant numberless host of heaven." Like a Blackmore, Ray, Fontenelle, or Newton, he felt that they were "probably all possest by proper inhabitants."[i-425] He wondered at the "just and geometrical arrangement of things."[i-426] These are all sentiments that Franklin expressed in his philosophical juvenilia.[i-427] But then, Franklin (after reading this sublimated geometry which reduced the parts of creation to an equally sublime simplicity) noted in Wollaston that man must be a free agent,[i-428] that good and evil are as black and white, distinguishable,[i-429] that empirically the will is free, the author urging with Johnsonian good sense, "The short way of knowing this certainly is to try."[i-430] Franklin's Dissertation was dedicated to his friend James Ralph and prefaced by a misquotation from Dryden and Lee's Oedipus. It purports, as Franklin wrote in 1779, "to prove the doctrine of fate, from the supposed attributes of God... that in erecting and governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew what would be best; infinitely good, he must be disposed, and infinitely powerful, he must be able to execute it: consequently all is right."[i-431] With confidence lent him by his a priori method, he proposed: "I. There is said to be a First Mover, who is called God, Maker of the Universe. II. He is said to be all-wise, all-good, all-powerful."[i-432] With the nonchalance of an abstractionist, he concluded, "Evil doth not exist."[i-433] Transcending the sensational necessitarianism[i-434] of Anthony Collins and John Locke, Franklin observed (with an eye on Newton's law of gravitation) that man has liberty, the "Liberty of the same Nature with the Fall of a heavy Body to the Ground; it has Liberty to fall, that is, it meets with nothing to hinder its Fall, but at the same Time it is necessitated to fall, and has no Power or Liberty to remain suspended."[i-435] As a disciple of Locke's psychology, Franklin reflected his concept of the tabula rasa in describing an infant's mind which "is as if it were not." "All our Ideas are first admitted by the Senses and imprinted on the Brain, increasing in Number by Observation and Experience; there they become the Subjects of the Soul's Action."

In the Dissertation one can discover the extent to which Franklin had absorbed (if not from Newton's own works, then from his popularizers and intellectual sons such as Pemberton, Franklin's friend) several of the essential tenets of Newtonianism. Here we see his belief in a universe motivated by immutable natural laws comprising a sublimely harmonious system reflecting a Wise Geometrician; a world in which man desires to affect a corresponding inner heaven. Enraptured by the order of the natural laws of Newtonianism, and like a Shaftesbury searching for a demonstrable inner harmony, Franklin (carrying his a priorism to logical absurdity) was unable to reconcile free will with Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Goodness. (In how far was this partly the result of his having been steeped in Calvinism's doctrine of Election?)

The Dissertation is as appreciative of Newton's contribution to physics and thought as Thomson's[i-436] To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton. Not unlike Franklin's framework is Shaftesbury's thought in An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit.[i-437] Since Franklin acknowledged his reading of Shaftesbury and since as late as 1730 he borrowed heavily from the Characteristics, it seems probable that Shaftesbury lent Franklin in this case some sanction for his only metaphysical venture.[i-438]

As one result of his printing A Dissertation he made the acquaintance of Lyons, author of The Infallibility of Human Judgement[i-439] who introduced him to Mandeville[i-440] and Dr. Henry Pemberton, who in turn "Promis'd to give me an opportunity, some time or other, of seeing Sir Isaac Newton, of which I was extreamly desirous; but this never happened [the italics are the editors']."[i-441] Dr. Pemberton, physician and mathematician, met Newton in 1722, and during the time Franklin enjoyed his friendship was helping Newton to prepare the third edition of the Principia. As a result of his aiding Newton "to discover and understand his writings,"[i-442] Pemberton in 1728 published A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy. It is obvious that Franklin could have discovered few men with a more concentrated and enthusiastic knowledge of Newtonianism than that possessed by Dr. Pemberton. As we have already noted, Franklin undoubtedly derived his appreciation of Newtonian speculation not from grubbing in the Principia but from secondary sources. There is no reason to apologize for Franklin on this score when we remember that Voltaire, who popularized Newtonianism in France, exclaimed: "Very few people read Newton because it is necessary to be learned to understand him. But everybody talks about him." Desaguliers, coming to London from Oxford in 1713, observed that "he found all Newtonian philosophy generally receiv'd among persons of all ranks and professions, and even among the ladies by the help of experiments."[i-443] Pemberton wrote that the desire after knowledge of Newtonianism "is by nothing more fully illustrated, than by the inclination of men to gain an acquaintance with the operations of nature; which disposition to enquire after the causes of things is so general, that all men of letters, I believe, find themselves influenced by it."[i-444] Through the sublimated mathematics of the Principia, Pemberton observed, "the similitude found in all parts of the universe makes it undoubted, that the whole is governed by one supreme being, to whom the original is owing of the frame of nature, which evidently is the effect of choice and design."[i-445] To what extent Franklin later gave evidence of his knowledge of Newtonian speculation we shall further discover in his Articles of Belief.

He returned in the summer of 1726 on the Berkshire to Philadelphia with Mr. Denham, a sweetly reasonable Quaker.[i-446] During this journey he wrote his Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia, indicating a virtuoso's interest in all novel phenomena of nature. In Philadelphia he worked for Denham, then Keimer, and finally established his own printing house in 1728, a year after founding the Junto,[i-447] and the year of his Articles of Belief. By this time, Franklin, like Hume, wearied of metaphysics. Commonly this creed has been described as illustrating the deism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It is true that Franklin admits a God who ought to be worshipped, the chief parts of worship being the cultivation of virtue and piety; but there is no suggestion of Lord Herbert's fourth and fifth dogmas, that sin must be atoned for by repentance, and that punishment and rewards follow this life. His reaction against Calvinism may be shown in his failure to include reference to scripture, the experience of faith, and the triune godhead presided over by the redeemer Christ. As a deist he accepted "one supreme, most perfect Being." This Deity is the "Author and Father of the Gods themselves." "Infinite and incomprehensible," He has created many gods, each having "made for himself one glorious Sun, attended with a beautiful and admirable System of Planets." Franklin offered his adoration to that "Wise and Good God, who is the author and owner of our System." It is conventional to suggest that his interest in the plurality of worlds and gods should be traced to Plato's Timaeus.[i-448] In the absence of any conclusive evidence concerning Franklin's study of Plato, and in view of his profound awareness of contemporary scientific and philosophical thought, it seems more reasonable to see the source of this idea in the thought of his own age. Let us remember that with the growth of the heliocentric cosmology there resulted a vast expanse of the unknown, bound to intrigue the speculations of the philosophers of the age. We know that Ray, Fénelon, Blackmore, Huygens, Fontenelle, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Newton all wondered about the plurality of worlds and gods.

In company with the supernatural rationalists and deists, Franklin exalted Reason as the experience through which God is discovered and known. Through Reason he is "capable of observing his Wisdom in the Creation." With Newtonian zeal, upon observing "the glorious Sun, with his attending Worlds," he saw the Deity responsible first for imparting "their prodigious motion," and second for maintaining "the wondrous Laws by which they move." As we have seen above, this argument from the design of creation to a Creator was one of the most influential and popular of the impacts of Newtonian physics. Like Fénelon, Blackmore, and Ray, whom he read and recommended that others read,[i-449] Franklin exclaimed:

Thy Wisdom, thy Power, and thy Goodness are everywhere clearly seen; in the air and in the water, in the Heaven and on the Earth; Thou providest for the various winged Fowl, and the innumerable Inhabitants of the Water; thou givest Cold and Heat, Rain and Sunshine, in their Season, [et cetera].

In addition to the works mentioned above which aided Franklin in arriving at a natural religion, it is certain that his views and even idiom received stout reinforcement from such a passage as follows from Ray's classic work:

There is no greater, at least no more palpable and convincing argument of the existence of a Deity, than the admirable act and wisdom that discovers itself in the make and constitution, the order and disposition, the ends and uses of all the parts and members of this stately fabric of heaven and earth; for if in the works of art... a curious edifice or machine, counsel, design, and direction to an end appearing in the whole frame, and in all the several pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and operation of some intelligent architect or engineer, why shall not also in the works of nature, that grandeur and magnificence, that excellent contrivance for beauty, order, use &c. which is observable in them, wherein they do as much transcend the effects of human art as infinite power and wisdom exceeds finite, infer the existence and efficacy of an omnipotent and all-wise Creator?[i-450]

Then he directly referred to the Archbishop of Cambray's Traité de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu. Oliver Elton observes that this work "with its appeal to popular science, is the chief counterpart in France to the 'physico-theology' current at the time in England."[i-451] From the skeleton of the smallest animal, "the bones, the tendons, the veins, the arteries, the nerves, the muscles, which compose the body of a single man"[i-452] to "this vaulted sky" which turns "around so regularly,"[i-453] all show "the infinite skill of its Author."[i-454] Although Fénelon is applying Cartesian physics, here Descartes reinforced Newtonianism; like Newton, Fénelon argued that cosmic motion is ordered by "immutable laws," so "constant and so salutary." Blackmore's Creation, a Philosophical Poem (1712), aiming to demonstrate "the existence of a God from the marks of wisdom, design, contrivance, and the choice of ends and means, which appear in the universe"[i-455] also furnished additional sanction for Franklin's emphasis on the wondrous laws of the creation and the discovery of the Deity in his Work. Like James Thomson, Blackmore seeks to show how

The long coherent chain of things we find
Leads to a Cause Supreme, a wise Creating Mind.[i-456]

In revolt against the contractile elements in Calvinism, Franklin believed that God "is not offended, when he sees his Children solace themselves in any manner of pleasant exercises and Innocent Delights."[i-457] In his Articles of Belief Franklin retains from his Dissertation his a priori concept of the Deity as a creator and sustainer of "Wondrous Laws," immutable and beneficent. To the depersonalized First Mover, however, he has added "some of those Passions he has planted in us," and he suggests furthermore that the Deity is mildly providential. A maker of systematic, if inhuman, metaphysics in the Dissertation, the author of the Articles, in spite of the superficial and embryonic metaphysics, succeeds better in making himself at home in his world. To this embryonic religion (linked with Franklin's obsession with the plurality of worlds and gods—of no real significance save to indicate picturesquely the extent to which he had, with the scientists of his age, extended the limits of the physical universe) Franklin welded a pattern of ethics, prudential but stern.

Mr. Hefelbower's description of the growth of free thought might appropriately be applied to Franklin's Articles: "As the supernatural waned in radical Deism, the ethical grew in importance, until religion was but a moral system on a theistic background."[i-458] Although the metaphysical portions of this work are far too neighborly and casual to be inspiring and provocative of saintliness, the ethical conclusions (would that they were uttered less consciously and complacently!) are worthy of the introspective force of New England's stern mind, of the classic tradition of Socrates and Aristotle, and of England's unbending emphasis on the middle way.[i-459] One could learn from the Articles how to be just, if he did not discover what is meant by the beauty of holiness. In 1728 Franklin, though bewildered by the tenuousness of metaphysics, based his religion on the "everlasting tables of right reason," plumbing the "mighty volumes of visible nature." He was thus our pioneer scientific deist, who discovered his chief sanction in popularized Newtonian physics.

Following Franklin's formal profession of deism buttressed by Newtonian science in 1728, one must depend on scattered references to plot the persistence of his philosophic ideology. His Dialogues between Philocles and Horatio (1730), borrowed[i-460] from Shaftesbury's The Moralists, suggest that his moral speculations were dual and not reconciled; he seems torn between humanitarian compassion and the self-development of the individual, unable to decide which is the nobler good. One may observe that this moral bifurcation was inveterate in Franklin's mind, never resolving itself into a fondness for the idea that human nature is inexorably the product of institutions and outward social forms. A Witch Trial at Mount Holly suggests that he felt free to handle scriptures with Aristophanic levity. His intellectual conviction of a matchless physical harmony, as yet unmatched in the world by a corresponding moral harmony, is joyously seen in Preface to Poor Richard, 1735:

Whatever may be the Musick of the Spheres, how great soever the Harmony of the Stars, 'tis certain there is no Harmony among the Stargazers; but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange Curs....[i-461]

Even Polly Baker is made to appeal to "nature and nature's God,"[i-462] discovering in her bastard children the Deity's "divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies." In Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (1749) Franklin remarked in a note on Natural Philosophy that "Proper Books may be, Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, Derham's Physico-Theology, [Pluche's?] Spectacle de la Nature, &c."[i-463] Poor Richard, in addition to prognostications of weather, survey of roads, Rabelaisian wit, and aphoristic wisdom, was a popular vehicle for the diffusion of a Newtonianism bordering on a mild form of deism.[i-464]

Since Franklin's interest in science is too commonly discussed as if his research were synonymous with a tinkering and utilitarian inventiveness, it is pertinent to inquire in how far it was at least partially (or even integrally) the result of his philosophic acceptance of Newtonianism. Since his philosophic rationale preceded his activities in science, it will not do to suggest that his interest in science was responsible for his scientific deism. He wrote (August 15, 1745) to Cadwallader Colden, who was receptive to Newtonianism, that he [Franklin] "ought to study the sciences" in which hitherto he had merely dabbled.[i-465] Then follow his electrical experiments. In one of his famous letters on the properties and effects of electricity (sent to Peter Collinson, July 29, 1750) he allowed that the principle of repulsion "affords another occasion of adoring that wisdom which has made all things by weight and measure!"[i-466] Investigating—like a Newton—nature's laws, Franklin at first hand added to his philosophic assurance of the existence of a Deity, observable in the physical order.

In 1739 Franklin met Reverend George Whitefield, whose sermons and journals he printed while the evangelist remained in the colonies.[i-467] He first angled public opinion through the Pennsylvania Gazette, promising to print Whitefield's pieces "if I find sufficient Encouragement."[i-468] The Pennsylvania Gazette piously hoped that Whitefield's heavenly discourses would be ever remembered: "May the Impression on all our Souls remain, to the Honour of God, both in Ministers and People!"[i-469] As editor (perhaps even writer of some of those notices) Franklin must have squirmed in praising the activities of one who daily cast all deists in hell! But it should be observed that if Franklin could not accept Methodistic zeal, he loved Whitefield, the man.[i-470] Even so did Whitefield regard Franklin, the man and printer—though not the scientific deist. Waiting to embark for England in 1740, Whitefield wrote to Franklin from Reedy Island: "Dear Sir, adieu! I do not despair of your seeing the reasonableness of Christianity. Apply to God, be willing to do the Divine Will, and you shall know it."[i-471] Twelve years later Whitefield wrote to his printer-deist friend: "I find that you grow more and more famous in the learned world. As you have made a pretty considerable progress in the mysteries of electricity, I would now humbly recommend to your diligent unprejudiced pursuit and study the mysteries of the new birth."[i-472] When troops had been sent to Boston, Franklin wrote a letter to Whitefield (after January 21, 1768) which offers a significant clue for estimating Franklin's philosophy: "I see with you that our affairs are not well managed by our rulers here below; I wish I could believe with you, that they are well attended to by those above; I rather suspect, from certain circumstances, that though the general government of the universe is well administered, our particular little affairs are perhaps below notice, and left to take the chance of human prudence or imprudence, as either may happen to be uppermost. It is, however, an uncomfortable thought, and I leave it."[i-473] Whitefield "endorsed his friend's letter with the words, 'Uncomfortable indeed! and blessed be God, unscriptural!'"[i-474] If in 1786 Franklin wrote to an unknown correspondent (perhaps Tom Paine?)[i-475] that any arguments "against the Doctrines of a particular Providence" strike "at the Foundation of all Religion,"[i-476] he also had written not long before that "the Dispensations of Providence in this World puzzle my weak Reason."[i-477] Beneath the taciturn and allegedly complacent, imperturbable Franklin there is apparent a haunting inquietude. Never dead to his Calvinist heritage, he sought to establish a providential relationship between the Deity and man's fortunes, not a little chilled in the presence of the virtually depersonalized Deity of the Enlightenment. If Calvin's God was wrathful, he was providential; his own Deity, if benevolent and omnipotent, seemed strangely remote from the ken of man's moral experience. Science had shown him a Deity existing at the head of a fagot of immutable laws. If this Creator was picturesquely unlike the fickle gods of Olympus, he was strangely like them to the extent that he seemed to exist apart from man's moral nature. When he wrote to his friend, the Bishop of St. Asaph, "It seems my Fate constantly to wish for Repose, and never to obtain it,"[i-478] was he in part longing for the retirement when he would be able to resolve his doubts as to the workings of Providence?

M. Marbois, discussing Franklin's religion with John Adams, quietly noted that "Mr. Franklin adores only great Nature."[i-479] Joseph Priestley "lamented that a man of Dr. Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done so much as he did to make others unbelievers."[i-480] This evidence appears untrustworthy in light of his diffident attitude toward church attendance, even toward scriptures, as it may be discovered in his collected works.[i-481] Even if he did not feel the desire to attend formal services, he seemed, like Voltaire, to feel that they were salutary, if only to furnish the canaille with the will to obey authority. In 1751 Franklin's mother, Abiah Franklin, wrote to her son: "I hope you will lookup to God, and thank Him for all His good providences towards you."[i-482] If he were unable to understand God's providences, it was certain that he did not seek to disturb others by calling the concept of a providential deity into question.

In England and France Franklin was revered as the answer to the Enlightenment's prayer for the ideal philosopher-scientist. Sir John Pringle,[i-483] one of his warmest friends, in a Royal Society lecture in honor of Maskelyne, might well have been describing Franklin's place in eighteenth-century science when he said: "As much then remains to be explored in the celestial regions, you [Maskelyne] are encouraged, Sir, by what has been already attained, to persevere in these hallowed labours, from which have been derived the greatest improvements in the most useful arts, and the loudest declarations of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of the Supreme Architect in the Spacious and beautiful fabric of the world."[i-484] To his age Franklin was "that judicious philosopher," judicious and "enlightened" to the extent that his experiments showed how men "may perceive not only the direction of Divine Wisdom, but the goodness of Providence towards mankind, in having so admirably settled all things in the sublime arrangement of the world, that it should be in the power of men to secure themselves and their habitations against the dire effects of lightning."[i-485] Turgot's famous epigram on Franklin, the republican-deist, that he snatched sceptres from kings and lightning from the heavens, in part expressed the extent to which the French public conceived of Franklin, the scientist, as detracting from the terror in the cosmos, hence making their reasonable world more habitable.[i-486] In the popular mind death-dealing lightning had been the visible symbol and proof of Calvin's wrathful and capricious Jehovah. Franklin's dramatic and widely popularized proof that even lightning's secrets were not past finding out, that it acted according to immutable laws and could be made man's captive and menial slave, no doubt had a powerful influence in encouraging the great untheological public to become ultimately more receptive to deism. If Franklin was apotheosized as the apostle of liberty, he was no less sanctified as a "Modern Prometheus." In his own words, he saw science as freeing man "from vain Terrors."[i-487] To Condorcet, his friend and disciple, Franklin was one who "was enabled to wield a power sufficient to disarm the wrath of Heaven."[i-488]

He expressed his creed just before his death in the often-quoted letter to Ezra Stiles.[i-489] Bearing in mind his inveterate scientific deism, we are not surprised that his religion is one created apart from Christian scripture, that Jesus is the conventional, amiable philosopher, respected but not worshipped by the Enlightenment. If he seems convinced in this letter that God "governs" the universe "by his Providence," we have seen above that his attitude toward the Deity's relation to man and his world was anything but sure and free from disturbing reflection. Convinced that the Deity "ought to be worshipped," he next observed "that the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children." His a priori concept of a benevolent Deity whose goodness is expressed in the harmony of the creation, in effect challenged him to attempt to approximate this kindness in his relations with his fellow men. Apart from provoking humanitarianism, primarily an ethical experience guided not by sentimentality but by reason and practicality. Franklin's natural religion—like deism in general—failed, as scriptural religion does not, to establish a union between theology, the religious life, and ethical behavior. It must be seen that Franklin had no confidence in achieving the good life through mere fellow-service: he continually urged man to conquer passion through reason, seeming to covet pagan sobriety more than he did the satisfaction of having aided man to achieve greater physical ease. If he felt that "to relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike,"[i-490] he warned against helping those who had failed to help themselves, implying that the inner growth of the individual is more significant than his outward charity to others. Whatever be the ultimate resolution of these antithetic principles, we see that his humanitarianism was the offspring of his a priori conceived Deity, augmented by his experiments in science which led to discovery of nature's laws. His emphasis on the inward and vertical growth of the individual toward perfection, on the other hand, may be viewed as the expression of the introspective force of his Puritan heritage and his knowledge, direct and indirect, of classical literature. As in the polarity of his thoughts concerning Providence, so here we see that the modus operandi of his mind is explicable in terms of the interplay of the old and the new, Greek paganism (Socratic self-knowledge) and Christianity and the rationale of the Enlightenment.

Before he became an economist, a statesman, a man of letters, a scientist, he had embraced scientific deism, primarily impelled by Newtonianism. We have observed that it is not improbable that his agrarianism, emphasis on free trade, and tendency toward laissez faire were partially at least the result of his efforts to parallel in economics the harmony of the physical order. Likewise, his views on education were conditioned by his faith in intellectual progress, in the might of Reason, which in turn was in part the result of his scientific deism. Then too, it may well be suggested that his theories of rhetoric were to some degree the result of his rationalistic and scientific habits of mind. We have also seen that his scientific deism was among the motivating factors of his belief in natural rights, which, coupled with his empirical awareness of concrete economic and political abuses issuing from monarchy and imperialistic parliamentarians, made him alive to the sovereignty of the people in their demands for civil and political liberty. This introduction, it is hoped, has made apparent the fact that the growth of Franklin's mind was a complex matter and that it was moulded by a vast multitude of often diverse influences, no one of which alone completely "explains" him. Puritanism, classicism, and neoclassicism were all important influences. Yet perhaps the modus operandi of this myriad-minded colonial, this provincial Leonardo, is best explained in reference to the thought pattern of scientific deism. To see the reflection of Newton and his progeny in Franklin's activities, be they economic, political, literary, or philosophical, lends a compelling organic unity to the several sides of his genius, heretofore seen as unrelated. Franklin's mind represents an intellectual coherence—an imperfect counterpart to the physical harmony of the Newtonian order, of which all through his life he was a disciple.

Footnotes:

[i-1] The Works of John Adams, ed. by C. F. Adams (Boston, 1856), f, 660.

[i-2] W. P. Trent, "Benjamin Franklin," McClure's Magazine, VIII, 273 (Jan., 1897).

[i-3] Cited in C. R. Weld's History of the Royal Society (London, 1848), I, 146. For Baconian influence see I, 57 f. See also Edwin Greenlaw, "The New Science and English Literature in the Seventeenth Century," Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, XIII, 331-59 (1925). Of dominant tendencies he stresses (a) a "new realism, or sense of fact and reliance on observation and experiment"; (b) the disregard for authority in favor of free inquiry; and (c) the development of faith in progress, inspiring men to improve their worldly condition.

[i-4] E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, 208. Newtonianism as a method and a philosophy has been ably examined by recent scholars. See, for examples, C. Becker, The Declaration of Independence, especially chap. II, and The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers; and in Bibliography, pp. cli ff., below, W. M. Horton (chap. II); C. S. Duncan; H. Drennon; L. Bloch; E. Halévy. See also Isabel St. John Bliss, "Young's Night Thoughts in Relation to Contemporary Christian Apologetics," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XLIX, 37-70 (March, 1934); J. H. Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind (Boston, 1926), chap. X ff.; H. H. Clark, "An Historical Interpretation of Thomas Paine's Religion," University of California Chronicle, XXXV, 56-87 (Jan., 1933), and "Toward a Reinterpretation of Thomas Paine," American Literature, V, 133-45 (May, 1933).

[i-5] Burtt, op. cit. 223.

[i-6] Article, "Deism."

[i-7] Article, "Nature."

[i-8] P. Smith, A History of Modern Culture (New York, 1934), II, 17-8.

[i-9] See S. Hefelbower, The Relation of John Locke to English Deism.

[i-10] Primitivism and the Idea of Progress in English Popular Literature of the Eighteenth Century, 168-9: "One inference that might be drawn from the theory was that while the infant whose mind is a blank page at birth is not so well off from the primitivistic point of view as the one who comes into the world already equipped with a complete set of the laws of nature and a predisposition to obey them, he is infinitely better off than the infant whose poor little mind had been loaded with original sin by his remote ancestors. For the orthodox baby, born in sin, there is almost no hope, except in supernatural aid; but if we suppose that man's ideas are all derived, as Locke postulated, from sense-impressions, then we may conclude that all men, rich and poor, primitive and civilized, are on an equal footing intellectually at birth. Although the primitive child does not have the help of civilization in the development of his mind, neither does he have its superstitions, prejudices, and corrupting influences; and he might actually be better off than the product of civilization—at least so many a primitivist argued. But one might draw another inference from the tabula rasa theory. Men, however corrupt they are now, may still have a chance of regeneration if their mind is really like blank paper at birth." For eighteenth-century primitivism see also H. N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage (New York, 1928).

[i-11] H. J. Laski, Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham (New York, 1920), 9. See also W. A. Dunning, A History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu; G. S. Veitch, Genesis of Parliamentary Reform; and G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (2d ed., Cambridge, England, 1927).

[i-12] K. Martin, French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 13.

[i-13] See J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, chap. VIII; and J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopædists, I, 6: "The great central moral of it all was this: that human nature is good, that the world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions."

[i-14] "Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXXI (N. S. XXIV), 277 (June, 1916).

[i-15] See Bury, op. cit.; Whitney, op. cit.; and J. Delvaille, Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès (Paris, 1910).

[i-16] R. Crane, "Anglican Apologetics and the Idea of Progress, 1699-1745," Modern Philology, XXXI, 273-306 (Feb., 1934), and 349-82 (May, 1934).

[i-17] The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, 30-1.

[i-18] N. L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists.

[i-19] D. Mornet, French Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 50-1. Also see his Les sciences de la nature en France au XVIII^e siècle (Paris, 1911), and R. L. Cru, Diderot as a Disciple of English Thought (New York, 1913). See Morley, op. cit., I, 31 ff., and Martin, op. cit.

[i-20] An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France (Glasgow, 1766), 61.

[i-21] Consult M. Roustan, The Pioneers of the French Revolution, and L. Ducros, French Society in the Eighteenth Century.

[i-22] Quoted in J. Fiske's The Beginnings of New England, 73. For the seventeenth-century New England way, see especially F. H. Foster, A Genetic History of the New England Theology (Chicago, 1907); P. Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650: A Genetic Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1933); B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, The Puritan Priest; I. W. Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools, 3-58 and passim; H. W. Schneider, The Puritan Mind; J. Haroutunian, Piety versus Moralism; R. and L. Boas, Cotton Mather: Keeper of the Puritan Conscience (New York, 1928). See Bk. V of Mather's Magnalia, "prose epic of New England Puritanism" (B. Wendell, Literary History of America, 50).

[i-23] Prior to the Treaty of Paris (1763) the American colonies were indebted primarily to English liberalism for ideas subversive of colonial orthodoxy. If works of Fénelon, Fontenelle, Bayle, Voltaire, and Rousseau are occasionally found in the colonies prior to 1763, these are dwarfed beside the impact of such English minds as those of Trenchard and Gordon, Collins, Wollaston, Tillotson, Boyle, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Newton. It was only in the twilight of the century that French liberalism, itself nursed on English speculation, began to impinge on the thought-life of the colonies. See H. M. Jones, America and French Culture. Also see L. Rosenthal, "Rousseau at Philadelphia," Magazine of American History, VII, 46-55. See works of Riley, Koch, Gohdes, Morais, in Bibliography, pp. cli ff., below.

[i-24] Fiske, op. cit., 124.

[i-25] F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), 30.

[i-26] Ibid., 38.

[i-27] Whitney, op. cit., 83-4.

[i-28] See R. M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (London, 1921).

[i-29] T. Hornberger's "The Date, the Source, and the Significance of Cotton Mather's Interest in Science," American Literature, VI, 413-20 (Jan., 1935), offers evidence to show that Mather's thought in this work is latent in earlier works.

[i-30] K. Murdock (ed.), Selections from Cotton Mather (New York, 1926), xlix-l; see G. L. Kittredge items (Murdock, lxii), and Hornberger, op. cit.

[i-31] Murdock, op. cit., 286.

[i-32] Ibid., 292.

[i-33] Ibid., 349.

[i-34] Riley, op. cit., 196.

[i-35] Quoted in H. M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America, 25.

[i-36] Ibid., 17. See also G. A. Koch, Republican Religion.

[i-37] Travels in North America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782 (London, 1787), I, 445.

[i-38] F. E. Brasch, "Newton's First Critical Disciple in the American Colonies—John Winthrop," in Sir Isaac Newton, 1727-1927 (Baltimore, 1928), 301.

[i-39] H. and C. Schneider (eds.), Samuel Johnson, President of Kings College: His Career and Writings (New York, 1929), I, 6.

[i-40] Ibid., I, 8-9. It will be remembered that Thomas Young was struck with science and deism while at Yale: he it was who introduced liberal ideas to that militant prince of deists (with Thomas Paine), Ethan Allen.

[i-41] Jacobus Rohaultus physica Latine reddita et annotata ex, Js. Newtonii principiis (1697).

[i-42] Literary Diary, I, 556 (1775).

[i-43] D. Stimson, The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory, 48.

[i-44] See S. E. Morison, "The Harvard School of Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century," New England Quarterly, VII, 3 (March, 1934).

[i-45] Ibid., 7. In 1672 Harvard received her first telescope. Such men as Winthrop and Thomas Brattle were actively interested in science.

[i-46] F. Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States, U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, No. 3, 1890 (Washington, D. C.), 22.

[i-47] Brasch, op. cit., 308.

[i-48] Dictionary of American Biography, VII, 591-2.

[i-49] The Newtonian System of the World... (Westminster, 1728), 30.

[i-50] Ibid., 6.

[i-51] See J. Quincy, History of Harvard University (Boston, 1860 [1840]), II, 4-21.

[i-52] Jan. 12, 1727, Feb. 23, and others. Also see June 13 and July 11 of 1734.

[i-53] See advertisements in Boston Gazette, June 17-24, 1734, quoted in W. G. Bleyer's Main Currents in the History of American Journalism, 73-4.

[i-54] Op. cit., 25.

[i-55] Literary Diary, II, 334.

[i-56] Through the kindness of the Hollis family, Harvard (by 1764) gained a remarkable collection of scientific instruments, possessed the Boylean lectures, Transactions of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Science in Paris, the works of Boyle and Newton, "with a great variety of other mathematical and philosophical treatises" (Quincy, op. cit., II, 481). Notable among these items are Chambers's Cyclopædia, received in 1743, and Pemberton's View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, in 1752.

[i-57] A. Bradford, Memoir of the Life and Writings of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew... (Boston, 1838), 18-9, 46.

[i-58] Ibid., 50.

[i-59] Ibid., 305. Mayhew is on record as saying: "The inspired scriptures are our only rule of faith and conduct" (ibid., 140).

[i-60] Ibid., 75. On the other hand, he reacts against what deism and orthodox rationalism commonly became: "A religion consisting in nothing but a knowledge of God's attributes, and an external conduct agreeable to his laws, would be a lifeless, insipid thing. It would be neither a source of happiness to ourselves, nor recommend us to the approbation of him, who requires us 'to give him our hearts.'"

[i-61] Ibid., 464.

[i-62] Two Discourses Delivered Oct. 9th, 1760... (Boston, 1760), 66.

[i-63] Election-Sermon, May 27, 1747 (Boston, 1747), 9.

[i-64] A Sermon [election], May 31, 1769 (Boston, 1769), 5.

[i-65] Election-Sermon, May 30, 1781 (Boston, 1781), 4.

[i-66] Election-Sermon, May 28, 1783 (Boston, 1783), 29.

[i-67] Ibid., 54.

[i-68] Election-Sermon, May 31, 1780 (Boston, 1780), 21.

[i-69] Election-Sermon, May 27, 1778 (Boston, 1778), 7.

[i-70] Election-Sermon, May 29, 1765 (Boston, 1765), 17.

[i-71] Life of Ezra Stiles (Boston, 1798), passim; see especially pp. 34-54.

[i-72] See his United States Elevated to Glory and Honour..., May 8, 1783 (Worcester, 1785).

[i-73] See Literary Diary for his inveterate interest in science and the laws of nature; see also I. M. Calder (ed.), Letters & Papers of Ezra Stiles... (New Haven, 1933).

[i-74] See Hornberger, op. cit., 419.

[i-75] For full backgrounds, see G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, W. A. Dunning, A History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu; H. L. Osgood, "Political Ideas of the Puritans," Political Science Quarterly, VI, 1-29, 201-31; Mellen Chamberlain, John Adams... with Other Essays (Boston, 1898), especially pp. 19-53, stressing the influence of Puritanism on political liberalism; Alice Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution; J. W. Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution (Boston, 1860), a collection of election sermons edited with an extensive introduction; C. H. Van Tyne, "The Influence of the Clergy... in the American Revolution," American Historical Review, XIX, 44-64. In stressing the influence on Franklin of European ideas, it is important to remember that, as we shall see, it is probable that some of Franklin's interest in doing good (charity), in science, and in democracy may have been inspired by his exposure during his formative years to American Puritanism.

[i-76] The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Albert Henry Smyth (New York, 1905-1907), I, 300; (hereafter referred to as Writings). For a scholarly exposition of backgrounds of educational theory in relation to philosophy, especially the cult of progress, see A. O. Hansen's Liberalism and American Education in the Eighteenth Century, which includes a valuable bibliography. This work, however, slights Franklin and Jefferson.

[i-77] Writings, I, 312.

[i-78] For an exhaustive survey of the means Franklin pursued to educate himself, and suggestive notes on his ideas of education, see F. N. Thorpe's Benjamin Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania, chaps. I-II, 9-203. See also Thomas Woody's Educational Views of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1931), which in addition to relevant selections from Franklin's works contains stimulating observations by the editor.

[i-79] Writings, I, 323.

[i-80] Essays to do Good, with an Introductory Essay by Andrew Thomson (Glasgow, 1825 [1710]), 189.

[i-81] Ibid., 102.

[i-82] Ibid., 192-3.

[i-83] See his letter to Samuel Mather, May 12, 1784 (Writings, IX, 208-10).

[i-84] The Works of Daniel Defoe, ed. by Wm. Hazlitt (London, 1843), I.

[i-85] Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times, 119. Also see his "Learned Societies in Europe and America in the Eighteenth Century," American Historical Review, XXXVII, 258 (1932), in which he suggests that the Junto "had Masonic leanings."

[i-86] These and others quoted in Woody, op. cit., 45-6 (reprinted from Sparks, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, II, 9-10).

[i-87] Writings, II, 88.

[i-88] Ibid., II, 89.

[i-89] Ibid.

[i-90] Ibid., II, 90.

[i-91] Questions suggestive of the Junto's interest in moral, political, and philosophical topics are: "Is self-interest the rudder that steers mankind, the universal monarch to whom all are tributaries?" which causes one to suspect that Franklin had challenged his friends with The Fable of the Bees; "Can any one particular form of government suit all mankind?" which may have stirred controversies in the Junto between logical relativists and historic absolutists, the realists and those motivated by a priori abstractions, as, for example, in the Burke-Paine intellectual duel; "Whether it ought to be the aim of philosophy to eradicate the passions?" which may tend to suggest that Franklin would gear philosophy to moral action rather than to arid metaphysics.

[i-92] Writings, I, 312.

[i-93] Ibid., I, 322.

[i-94] Since writing this the editors have noted Morais's fragmentary use of the Company's catalogues in Deism In Eighteenth Century America. For popular accounts of the general character and function of the Company see L. Stockton, "The Old Philadelphia Library," Our Continent, Oct., 1882, 452-9; J. M. Read, Jr., "The Old Philadelphia Library," Atlantic Monthly, March, 1868, 299-312; B. Samuel, "The Father of American Libraries," Century Magazine, May, 1883, 81-6. The ablest survey is G. M. Abbot's A Short History of the Library Company of Philadelphia. He lists, however, only the first books ordered in 1732 through Peter Collinson.

[i-95] Cited in Abbot, op. cit., 5.

[i-96] Photostat used as source is in the William Smith Mason Collection in Evanston, Ill.

[i-97] "The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Vol. II, 1730-1742," Collections of the New York Historical Society (New York, 1919), II, 146-7. See also A. M. Keys, Cadwallader Colden: A Representative Eighteenth-Century Official (New York, 1906), 6-7.

[i-98] American Philosophy: The Early Schools, 330.

[i-99] An Historical Account of the Origin and Formation of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1914); J. G. Rosengarten, in "The American Philosophical Society," tends to agree with Du Ponceau.

[i-100] Writings, II, 229.

[i-101] The History of the Royal Society of London... (2d ed., London, 1702), 61.

[i-102] Ibid., 64.

[i-103] Writings, II, 230.

[i-104] In 1750 he wrote: "Nor is it of much importance to us, to know the manner in which nature executes her laws; 'tis enough if we know the laws themselves. 'Tis of real use to know that china left in the air unsupported will fall and break; but how it comes to fall, and why it breaks, are matters of speculation. 'Tis a pleasure indeed to know them, but we can preserve our china without it" (Writings, II, 434-5). We remember that even Sir Isaac Newton confessed that "the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know" (Works of Richard Bentley, London, 1838, III, 210). He observed that "Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers" (ibid., 212).

[i-105] Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XIII, 247-8 (1889).

[i-106] Franklin was unable to prevail upon Johnson to accept the provostship of the Academy. In 1752 he printed Johnson's Elementa Philosophica and suggested in Idea of the English School that it be used in the Academy. In a letter of 1754 Franklin informs Johnson that the grammatical and mathematical parts were already being used—the rest would be when the instructors and pupils were ready for it (E. E. Beardsley, Life and Correspondence of S. Johnson, D. D., 2d ed., New York, 1874, 180-1). In the Elementa Philosophica Johnson stresses the use of mathematics in man's study of nature (p. xv). Through mathematics, an indispensable aid in "considering that wonderful and amazing Power, that All-comprehending Wisdom, that inimitable Beauty, that surprizing Harmony, that immutable Order, which abundantly discover themselves in the Formation and Government of the Universe, we are led to their divine Original, who is the unexhausted Source, the glorious Fountain of all Perfection..." (ibid., xiii). The Elementa is a rhapsodic manual extolling the discovery of the Deity in his Work, through the study of the physical laws of the creation. Although subordinated to this, there are frequent reactions against Lockian sensationalism, suggesting an ecstatic mystical union between man and God. On the whole, the volume is a treatise on the glories of a natural religion (a religion of course which buttresses rather than refutes scriptural religion).

[i-107] Quoted in T. H. Montgomery's A History of the University of Pennsylvania, 396. Smith's educational principles may be partially seen in his "View of the Philosophy Schools" (1754) printed in H. W. Smith's Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith (Philadelphia, 1879), I, 59 f. Although he conceived Nature as affording only "those fainter exhibitions of the Deity" (I, 156), he was a sturdy orthodox rationalist, tending toward, yet not embracing deism. Emphasizing the principal writings of Barrow, Maclaurin, Watts, Keill, Locke, Hutcheson, 'sGravesande, Martin, Desaguliers, Rohault (Clarke's edition), Ray, Derham, and Sir Isaac Newton, Smith suggests the rationalist who buttresses scriptural revelation with the evidences of Deity through discovery by reason of the Workman in the Work. His Discourses on Public Occasions in America (2d ed., London, 1762) are the result "of his office as Head of a seminary of learning [Philadelphia Academy and College]; in order to advance the interests of Science, and therewith the interests of true Christianity" (p. vi). "A General Idea of the College of Mirania" (1762), though written about 1752 while Smith was in New York, suggests the form of his "View": he observes that "besides his revealed will, God has given intimations of his will to us, by appealing to our senses in the constitution of our nature, and the constitution and harmony of the material universe" (Discourses, 44). The same titles and authors are listed as in the "View." A Newtonian rationalist, Smith meditated: "All thy works, with unceasing voice, echo forth thy wondrous praises. The splendid sun, with the unnumbered orbs of heaven, thro' the pathless void, repeat their unwearied circuits, that, to the uttermost bounds of the universe, they may proclaim Thee the source of justest order and unabating harmony" (ibid., 155). Smith arrived at his principles of rationalism apparently without indebtedness to Franklin: there seems to be no evidence that as provost he was merely attempting to fulfill the scientific and rationalistic ideas latent in Franklin's Proposals, that he was a tool in Franklin's hands. Indeed, they were anything but friendly to one another. Hence, one feels that the credit for the relatively modern curriculum should be given more abundantly to Smith than to Franklin.

[i-108] Writings, II, 388.

[i-109] Montgomery, op. cit., 254 note.

[i-110] Writings, II, 9-14.

[i-111] Writings, X, 29.

[i-112] Ibid., X, 31. Compare similar views in Benjamin Rush's "Observations upon the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages," in Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia, 1798), and Francis Hopkinson's "An Address to the American Philosophical Society," in Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings (Philadelphia, 1792), I.

[i-113] Writings, IV, 22.

[i-114] Ibid., VI, 153.

[i-115] Quoted in J. B. Bury's The Idea of Progress, 104. See also Lois Whitney's Primitivism and the Idea of Progress, especially chap. V.

[i-116] Bury, op. cit., 96.

[i-117] Writings, VIII, 451.

[i-118] For example see ibid., IX, 74, 557.

[i-119] See Writings, VIII, 454.

[i-120] See R. M. Gummere, "Socrates at the Printing Press. Benjamin Franklin and the Classics," Classical Weekly, XXVI, 57-9 (Dec. 5, 1932).

[i-121] Several of the following arguments are included in C. E. Jorgenson's "Sidelights on Benjamin Franklin's Principles of Rhetoric," Revue Anglo-Américaine, Feb., 1934, 208-22.

[i-122] Hume wrote to Franklin: "You are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her [America]" (Writings, IV, 154). Cowper exclaimed that Franklin was "one of the most important [men] in the literary world, that the present age can boast of" (Parton, op. cit., II, 439); for other engaging estimates of Franklin as a man of letters consult C. W. Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism..., IV, 79-106.

[i-123] Franklin found in an appendix to Greenwood's English Grammar and in the Memorabilia specimens of the Socratic method which influenced him to adopt the manner of "the humble inquirer and doubter," to write and harangue with a "modest diffidence." On several occasions he approvingly quotes Pope's rule: "to speak, tho' sure, with seeming Diffidence." Jefferson recognized Franklin's use of this kind of Machiavellian diffidence, noting, "It was one of the rules which, above all others, made Dr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, never to contradict anybody," and that "if he was urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts." In the Autobiography Franklin sees the Socratic method as a necessary ally to "doing good," observing that many who mean to be helpful "lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us."

[i-124] Bunyan's dignified simplicity, his "sound and honest Gospel strains," may have been one of Franklin's incentives to write lucidly and compellingly. For Bunyan's literary ideals, see the prefaces to his works, especially that to Grace Abounding. The best study of Defoe and Swift as literary theorists is W. Gückel and E. Günther, D. Defoes und J. Swifts Belesenheit und literarische Kritik (Leipzig, 1925).

[i-125] E. C. Cook, Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704-1750, 15. This scholarly work shows the great influence in America of neoclassical authors.

[i-126] For a generous catalog of the devices borrowed see ibid., 15 f.

[i-127] Spectator, No. 167.

[i-128] For a fuller discussion of Franklin's view of the ancients, see section on "Franklin's Theories of Education," p. xxxii above.

[i-129] Cited in R. F. Jones, "Science and English Prose Style...," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XLV, 982 (Dec., 1930). On the backgrounds of literary theories underlying the sermons which Franklin heard, see scholarly studies such as Caroline F. Richardson's English Preachers and Preaching, 1640-1670 (New York, 1928), and W. F. Mitchell's English Pulpit Oratory (New York, 1932). From 1750 on, however, the Puritan clergy in America increasingly advocated a simple, clear, and easy style. See Howard M. Jones, "American Prose Style; 1700-1770," Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 6, 115-51 (Nov., 1934).

[i-130] History of the Royal Society... (2d ed., London, 1702), 113.

[i-131] R. F. Jones, op. cit., 989. Tillotson, whom Franklin suggested as a model worthy of emulation (Writings, II, 391), was "another great exponent of the new style" (R. F. Jones, op. cit., 1002).

[i-132] L. M. MacLaurin (Franklin's Vocabulary, 21) also suggests Franklin's probable indebtedness to the Royal Society program.

[i-133] O. Elton, The Augustan Age, 8-12.

[i-134] A. O. Lovejoy, "The Parallel of Deism and Classicism," Modern Philology, XXIX, 281-99 (Feb., 1932).

[i-135] Franklin's friend Henry Pemberton, in his View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728), had said (pp. 2-3) that the Newtonian thirst for knowledge, especially of the causes of the operations of nature, had become "so general, that all men of letters, I believe, find themselves influenced by it."

[i-136] Writings, II, 157.

[i-137] Ibid., I, 37.

[i-138] Ibid., I, ix.

[i-139] Ibid., III, 121. For his demand that sculpture and music have "beautiful simplicity" of form see ibid., VII, 194; VIII, 578; IV, 210, 377-8, 381; V, 530; VIII, 94. On the basis of confusion of genres, Franklin disliked the opera.

[i-140] Ibid., I, 41. See also X, 33, 51.

[i-141] Miss MacLaurin's research has disclosed that Franklin's vocabulary (4,062 words, between 1722 and 1751) contained only 19 words which "were discovered to be pure 'Americanisms,' and of these, 6 are the names of herbs or grasses; 1 is derived from the name of an American university, and 1 from the name of an American state" (op. cit., 38-9).

[i-142] Quoted in Bruce, op. cit., II, 439. Also see his letters to Noah Webster, Writings, I, 29; X, 75-6.

[i-143] S. A. Leonard, The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700-1800, 14.

[i-144] See L. Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 1741-1789, index, for the vogue of Swift. In the library of the New England Courant, as early as 1722, there was a copy of The Tale of a Tub (T. G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620-1730, 187-8). Franklin was probably indebted to the Dean for his prophecies of the death of Titan Leeds (although he could have learned the use of this device from Defoe). In Idea of the English School Franklin recommends Swift for use in the sixth class (Writings, III, 28). His Meditation on a Quart Mugg is undoubtedly derived from Swift's Meditation upon a Broomstick, each forced to undergo the indignities of a "dirty wench." In 1757 he made the acquaintance of Dr. John Hawksworth, who in 1755 had edited Swift's works. It is likely that this friendly union may have helped to produce Franklin's 1773 masterpieces of caustic irony and the disarmingly effective hoaxes. Variously he quotes (acknowledged and otherwise) bits from Swift's poetry and prose. See Herbert Davis's "Swift's View of Poetry," in Studies In English by Members of University College, Toronto (1931), collected by M. W. Wallace.

[i-145] Writings, III, 26.

[i-146] To suggest that Franklin knew his Horace, see ibid., VI, 150; VIII, 148.

[i-147] It seems unnecessary to extend a discussion of the didacticism inherent in Franklin's writing. Addison, and the ethical bent of neoclassicism in general, impinging on a mind no small part of which was motivated by its Puritan heritage, help to account for Franklin's ethicism, a lifelong quality. References illustrating his assumed role as Censor Morum are: Writings, I, 37, 243; II, 4, 50, 101, 110-1, 117, 175. Franklin proposes not only to delight, but also, in the Jonsonian and Meredithian sense, to instruct through a mild catharsis brought about by holding up man's excesses and vagaries for ridicule. He is firm in distinguishing good writing by its "tendency to benefit the reader, by improving his virtue or his knowledge." Consonant with Horace's

"To teach—to please—comprise the poet's views,
Or else at once to profit and amuse,"

and with Sidney's "to teach delightfully," Franklin's literary purpose included a basic ethical motivation.

[i-148] Writings, I, 226.

[i-149] Ibid., I, 42-3.

[i-150] Fully aware "that I am no Poet born" (Bruce, op. cit., II, 498), apparently agreeing with his father that poets "were generally beggars" (Writings I, 240), Franklin allowed only that writing poetry may improve one's language. Yet Dogood Paper No. VII and his estimate of Cowper (characterized by easiness in manner, correctness in language, clarity of expression, perspicuity, and justness of the sentiments) (ibid., VIII, 448-9), and the "Tears of Pleasure" he shed over Thomson, all suggest that he was not wholly blind to poetry. He hoped to see Philadelphia "become the Seat of the American Muses" (ibid., II, 245, 110; IV, 181, 184; VI, 437).

[i-151] A. Bosker, Literary Criticism in the Age of Johnson, 34. For important qualifications see the thorough study by Donald F. Bond, "'Distrust' of Imagination in English Neo-Classicism," Philological Quarterly, XIV, 54-69 (Jan., 1935). Those interested in considering Franklin with reference to contemporary literary theory will find full materials in J. W. Draper's Eighteenth-Century English Aesthetics: A Bibliography, and additions to it by R. S. Crane, Modern Philology, XXIX, 25 ff. (1931); W. D. Templeman, ibid., XXX, 309-16; R. D. Havens, Modern Language Notes, XLVII, 118-20 (1932).

[i-152] Writings, II, 24.

[i-153] Ibid., V, 182; also II, 43, and VIII, 128, 163, 604.

[i-154] See G. S. Eddy, "Dr. Benjamin Franklin's Library," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, N. S. XXXIV, 206-26 (Oct., 1924).

[i-155] See C. E. Jorgenson, "Benjamin Franklin and Rabelais," Classical Journal, XXIX, 538-40 (April, 1934).

[i-156] The Travels of Cyrus.

[i-157] Independent Whig and Cato's Letters.

[i-158] For an interesting summary of Franklin's references to the classics, see R. M. Gummere, op. cit.

[i-159] Add to this, Franklin's use of the Swiftian hoax and complex irony. After writing Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One (1773) he explained to a friend: "These odd ways of presenting Matters to the publick View sometimes occasion them to be more read, talk'd of, and more attended to" (Writings, VI, 137). Parton observes that the Edict of the King of Prussia "was the nine-days' talk of the kingdom." Raynal unsuspectingly used Franklin's Polly Baker, as an authentic document in his Histoire.... Franklin's Exporting of Felons to the Colonies, The Sale of Hessians, and A Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony, and America illustrate these trenchant devices used to achieve a political purpose.

[i-160] Writings, I, 49.

[i-161] The True Benjamin Franklin, 158.

[i-162] Writings, I, 239.

[i-163] Smyth's note, Writings, VIII, 336.

[i-164] Writings, I, 238.

[i-165] Writings, X, 4 (to Mrs. Catherine Greene, March 2, 1789).

[i-166] There were eight towns in the colonies which had presses when Franklin went into business for himself: Cambridge, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, New London (Conn.), Woodbridge (N. J.), and Williamsburg. See Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (Worcester, 1810), II, passim.

[i-167] "A printer of first-rate eminence," according to Charles Henry Timperley's A Dictionary of Printers and Printing (London, 1839), 714 note.

[i-168] R. A. Austen Leigh, "William Strahan and His Ledgers," in Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, N. S. III, 286. For Strahan see also Spottiswoode & Co.'s The Story of a Printing House, Being a Short Account of the Strahans and Spottiswoodes (London, 1911); and Timperley, op. cit., 754-6.

[i-169] See G. S. Eddy, "Correspondence Between Dr. Benjamin Franklin and John Walter, Regarding the Logographic Process of Printing," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, N. S. XXXVIII, 349-69 (Oct., 1928).

[i-170] Writings, II, 175.

[i-171] See W. P. and J. P. Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, I, 269, letter of July 13, 1787; also G. S. Eddy, op. cit.

[i-172] See Thomas, loc. cit.

[i-173] A notable exception was the type of "letter to the editor" which Franklin used as a means of suggesting reforms, such as those affecting the city watch, the fire companies, and the cleaning and lighting of the streets. See J. B. McMaster, Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, 82-5.

[i-174] A correspondent of Franklin's paper commended Zenger's stand (see Pennsylvania Gazette, May 11-18, 1738; reprinted in W. G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism, 66-7), but Franklin shrewdly kept his own paper free of factional politics. See Livingston Rutherford, John Peter Zenger (New York, 1904).

[i-175] See Clarence S. Brigham, "American Newspapers to 1820," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, N. S. XXXII, 157-9 (April, 1922), for detailed bibliography of the Gazette.

[i-176] A. H. Smyth, Philadelphia Magazines and Their Contributors, 200.

[i-177] Writings, I, 360.

[i-178] For a list of the printers with whom Franklin had such connections, see M. R. King, "One Link in the First Newspaper Chain, the South Carolina Gazette," Journalism Quarterly, IX, 257 (Sept., 1932).

[i-179] For sketches of both magazines, see L. N. Richardson, A History of Early American Magazines, 17-35, and F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850, 71-7. See also Philip Biddison, "The Magazine Franklin Failed to Remember," American Literature, IV, 177 (June, 1932); the writer thinks certain accusations in the Bradford-Franklin controversy over the magazines discreditable to Franklin, so that the latter's lapse of memory saved him "embarrassment."

[i-180] See letter to John Wright, Nov. 4, 1789 (Writings, X, 60-3). For European backgrounds of Franklin's economic views see Gide and Rist, in Bibliography. On American backgrounds the standard work is E. A. J. Johnson's American Economic Thought in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1932), which shows the intimate relation between economic and religious theories.

[i-181] Lewis J. Carey, Franklin's Economic Views (Garden City, N. Y., 1928), 72.

[i-182] Cited in Carey, 73. He had used in this article facts lent by Benezet concerning the "detestable commerce" motivated in part by English "laws for promoting the Guinea trade" (Writings, V, 431-2).

[i-183] Writings, IX, 627.

[i-184] In 1779 he professed mortification that the King of France gave "freedom to Slaves, while a king of England is endeavouring to make Slaves of Freemen" (ibid., VII, 402).

[i-185] Ibid., IX, 404. See also ibid., 6.

[i-186] Suggestive notes on this point may be found in N. Foerster's article in the American Review, IV, 129-46 (Dec., 1934).

[i-187] Writings, VI, 102. See also VI, 39-40.

[i-188] Ibid., III, 66.

[i-189] Ibid., III, 66-7.

[i-190] Ibid., III, 68.

[i-191] Carey, op. cit., 69.

[i-192] Writings, III, 65.

[i-193] Ibid., III, 73.

[i-194] That others in the colonies saw slavery as an economically unsound investment (without any reference to its being malum in se) may be witnessed in an article in the Boston News-Letter (March 3, 1718): "In the previous year there had been eighty burials of Indians and negroes in Boston. The writer argued that the loss of £30 each amounted to £2,400. If white servants had been employed instead, at £15 for the time of each, the 'town had saved £1,200.' A man could procure £12 to £15 to purchase the time of a white servant that could not pay £30 to £50 for a negro or Indian. 'The Whites Strengthens [sic] and Peoples the Country, others do not'" (W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789, Boston, 1891, II, 456). Congruent with Franklin's Observations is John Adams's note that "Argument might have some weight in the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer the rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury" (ibid., II, 453).

[i-195] In Franklin's view, slavery was also politically subversive. In 1756 he feared that the slaves, along with servants and loose people in general, would desert to the French (Writings, III, 359). Since the danger undoubtedly existed (ibid., VII, 48, 69), Franklin had a right to be sardonic in commenting on Dr. Johnson's advice that slaves be incited "to rise, cut the throats of their purchasers, and resort to the British army, where they should be rewarded with freedom" (ibid., X, 110-1).

[i-196] Printed in Maryland Gazette (Dec. 17, 1728); later as pamphlet (April 3, 1729).

[i-197] Carey, op. cit., 7. See Writings I, 306-7, for Franklin's own account of the effect of this work.

[i-198] C. J. Bullock, Essays on the Monetary History of the United States, 51.

[i-199] Weeden, op. cit., II, 485.

[i-200] Financial History of the United States, 21. Bullock observes another factor: "Sooner or later all the plantations were deeply involved in the mazes of a fluctuating currency, for the burdens attending the various wars of the eighteenth century were so great as to induce even the most conservative colonies to resort to this easy method of meeting public obligations" (op. cit., 33).

[i-201] Writings, II, 133-5.

[i-202] See Carey, op. cit., chap. I, for suggestive survey of this pamphlet. Carey points out Franklin's indebtedness to writings of Sir William Petty.

[i-203] Carey (chap. II, "Value and Interest") quotes Franklin: "Riches of a Country are to be valued by the Quantity of Labour its inhabitants are able to purchase, and not by the Quantity of Silver and Gold they possess" (Writings, II, 144).

[i-204] See, for example, Plan for Saving One Hundred Thousand Pounds, 1755 (Writings, III, 293-5).

[i-205] Writings, IV, 420: Examination of Benjamin Franklin. He was obliged to admit that Massachusetts colonists had taken a calmer view of the 1751 act (IV, 428).

[i-206] G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765, 188.

[i-207] Although it is true that Pennsylvania suffered less from paper money because of better security (Carey, op. cit., 23 note), it seems curious that Franklin should have been blind to the evils of inflation and the operations of Gresham's law.

[i-208] Paper in William Smith Mason Collection; cited in Carey, op. cit., 20. See also Writings, V, 189, in which he repeats the threat. British restraint must hence provoke colonial "industry and frugality."

[i-209] Writings, VII, 294. Cf. ibid., IX, 231-6.

[i-210] See Writings, VII, 275, 335, 341.

[i-211] To Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1783 (Writings, IX, 93-5).

[i-212] In 1779 (see Writings, VII, 294) Franklin explained that the French knew little of paper currency. Mr. Carey offers convincing evidence to show that Franklin helped to predispose the deputies of the first National Assembly to use assignats (op. cit., 27-33). See Of the Paper Money of the United States of America (Writings, IX, 231-6).

[i-213] J. F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (1844 ed.), I, 533.

[i-214] Cited by J. Rae in his Life of Adam Smith (London, 1895), 265.

[i-215] Ibid., 266. See Carey's chapter, "Franklin's Influence on Adam Smith," for an exhaustive survey of the personalia linking Adam Smith and Franklin. Both were in London in 1773-1776 and were occasional companions, having in 1759 met in Edinburgh at the home of Dr. Robertson. Probably they again met in Glasgow during the same year. Smith could have received copies of Franklin's works through Hume and Lord Kames; among Franklin's works in Smith's library was Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind; when Smith in the Wealth of Nations observes that colonial population doubles in every twenty to twenty-five years, it seems reasonable to infer that he was beholden to Franklin for the suggestion. It is within the realm of reasonable inference, says Mr. Carey, that Franklin did, as Parton urges, help to educate Smith in the colonial point of view. T. D. Eliot, in "The Relations Between Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin before 1776," Political Science Quarterly, XXXIX, 67-96 (March, 1924), after calling attention to the lack of extant correspondence between them and the silence of their contemporaries concerning a vital relationship, shows a reasonable hesitancy in observing that little is known about Smith's alleged debt to Franklin. Like Wetzel and Carey, Eliot thinks the debt has been exaggerated. He has been unable to prove Dr. Patten's intuition that in 1759 Franklin went to Smith in Scotland to urge him to write a treatise on colonial policy. In 1765 Turgot met Adam Smith. In the following year he published his Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, antedating Smith's Wealth of Nations by ten years. See J. Delvaille's Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès (Paris, 1910), chap. IV, on Adam Smith; and Carey, op. cit., 152, 158-9, for the relationship between Turgot and Franklin.

[i-216] Although both Franklin and Smith held to the labor theory of value (Franklin was indebted to Petty for his use of the term), Smith was confirmed in his belief before he knew of Franklin or his works.

[i-217] According to Jacob Viner ("Adam Smith and Laissez Faire," in Adam Smith, 1776-1926. Lectures to Commemorate the Sesqui-Centennial of the Publication of 'The Wealth of Nations,' 116-55), "Smith's major claim to fame... seems to rest on his elaborate and detailed application to the economic world of the concept of a unified natural order, operating according to natural law, and if left to its own course producing results beneficial to mankind" (p. 118), which suggests, especially in Theory of Moral Sentiments, that self-love and social are the same. When Smith came to write the Wealth of Nations, he tended, Viner asserts, to distrust the operations of the harmonious natural order—yet Viner admits that many passages tend to corroborate his earlier view expressed in Theory of Moral Sentiments and that "There is no possible room for doubt that Smith in general believed that there was, to say the least, a stronger presumption against government activity beyond its fundamental duties of protection against its foreign foes and maintenance of justice" (p. 140). We shall see elsewhere that Franklin seems to have urged a less frugal governmental restraint in activities other than economic.

[i-218] The Colonial Mind, 173. It is generally thought that Principles of Trade is "partly" Franklin's "own composition" (Carey, op. cit., 161).

[i-219] Philadelphia, Sept. 13, 1775: MS letter (unpublished) in W. S. Mason Collection.

[i-220] London, Sept. 29, 1769: MS letter (unpublished) in W. S. Mason Collection.

[i-221] London, Feb. 20, 1768 (Writings, V, 102).

[i-222] Dated April 4, 1769 (ibid., V, 200-2).

[i-223] Writings, V, 202.

[i-224] Cited by F. W. Garrison in "Franklin and the Physiocrats," Freeman, VIII, 154-6 (Oct. 24, 1923).

[i-225] Dupont de Nemours's opinion of Franklin (Writings, V, 153-4).

[i-226] Writings, V, 156. See W. Steell's entertaining "The First Visit to Paris," in Benjamin Franklin of Paris, 3-21; also E. E. Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr., Franklin in France, I, 7-13.

[i-227] C. Gide and C. Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines, 4 note.

[i-228] Writings, V, 155.

[i-229] As an experimental agriculturist Franklin has been given too little honor. He performed many valuable services in introducing Old-World plants, trees, and fruits to the New, and in encouraging others to carry on practical botanical experiments. Particularly from 1747 to 1757 he experimented in agriculture and was in constant communication with that pioneer scientific husbandman, Jared Eliot. See E. D. Ross's "Benjamin Franklin as an Eighteenth-Century Agriculture Leader," Journal of Political Economy, XXXVII, 52-72 (Feb., 1929).

[i-230] Although no scholarly substitute for the works of Quesnay, Mirabeau, Mercier de la Rivière, Dupont de Nemours, Le Trosne, Abbé Bandeau, Abbé Roubaud, and some pieces of the occasional physiocrat Turgot, the following will enable the student to derive adequately for general purposes the thought of the Économistes: H. Higgs, The Physiocrats (1897); Gide and Rist, op. cit.; L. H. Haney, History of Economic Thought (1911), 133-57; G. Weulersse, Le mouvement physiocratique en France (de 1756 à 1770); A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV, chap. IX; J. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Science (1893); in addition see critical and interpretative writings of Oncken, Stem, Kines, Hasbach, Schelle, Bauer, Feilbogen, De Lavergne.

[i-231] An integral idea of the French school was its advocacy of the impôt unique—a single tax on land. It is difficult to find evidence to controvert Mr. Carey's assertion that Franklin seems never to have advocated this tax (op. cit., 154). However, in marginalia on a pamphlet by Allan Ramsay, Franklin held: "Taxes must be paid out of the Produce of the Land. There is no other possible Fund" (cited by Carey, 155). Another reference is found in a letter of 1787 to Alexander Small: "Our Legislators are all Land-holders; and they are not yet persuaded, that all taxes are finally paid by the Land" (Writings, IX, 615). It is probable that he felt that a land tax would be dubiously effective in view of the difficulties of collection in sparse settlements.

[i-232] Writings, II, 313 (July 16, 1747). See also Note Respecting Trade and Manufactures, London, July 7, 1767 (Sparks, II, 366):

"Suppose a country, X, with three manufactures, as cloth, silk, iron, supplying three other countries. A, B, C, but is desirous of increasing the vent, and raising the price of cloth in favor of her own clothiers.

In order to do this, she forbids the importation of foreign cloth from A.

A, in return, forbids silks from X.

Then the silk-workers complain of a decay of trade.

And X, to content them, forbids silks from B.

B, in return, forbids iron ware from X.

Then the iron-workers complain of decay.

And X forbids the importation of iron from C.

C, in return, forbids cloth from X.

What is got by all these prohibitions?

Answer.—All four find their common stock of the enjoyments and conveniences of life diminished."

[i-233] Writings, IV, 469-70.

[i-234] Ibid., V, 155.

[i-235] Passy, May 27, 1779 (Writings, VII, 332).

[i-236] Ibid., IV, 242-5 (April 30, 1764). As Mr. Carey notes. Franklin in several places. On the Labouring Poor and in a letter (IX, 240-8), suggests that private vices—demands for luxuries—make public benefits, hence resembling, if not ultimately derived from, Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. Franklin's sanction of free trade is, however, antithetical to Mandeville's 'dog eat dog' basis. (See Kaye's Intro. to The Fable of the Bees, xcviii ff.) Franklin in no uncertain terms looks upon trade restrictions definitely as the result of "the abominable selfishness" of men (VII, 332). As long as selfishness is the rule, mercantilism, not economic laissez faire, will be king. It is theoretically probable also that belief in man's innate altruism could furnish emotional if not logical sanction for laissez faire—but this abstraction is in Franklin's case futile, since like Swift he was not blind to man's malevolence!

[i-237] Writings, IV, 245; see also ibid., VIII, 107-8, 261, 19.

[i-238] Ibid., IX, 41; also 63, 578, 588.

[i-239] Cited in Carey, op. cit., 160-1.

[i-240] See Gide and Rist, op. cit., 7 note.

[i-241] Ibid., 7 note.

[i-242] Ibid.

[i-243] Mercier de la Rivière, cited in ibid., 8 note.

[i-244] Ibid., 9-10.

[i-245] "Economics and the Idea of Natural Law," Quarterly Journal of Economics, XLIV, 16 (1929). See also O. H. Taylor's valuable dissertation, "The Idea of a 'Natural Order' in Early Modern Economic Thought," summarized in Harvard University Summaries of Theses, 1928, 102-6, and available in manuscript at the Harvard University Library.

[i-246] Taylor, "Economics and the Idea of Natural Law," loc. cit., 16.

[i-247] Even this fragmentary view of the more obvious economic principles held by Franklin offers convincing evidence that had he been less incidentally an economist he would have been at least a lesser Adam Smith. Mr. Wetzel, in Benjamin Franklin as an Economist, offers a convenient summary of Franklin as an economist, some items suggesting aspects of his views which, had space permitted, we should have included in this study: "1. Money as coin may have a value higher than its bullion value. 2. Natural interest is determined by the rent of so much land as the money loaned will buy. 3. High wages are not inconsistent with a large foreign trade. 4. Population will increase as the means of gaining a living increase. 5. A high standard of living serves to prolong single life, and thus acts as a check upon the increase of population. 6. People are adjusted among the different countries according to the comparative well-being of mankind. 7. The value of an article is determined by the amount of labor necessary to produce the food consumed in making the article. 8. While manufactures are advantageous, only agriculture is truly productive. 9. Manufactures will naturally spring up in a country as the country becomes ripe for them. 10. Free trade with the world will give the greatest return at the least expense. 11. Wherever practicable, State revenue should be raised by direct taxes."

[i-248] Writings, II, 110.

[i-249] Ibid., II, 295. In 1736 Franklin wrote: "Faction, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins" (cited in R. G. Gettell, History of American Political Thought, 149).

[i-250] W. R. Shepherd, History of Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania (New York, 1896), 5.

[i-251] Writings, II, 351.

[i-252] Ibid.

[i-253] Ibid., II, 352.

[i-254] Ibid., II, 347.

[i-255] Shepherd, op. cit., 222. In 1764 Penn thought that Franklin was one "who may lose the government of a post office by grasping at that of a province" (ibid., 564). In turn one of the proprietors wrote to him: "Franklin is certainly destined to be our plague" (ibid., 566). Penn professed not to fear "your mighty Goliath." For proof that Franklin's fear expressed in Plain Truth was not idle see Extracts from Chief Justice William Allen's Letter Book, 17, 22-3, 25, 31-2.

[i-256] Plain Truth inspirited the colonists to defend themselves, even if it failed in its larger purpose; see Writings, II, 354, 362.

[i-257] To James Parker, March 20, 1750/51 (Writings, III, 40-5). L. C. Wroth, in An American Bookshelf, 1755 (Philadelphia, 1934), 12 ff., reviews A. Kennedy's The Importance of Gaining the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest (1751), to which was appended a letter, prefiguring the Albany Plan of Union. This letter, Mr. Wroth observes, was by Franklin. C. E. Merriam states that "The storm centre of the democratic movement during the colonial period was the conflict between the governors and the colonial legislatures or assemblies" (A History of American Political Theories, 34). Also see E. B. Greene, The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies of North America.

[i-258] Writings, III, 71.

[i-259] Cited in G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765, 17.

[i-260] Writings, III, 197.

[i-261] For a suggestive source study see Mrs. L. K. Mathews's "Benjamin Franklin's Plans for a Colonial Union, 1750-1775," American Political Science Review, VIII, 393-412 (Aug., 1914).

[i-262] Cited in Beer, op. cit., 49.

[i-263] Writings, III, 242.

[i-264] Ibid., III, 226. As Beer has pointed out (op. cit., 23 note), since the plan was not ratified, it never went before the Crown; hence Franklin's retrospective glance is misleading: "The Crown disapproved it, as having placed too much Weight in the Democratic Part of the Constitution; and every Assembly as having allowed too much to Prerogative. So it was totally rejected" (Writings, III, 227).

[i-265] Ibid., III, 233.

[i-266] To Peter Collinson, Nov. 22, 1756 (Writings, III, 351).

[i-267] As A. H. Smyth says, this was probably inspired by Franklin although not written by him; at any rate "it undoubtedly reflects" his opinions (III, vi). Isaac Sharpless observes that Franklin "had sympathy with their [Quakers'] demands for political freedom, but none for their non-military spirit" (Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsylvania, New York, 1919, 178).

[i-268] Writings, III, 372.

[i-269] A. Bradford, Memoir of the Life and Writings of Rev. J. Mayhew (Boston, 1838), 119.

[i-270] See for capable studies: B. F. Wright, American Interpretations of Natural Law; C. F. Mullett, Fundamental Law and the American Revolution; D. G. Ritchie, Natural Rights (London, 1895), and his "Contributions to the History of the Social Contract Theory," Political Science Quarterly, VI, 656-76 (1891); C. Becker, The Declaration of Independence, chap. II; C. E. Merriam, op. cit., chap. II; H. J. Laski, Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham (New York, 1920).

[i-271] Becker, op. cit., 24.

[i-272] Ibid., 27.

[i-273] Burke said that nearly as many copies of this work were sold in the colonies as in Great Britain. It will be remembered that Hamilton leaned heavily on Blackstone in The Farmer Refuted (1773).

[i-274] Cited in Wright, op. cit., 11.

[i-275] The Farmer Refuted. For discussion of changes in Hamilton's political theory see F. C. Prescott's Introduction to Hamilton and Jefferson (American Writers Series, New York, 1934).

[i-276] Franklin acknowledges his close reading of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Writings, I, 243). In 1749 he urges that Locke be read in the Philadelphia Academy (II, 387) and refers again to the great logician in Idea of the English School (III, 28). He is supposed to have defended in spirited debate Locke's treatise on Toleration (I, 179). The catalogues of the Philadelphia Library Company disclose that by 1757 all of Locke's works had been obtained. One may ask how an alert eighteenth-century mind could have escaped the impact of Locke's thought.

It is more difficult to establish satisfactorily a nexus between Rousseau's and Franklin's minds. Mr. George Simpson Eddy has kindly allowed us to consult his "Catalogue of Pamphlets, Once a Part of the Library of Benjamin Franklin, and now owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania" in which are included Rousseau's Preface de la Nouvelle Hélöise... (1761) and Discours sur l'économie politique... (1760). Even if Rousseau's mistress, Countess d'Houdetot, feted Franklin in 1781, and Franklin was acquainted with Rousseau's physician, Achille-Guillaume le Bègue de Presle, and directly in 1785 mentions Rousseau on child-education (Writings, IX, 334), one can not be sure to what extent Rousseau's writings may have aided Franklin in formulating notions similar to the social contract theory (IX, 138).

[i-277] Cited in A. M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, 6.

[i-278] Ibid., xii. See also C. H. Van Tyne's able study, "The Influence of the Clergy, and of Religious and Sectarian Forces, on the American Revolution," American Historical Review, XIX, 44-64 (Oct., 1913). He takes issue with the economic determinists and concludes that of all the causes of the Revolution, religious causes are "among the most important" (p. 64). The Revolution was in large measure caused by a conflict of political ideas, and these were disseminated mostly by the clergy.

[i-279] An Oration, Delivered March 5, 1773 (Boston, 1773), 6.

[i-280] Ibid., 10-11.

[i-281] Ibid., 8. Also see S. Stillman, Election-Sermon, May 26, 1779 (Boston, 1779); J. Clarke, Election-Sermon, May 30, 1781 (Boston, 1781).

[i-282] Although Franklin denied having written it (Writings, IV, 82), Mr. Ford (Franklin Bibliography, III) asserts that "this work must still be treated as from Franklin's pen." He sent 500 copies to Pennsylvania consigned to his partner, David Hall, for distribution.

[i-283] To Joseph Galloway, April 11, 1757 (unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection). For a description of the unpublished Franklin-Galloway correspondence see W. S. Mason's article in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for Oct., 1924.

[i-284] To Joseph Galloway, Feb. 17, 1758 (unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection).

[i-285] June 10, 1758 (unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection).

[i-286] April 7, 1759 (unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection).

[i-287] The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1809), II, 147.

[i-288] Ibid., II, 7.

[i-289] Ibid., II, 1.

[i-290] Ibid., II, vii.

[i-291] Ibid., II, xvi.

[i-292] Apropos of many colonial ferments, not unlike the one we have considered above, Carl Becker writes: "Throughout the eighteenth century, little colonial aristocracies played their part, in imagination clothing their governor in the decaying vesture of Old-World tyrants and themselves assuming the homespun garb, half Roman and half Puritan, of a virtuous republicanism.... It was the illusion of sharing in great events rather than any low mercenary motive that made Americans guard with jealous care their legislative independence" (The Eve of the Revolution, New Haven, 1918, 60). Also see C. H. Lincoln, The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 1760-1776.

[i-293] Writings, III, 408-9.

[i-294] Ibid., III, 457.

[i-295] V. W. Crane, "Certain Writings of Benjamin Franklin on the British Empire and the American Colonies," Papers of the Bibliographical Society, XXVIII, Pt. 1, 6 (1934). Also see W. L. Grant, "Canada vs. Guadaloupe," American Historical Review, XVII, 735-43, (Oct., 1911-July, 1912).

[i-296] Beer, op. cit., 313.

[i-297] Writings, IV, 224.

[i-298] Ibid., IV, 229.

[i-299] The massacre led by the "Paxton boys."

[i-300] Writings, IV, 314.

[i-301] Writings, IV, 418.

[i-302] Ibid., IV, 419. See Beer, op. cit., 294 f.

[i-303] A History of American Political Theories, 46.

[i-304] Writings, IV, 445-6.

[i-305] To Joseph Galloway, May 20, 1767 (photostat of unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection; original in W. L. Clements Library).

[i-306] To Joseph Galloway, Aug. 20, 1768 (photostat of unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection; original in W. L. Clements Library).

[i-307] To Joseph Galloway, April 14, 1767 (photostat of unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection; original in W. L. Clements Library). Cf. also letter to the same, Jan. 11, 1770, ibid.

[i-308] See, for example, An Edict by the King of Prussia (1773)—for its effect see Writings, VI, 146—and Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One (1773). Crane, op. cit., concludes that Franklin appears as "the chief agent of the American propaganda in England, especially between 1765 and 1770" (p. 26). For treatment of American propagandists see P. G. Davidson, "Whig Propagandists of the American Revolution," American Historical Review, XXXIX, 442-53 (April, 1934), and his Revolutionary Propagandists in New England, New York and Pennsylvania, 1763-1776 (unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, 1929); summarized in Abstracts of Theses, Humanistic Series VII, 239-42; F. J. Hinkhouse, The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as Seen in the English Press (New York, 1926).

[i-309] Writings, V, 297.

[i-310] See R. G. Adams, Political Ideas of the American Revolution, 35, 62-3.

[i-311] Oct. 2, 1770 (Writings, V, 280). See also Causes of the American Discontents before 1768 (V, 78 f., 160-2). An aspect of his loyalty to the crown may be seen in his hatred of French desire to separate the colonies from England (V, 47, 231, 254, 323). The printing of the Examination and other of Franklin's pieces in Europe buttressed the predisposition of France to hate Great Britain (V, 231). The best comprehensive treatment of backgrounds is C. H. Van Tyne's The Causes of the War of Independence.

[i-312] Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XXV, 311 (1901). See also ibid., 307-22, and XXVI, 81-90, 255-64 (1902). See Writings, VI, 144.

[i-313] Writings, VI, 173.

[i-314] Ibid., VI, 319. His unpublished letters of 1775 in the Original Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin with the Bishop of St. Asaph (in the W. S. Mason Collection) emphasize his progressive apathy toward a reconciliation. Especially see letters of May 15 and July 7.

[i-315] Ibid., VI, 460.

[i-316] Cited in Davidson, op. cit., 442.

[i-317] Hugh Williamson claimed that he actually gave Franklin the letters. Apparently another person went to the office where the letters were archived and posing as an authorized person secured the desired correspondence (D. Hosack, Biographical Memoir of Hugh Williamson, New York, 1820, 37 ff.).

[i-318] For an interesting account of this episode see Parton, op. cit., 1, chap. IX.

[i-319] Writings, V, 134. Franklin and Burke were friendly; see their correspondence. The best exposition of Burke's doctrines is that by John MacCunn, The Political Philosophy of Edmund Burke (London, 1913).

[i-320] Ibid., V, 439; see also 527.

[i-321] London, April 20, 1771; unpublished MS letter in W. S. Mason Collection. Compare with Abbé Raynal's opinion that "society is essentially good; government, as is well known, may be, and is but too often evil" (The Revolution of America, Dublin, 1781, 45).

[i-322] M. Eiselen (Franklin's Political Theories, Garden City, N. Y., 1928) observes that Franklin as presiding officer had actually little to do with casting the instrument. From his later paper on the Constitution it is possible, however, to see that he accepted most of its major ideas (pp. 57-8). See S. B. Harding, "Party Struggles over the First Pennsylvania Constitution," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, 371-402.

[i-323] That Franklin "had more to do with the phraseology of the Declaration of Independence than has been recognized up to now" (J. C. Fitzpatrick, Spirit of the Revolution, Boston, 1924, 11) has been shown by Becker, op. cit.

[i-324] See text in S. E. Morison, Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764-1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (Oxford, 1923, 162-76).

[i-325] C. H. Lincoln, The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 1760-1776, 277.

[i-326] Cited in N. G. Goodman, Benjamin Rush (Philadelphia, 1934), 62. Another wrote that the unicameral form is good "if men were wise and virtuous as angels" (Lincoln, op. cit., 282; see also 283). The American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was president, declared against it.

[i-327] T. F. Moran, The Rise and Development of the Bicameral System in America (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 13th ser., V [Baltimore, 1895]), 42. The legislative Council (upper chamber) had been destroyed by the 1701 constitution. See B. A. Konkle, George Bryan and the Constitution of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1922), 114. P. L. Ford ("The Adoption of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776," Political Science Quarterly, X, Sept., 1895, 426-59) observes: "The one-chamber legislature and the annual election were hardly the work of the Convention, for they were merely transferred from the Penn Charter; having yielded such admirable results in the past, it is not strange that they were grafted into the new instrument" (p. 454).

[i-328] Defending (in 1789) the Pennsylvania constitution, Franklin wrote, "Have we not experienced in this Colony, when a Province under the Government of the Proprietors, the Mischiefs of a second Branch existing in the Proprietary Family, countenanced and aided by an Aristocratic Council?" (Writings, X, 56.)

[i-329] In 1775 he submitted to the Second Continental Congress his Articles of Confederation (Writings, VI, 420-6) which called for a "firm League of Friendship" motivated by a unicameral assembly and a plural executive, a Council of twelve. It was democratic also in its "basing representation upon population instead of financial support" (Eiselen, op. cit., 54).

[i-330] Writings, VII, 48.

[i-331] Ibid., VII, 23. No dull sidelight on the quality of Franklin's radicalism during this period is the fact that he brought Thomas Paine to the colonies and was partly responsible for the writing of Common Sense. It is alleged that Franklin considered Paine "his adopted political son" (cited in M. D. Conway's Life of Thomas Paine, 3d ed., New York, 1893, II, 468). For explication of Paine's political theories see C. E. Merriam, "Political Theories of Thomas Paine," Political Science Quarterly, XIV, 389-403.

[i-332] Hale and Hale, op. cit., I, 70; see also 75.

[i-333] Ibid., I, 32.

[i-334] Cited in J. B. Perkins, France in the American Revolution, 140.

[i-335] Ibid., 127.

[i-336] See D. J. Hill, "A Missing Chapter of Franco-American History," American Historical Review, XXI, 709-19, (July, 1916).

[i-337] Ibid., 710.

[i-338] Writings, IX, 132. The Due de la Rochefoucauld translated them into French (IX, 71). Franklin thought they would induce emigration to the colonies. See the scores of requests (on the part of notable Frenchmen) and thanks for copies of the constitutions of the United States listed in Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society.

[i-339] J. S. Schapiro, Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism, 79-81 and passim.

[i-340] Ibid., 222.

[i-341] Cited in W. T. Franklin's edition, I, 303-4. E. P. Oberholtzer, essentially hostile to Franklin, is obliged to admit that Franklin "seems not to have had more than an advisory part" in making the Constitution of 1776. He adds that if Franklin did not form it, "he was at any rate a loyal defender of its principles," and that he seems to have allowed the French to think that the Constitution was his own (The Referendum in America, New York, 1900, 26-42). For Franklin's later defenses of unicameralism, see Writings, IX, 645, 674; X; 56-8.

[i-342] Cited in B. Faÿ, The Revolutionary Spirit In France and America, 289. Faÿ shows that in France the "revolutionary leaders" who took lessons from Franklin regarded him as "the prophet and saint of a new religion," as the "high priest of Philosophy." See also E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution (Boston, 1892), chaps. XVI and XVIII.

[i-343] B. Faÿ, The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America, 302.

[i-344] Writings, VIII, 34.

[i-345] Ibid., VIII, 452; June 7, 1782 (to Joseph Priestley).

[i-346] Ibid., IX, 241.

[i-347] Ibid., IX, 330.

[i-348] Ibid., IX, 521; see also IX, 489.

[i-349] Although the preponderance of evidence bears out the trustworthiness of this assertion, one can not idly dismiss his Some Good Whig Principles or disregard his expressed belief that the people "seldom continue long in the wrong" and if misled they "come right again, and double their former affections" (cited in W. C. Bruce, Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, II, 100; also see Writings, X, 130). There is a clearly evident polarity in Franklin's mind between ultra-democratic faith and a rigorous observation that if "people" are so constituted, many men are utter rascals. One almost senses a dichotomy between Franklin the politician and Franklin the man and moralist.

[i-350] See his The Constitution of the United States (New York, 1924).

[i-351] The Records of the Federal Convention, ed. by Max Farrand, I, 488; see Writings, IX, 602-3, 595-9.

[i-352] Writings, IX, 596.

[i-353] The Records of the Federal Convention, I, 47.

[i-354] Ibid., I, 165.

[i-355] Writings, IX, 593.

[i-356] The Records of the Federal Convention, I, 109.

[i-357] Ibid., II, 120.

[i-358] Ibid., II, 204.

[i-359] Franklin objected to primogeniture and entail.

[i-360] Ibid., II, 249.

[i-361] Gettell, op. cit., 122.

[i-362] Writings, X, 56-8.

[i-363] Ibid., IX, 698-703.

[i-364] Ibid., IX, 608.

[i-365] Ibid., IX, 638.

[i-366] Writings, X, 7.

[i-367] Letter in American Philosophical Society Library; cited by B. M. Victory, Benjamin Franklin and Germany, 128.

[i-368] Writings, III, 96.

[i-369] Ibid., III, 97.

[i-370] Ibid., III, 107.

[i-371] Ibid., IV, 221.

[i-372] Ibid., IV, 377.

[i-373] Ibid., V, 165. He repeated this thought to Beccaria in 1773 (ibid., VI, 112). Also see V, 206, 410-1, VII, 49.

[i-374] Ibid., VII, 418; also see VIII, 211.

[i-375] Ibid., VIII, 315; also see letter to Priestley, June 7, 1782, VIII, 451; to Comte de Salmes, July 5, 1785, IX, 361.

[i-376] Ibid., IX, 652.

[i-377] Ibid., IX, 621. He wrote this after he was reappointed President of Pennsylvania in 1787. He confessed, however, that this honor gave him "no small pleasure."

[i-378] W. P. and J. P. Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, I, 269-70.

[i-379] Joseph and Benjamin, A Conversation, Trans. from a French Manuscript (London, 1787), 72. If this meeting never took place, the reported conversation is anything but "decidedly silly" as Ford opines (Franklin Bibliography, #936, 371).

[i-380] Writings, IV, 143.

[i-381] Ibid., VIII, 601. Also see IX, 53.

[i-382] Ibid., VIII, 593.

[i-383] Brother Potamian and J. J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, 126.

[i-384] "Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, IV (1748-54)," Collections of the New York Historical Society (1920), 372.

[i-385] "An Outline of Philosophy in America," Western Reserve University Bulletin (March, 1896). See also I. W. Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools, 229-65.

[i-386] Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times, iv.

[i-387] Writings, I, 295.

[i-388] Boston News-Letter, Jan. 17, 1744/5. Also see 1669-1882. An Historical Catalogue of the Old South Church (Third Church), Boston (Boston, 1883), 304.

[i-389] Writings, I, 324.

[i-390] Writings, IX, 208.

[i-391] Essays to do Good, with an Introductory Essay by A. Thomson (Glasgow, 1825), 102.

[i-392] Ibid., 213-4.

[i-393] Works of Daniel Defoe, ed. by Wm. Hazlitt (London, 1843), I, 22.

[i-394] Writings, I, 239.

[i-395] See New England Courant, No. 48, June 25-July 2, 1722.

[i-396] Writings, I, 244.

[i-397] Consecrated to piety, Robert Boyle at his death left £50 per annum, for a clergyman elected to "preach eight sermons in the year for proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels, viz. Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans..." (Works of Robert Boyle, London, 1772, I, clxvii.)

[i-398] Writings, I, 295.

[i-399] In his Introduction to Selections from Cotton Mather (New York, 1926), xlix-li, K. B. Murdock agrees with I. W. Riley that The Christian Philosopher (1721) represents the first stage of the reaction from scriptural Calvinism to the scientific deism of Paine and Franklin. T. Hornberger's "The Date, the Source, and the Significance of Cotton Mather's Interest in Science" (loc. cit.) shows that "as early as 1693 Cotton Mather was expressing that delight in the wonder and beauty of design in the external world which Professors Murdock and Riley regard as deistic in tendency," that he "was unconsciously vacillating between two points of view."

[i-400] Works of Richard Bentley, ed. by A. Dyce (London, 1838), III, 74-5.

[i-401] Ibid., III, 79.

[i-402] Physico-Theology... (5th ed., London, 1720), 25-6. God's "exquisite Workmanship" is seen in "every Creature" (p. 27).

[i-403] See A Discourse of Free-Thinking (London, 1713).

[i-404] Priestcraft in Perfection... (London, 1710).

[i-405] Writings, I, 243.

[i-406] A. C. Fraser ed. (Oxford, 1894), II, 425-6.

[i-407] Ibid., II, 121. For Locke and his place in the age see S. G. Hefelbower's The Relation of John Locke to English Deism. About the time he read Locke, Franklin notes he studied Arnauld and Nicole's La logique ou l'art de penser. Mr. G. S. Eddy has informed one of the editors that the Library Company of Philadelphia owns John Ozell's translation of the work (London, 1718), and that this was the copy owned by Franklin. (See Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, IV, 1930, and Dictionary of National Biography, "John Ozell.") In accord with the English deistic and rationalistic tendency, La logique admits that Aristotle's authority is not good, that "Men cannot long endure such constraint" (Thomas S. Bayne's trans., 8th ed., Edinburgh and London, n.d., 23). Indebted to Pascal and Descartes, it admits with the latter that geometry and astronomy may help one achieve justness of mind, but it vigorously asserts that this justness of mind is more important than speculative science (p. 1). Anti-sensational, it denies "that all our ideas come through sense" (p. 34), affirming that we have within us ideas of things (p. 31). It is uncertain of the value of induction, which "is never a certain means of acquiring perfect knowledge" (p. 265; see also 304, 307, 308, 350). It accords little praise to the sciences and reason, and seems wary of metaphysical speculation, assuring more humbly that "Piety, wisdom, moderation, are without doubt the most estimable qualities in the world" (p. 291). As we shall discover, this work on the whole seems to have had (with the exception of the last very general principle) little formative influence on the young mind which was fast impregnating itself with scientific deism. Were it not for the recurring implications (particularly in the harvest of editions of the Autobiography) that La logique is as significant for our study as, for example, the works of Locke and Shaftesbury, this note would be pedantic supererogation.

[i-408] A. C. Fraser, op. cit., I, 99. See also 190, 402-3; II, 65, 68, 352.

[i-409] Cited in C. A. Moore, "Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXXI (N. S. XXIV), 276 (June, 1916).

[i-410] Ibid., 271.

[i-411] J. M. Robertson, ed., Characteristics... (New York, 1900), I, 27.

[i-412] Ibid., I, 241-2.

[i-413] Moore, op. cit., 267.

[i-414] In Dogood Paper No. XIV Franklin suggests (autobiographically?): "In Matters of Religion, he that alters his Opinion on a religious Account, must certainly go thro' much Reading, hear many Arguments on both Sides, and undergo many Struggles in his Conscience, before he can come to a full Resolution" (Writings, II, 46).

[i-415] He read Thomas Tryon's The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness, probably the second edition (London, 1691), a copy of which is in the W. S. Mason Collection. Tryon holds that no "greater Happiness" than Attic sobriety is "attainable upon Earth" (p. 1). Divine Temperance is the "spring head of all Virtues" (p. 33). Inward harmony "is both the Glory and the Happiness, the Joy and Solace of created Beings, the celebrated Musick of the Spheres, the Eccho of Heaven, the Business of Seraphims, and the Imployment of Eternity" (p. 500). From Xenophon he learned that "self-restraint" is "the very corner-stone of virtue." The classic core of the Memorabilia is the love of the moderate contending with the love of the incontinent. Franklin has impressed many as representing an American Socrates. Emerson was certain that Socrates "had a Franklin-like wisdom" (Centenary Ed., IV, 72). Franklin's fondness for Socratic centrality, discipline, and knowledge of self is fragmentarily shown by the aphorisms appropriated in Poor Richard. There are scores of the quality of the following: "He that lives carnally won't live eternally." "Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?" "Caesar did not merit the triumphal car more than he that conquers himself." "If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins." "A man in a Passion rides a mad Horse." "There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond and to know one's self." Consult T. H. Russell's The Sayings of Poor Richard, 1733-1758.

[i-416] See S. Bloore, "Samuel Keimer. A Footnote to the Life of Franklin," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LIV, 255-87 (July, 1930), and "Samuel Keimer," in Dictionary of American Biography, X, 288-9. In 1724 Samuel Keimer (probably with Franklin's aid) reprinted Gordon and Trenchard's The Independent Whig. (See W. J. Campbell's A Short-Title Check List of all the Books, Pamphlets, Broadsides, known to have been printed by Benjamin Franklin.) Franklin also was acquainted with their Cato's Letters, having helped to set up parts from it while working on the New England Courant. The Independent Whig emphasizes humanitarian morality rather than theological dogma, morality which "prompts us to do good to all Men, and to all Men alike" (London, 1721, xlviii). It is fearful of metaphysical vagaries (p. 26). Warring against priests and their "Monkey Tricks at Church" (p. 165)—"One Drop of Priestcraft is enough to contaminate the Ocean" (p. 168)—it sets up a violent antithesis between reason and authority (p. 212), declaring that "we must judge from Scripture what is Orthodoxy" but "we must judge from Reason, what is Scripture" (p. 276). Tilting at a Deity "revengeful, cruel, capricious, impotent, vain, fond of Commendation and Flattery," exalting an "All-powerful, All-wise, and All-merciful God" (p. 413), The Independent Whig, like Franklin's Articles, suggests that "it is absurd to suppose, that we can direct the All-wise Being in the Dispensation of his Providence; or can flatter or persuade him out of his eternal Decrees" (p. 436). In Cato's Letters (3rd ed., 4 vols., London, 1733), which were tremendously popular in the American colonies, Franklin could have read that "The People have no Biass to be Knaves" (I, 178), that man "cannot enter into the Rationale of God's punishing all Mankind for the Sin of their first Parents, which they could not help" (IV, 38), "That we cannot provoke him, when we intend to adore him; that the best Way to serve him, is to be serviceable to one another" (IV, 103). Jesus instituted a natural religion, a worship of One Immutable God, free from priests, sacrifices, and ceremonies, in which one shows through "doing Good to men" his adoration for God (IV, 265-6). Here are observations which could easily have reinforced Franklin's deistic rationale. For interesting evidence of further deistic and rationalistic works available to Franklin, see L. C. Wroth's An American Bookshelf, 1755.

[i-417] One of the editors has examined the photostated New England Courant in the W. S. Mason Collection. For readable accounts of this newspaper see: W. G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism, chaps. I-II; C. A. Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 97-103; W. C. Ford, "Franklin's New England Courant," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, LVII, 336-53 (April, 1924); H. F. Kane, "James Franklin Senior, Printer of Boston and Newport," American Collector, III, 17-26 (Oct., 1926).

[i-418] See Writings, II, 52-3.

[i-419] One of the editors has used the Huth copy now possessed by W. S. Mason. Not included in the Sparks, Bigelow, or Smyth editions of his works, it was printed by Parton as an Appendix to his Life; by I. W. Riley, op. cit., and recently edited by L. C. Wroth for The Facsimile Text Society.

[i-420] Franklin must have been mistaken in his belief that he set up the second edition. The work was privately printed in 1722, reprinted in 1724 and a second time in 1725. Hence Franklin really set up the third edition. For an extensive analysis of this work, see C. G. Thompson's dissertation, The Ethics of William Wollaston (Boston, 1922).

[i-421] Wollaston, op. cit., 15.

[i-422] Ibid., 23.

[i-423] Ibid., 78-9.

[i-424] Ibid., 80.

[i-425] Ibid.

[i-426] Ibid., 83.

[i-427] It would be interesting to know whether Franklin's much discussed prudential virtues (listed in Autobiography) were not in part motivated by Wollaston's pages 173-80.

[i-428] Ibid., 7.

[i-429] Ibid., 26.

[i-430] Ibid., 63 ff.

[i-431] Writings, VII, 412.

[i-432] A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (London, 1725), 4.

[i-433] Ibid., 5.

[i-434] For an incisive exposition of the earlier and contemporary controversy regarding freedom of the will, see C. H. Faust and T. H. Johnson's Introduction to Jonathan Edwards (American Writers Series, New York, 1935), xliii-lxiv.

[i-435] A Dissertation..., 10-1.

[i-436] In Franklin's liturgy of the '30's (in the Autobiography) he quotes from Thomson's Winter (lines 217 ff.). While the references to Thomson are few in the complete works, his later influence on Franklin need not be underestimated. See Franklin's letter to W. Strahan (Writings, II, 242-3) in which he confesses that "That charming Poet has brought more Tears of Pleasure into my Eyes than all I ever read before." It is not inconceivable that in Thomson Franklin found additional sanction for his humanitarian bias. One remembers the wide differences between the humanitarianism of Thomson and Franklin. Franklin's practical and masculine-humanitarianism keyed to the saving of time and energy was unlike the sentimental warmheartedness often displayed by Thomson. Franklin was never moved to tears at beholding the worm's "convulsive twist in agonizing folds."

[i-437] Phillips Russell has suggested Spectator, No. 183, as Franklin's probable source in Part II of the Dissertation. There, pleasure and pain are "such constant yoke-fellows." This intuitive assertion can hardly be conceived as the elaborate metaphysical rationale upon which this idea rests in Franklin's work.

[i-438] Robertson, op. cit., 239-40.

[i-439] London (4th ed.), 1724. A despiser of authoritarianism in religion, intrigued by the physico-deistic thought of his day, Lyons (with a vituperative force akin to Thomas Paine's) damns those who damn men for revolting against divine and absolute revelation (p. 25). "Men have Reason sufficient to find out proper and regular ways for improving and perfecting their laws." Faith he calls "an unintelligible Chymæra of the Phantasie" (p. 92). The doctrine of the Trinity "is one of the most nice Inventions that ever the subtlest Virtuoso constru'd to puzzle the Wit of Man with" (p. 112). Through faith people make of God "only a confus'd unintelligible Description of a Heterogeneous Monster of their own Making" (p. 117). Deistically he opines that "we shall soon see that the Object of True Religion, and all Rational Mens Speculations, is an Eternal, Unchangeable, Omnipotent Being, infinitely Good, Just and Wise" (p. 123). Like Toland he urges, "To pretend to Believe a Thing or the Working of a Miracle, is a stupid and gaping Astonishment" (p. 195). Although he enjoyed Franklin's dissertation, he does not in his work hold to Franklin's necessitarianism: "Nothing interrupts Men, but only as they interrupt one another" (p. 238). Religion to Lyons is remote from books, but is found in the "unalterable laws of Nature, which no Authority can destroy, or Interpolator corrupt" (p. 252).

[i-440] Although Franklin indicates in his Autobiography that he delighted to listen to Mandeville hold forth at the Horns, there seems to be traceable in his writings no direct influence of Mandeville's thought. (One may wonder whether Franklin's use of the name "Horatio" in his 1730 dialogues between Philocles and Horatio could be traced to Mandeville's use of the name in his dialogues between Cleomenes and Horatio.) Mandeville's empirical view of man's essential egoism would have found sympathetic response from Franklin. On the other hand, Mandeville's ethical rigorism (see Kaye's Introd. to The Fable of the Bees) differs from the utilitarian cast Franklin sheds over his strenuous ethicism. One may suspect that like a Bunyan, a Swift, a Rabelais, Mandeville would have fortified Franklin against accepting too blithely Shaftesbury's faith in man's innate altruism, even if he did not short-circuit Franklin's growing humanitarianism.

[i-441] Writings, I, 278.

[i-442] David Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac Newton (New York, 1831), 258. For fuller treatment see his Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (Edinburgh, 1855), II, 378 ff., and passim.

[i-443] Quoted in C. S. Duncan, op. cit., 16. See Desaguliers's A System of Experimental Philosophy, Prov'd by Mechanicks... (London, 1719), and his The Newtonian System of the World, The Best Model of Government: An Allegorical Poem (Westminster, 1728). The popularizers of Newton were legion: see especially Watts, Derham, Ray, Huygens, Blackmore, Locke, Thomson, Shaftesbury, S. Clarke, Whiston, Keill, Maclaurin.

[i-444] A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728), 2-3.

[i-445] Ibid., 405. Cf. also 13, 18, 181, 406.

[i-446] Not to be neglected in a summary of the factors influencing Franklin during his youth is Quakerism. Taught in Boston to suspect the Quakers, in Philadelphia in the midst of their stronghold he came soon, one may imagine, to have a sympathetic regard for them. Quakerism, in its antagonism towards sacraments and ceremonies, in its emphasis on the priesthood of every man and the right of private judgment, in its strenuous effort to promote fellow-service, was congenial to the young printer, reacting against Presbyterianism. Like the radical thought of the age, Quakerism refused first place to scriptural revelation, which became secondary to the light within, the dictates of one's heart. Often, we may suspect, the light within was blended with the concept in deism, that regardless of the promptings of scripture, each man has within him a natural sense which enables him to apprehend the truths of nature. The effort of deism to simplify religion was historically shared by Quakerism. During the years we have under consideration Franklin was endeavoring to make a simple worship out of the subtle theology which had been offered him during his early years. Presbyterianism had frowned upon a covenant of works; Quakerism attempted to express its covenant with God in terms of human kindliness, fellowship, and service.

[i-447] It would be interesting to know if M. Faÿ is able to document his statement that the Junto "had Masonic leanings" ("Learned Societies in Europe and America in the Eighteenth Century," American Historical Review, XXXVII, 258 [1932]). R. F. Gould (The History of Freemasonry, London, 1887, III, 424) conjectures whether where was a lodge in Boston as early as 1720 but can offer no evidence of a real history of Masonry in the colonies until 1730, when colonial Masonry "may be said to have its commencement." Chroniclers of Franklin's Masonic career have found no documentary evidence of his affiliation with Masonry until February, 1731, when he entered St. John's Lodge. See J. F. Sachse, Benjamin Franklin as a Free Mason; J. H. Tatsch, Freemasonry in the Thirteen Colonies (New York, 1924); Early Newspaper Accounts of Free Masonry in Pennsylvania, England, Ireland, and Scotland. From 1730 to 1750 by Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Reprinted from Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, 1886); Masonic Letters of Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia to H. Price of Boston, ed. by C. P. MacCalla (Philadelphia, 1888); M. M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (New York, 1924). See "Prefatory Note" in W. B. Loewy's reprint of Anderson's Constitutions (a reprint of Franklin's imprint of 1734) in Publications of the Masonic Historical Society of New York, No. 3 (New York, 1905). Arriving in London only seven years after the inauguration of the Grand Lodge, Franklin could hardly have been unaware of the broader speculations of Masonry. In London only a year after Anderson's Constitutions were printed (in 1723), he may conceivably have read the volume.

Stressing toleration, the universality of natural religion, morality rather than theology, reason rather than faith, Masonry could easily have augmented these ideas as they were latent or already developed in Franklin's mind. Scholars have yet to work out the extent to which Freemasonry, yokefellow of deism, reinforced free thought and was one of the subversive forces breaking down colonial orthodoxy. B. Faÿ's Revolution and Freemasonry, 1680-1800 neglects non-political influences of Freemasonry.

Although there is no evidence that Franklin as early as 1728 read such works (popular in the colonies) as De Ramsay's The Travels of Cyrus and Rowe's translation of The Golden Sayings of Pythagoras, the manner in which oriental lore augmented science and Masonry in fostering deism is an intriguing problem in eighteenth-century colonial letters.

[i-448] See I. W. Riley, op. cit., 249. Also see C. M. Walsh, "Franklin and Plato," Open Court, XX, 129 ff.

[i-449] See Writings, II, 95-6 (1728).

[i-450] John Ray's The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London, 1827; first ed. 1691), 31-2.

[i-451] The Augustan Age, 54-5.

[i-452] Selections from the Writings of Fénelon, ed. by Mrs. Follen (Boston, 1861), 51-2.

[i-453] Ibid., 59.

[i-454] Ibid., 47.

[i-455] In Preface to The Works of the British Poets, ed. by R. Anderson (London, 1795), 592. Since Franklin frequented Batson's in Cornhill, it is possible that through Dr. Pemberton he might have met Sir R. Blackmore, who was one of its best patrons.

[i-456] Ibid., 611.

[i-457] See Ray, op. cit., 143: "I persuade myself, that the beautiful and gracious Author of man's being and faculties, and all things else, delights in the beauty of his creation, and is well pleased with the industry of man, in adorning the earth with beautiful cities and castles...."

[i-458] The Relation of John Locke to English Deism, 133.

[i-459] See P. S. Wood, "Native Elements in English Neo-Classicism," Modern Philology, XXIV, 201-8 (Nov., 1926).

[i-460] See C. E. Jorgenson's "The Source of Benjamin Franklin's Dialogues between Philocles and Horatio (1730)," American Literature, VI, 337-9 (Nov., 1934).

[i-461] Writings, II, 203.

[i-462] Ibid., II, 467.

[i-463] Facsimile reprint by W. Pepper (Philadelphia, 1931), 27 note.

[i-464] See Almanac for 1753.

[i-465] Writings, II, 288.

[i-466] Ibid., II, 429. See also II, 434-5.

[i-467] See W. J. Campbell, op. cit.

[i-468] No. 570 (Nov. 15, 1739), No. 565 (Oct. 11, 1739), and No. 628 (Dec. 25, 1740), for example, are loaded with tributes to the effective preaching and contagious saintliness of this preacher of the Great Awakening.

[i-469] No. 618 (Oct. 16, 1740). Franklin's General Magazine and Historical Chronicle contains many Whitefield references.

[i-470] Writings, II, 316. In general, emotional Methodism was not responsive to science as a basis for rationalistic deism, although to a considerable extent Methodism and deism synchronized in their endeavor to relieve social suffering. See U. Lee's able study, The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm (New York, 1931).

[i-471] Rev. L. Tyerman, Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (London, 1876), I, 439.

[i-472] Ibid., II, 283-4.

[i-473] Ibid., II, 540-1.

[i-474] Ibid., II, 541.

[i-475] See H. H. Clark's "An Historical Interpretation of Thomas Paine's Religion," University of California Chronicle, XXXV, 56-87 (Jan., 1933), and "Toward a Reinterpretation of Thomas Paine," American Literature, V, 133-45 (May, 1933).

[i-476] Writings, IX, 520.

[i-477] Ibid., VIII, 561. See also IX, 506.

[i-478] Aug. 22, 1784; unpublished letter in W. S. Mason Collection. Also see Writings, VIII, 113; IX, 476, 488, 621.

[i-479] I. W. Riley, American Thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism, 76.

[i-480] Parton, op. cit., I, 546.

[i-481] He admonished Deborah, his wife, that she "should go oftener to Church" (Writings, IV, 202), and his daughter, Sarah, "Go constantly to Church, whoever preaches" (Ibid., IV, 287).

[i-482] Letters to Benjamin Franklin from His Family and Friends, 1751-1790 (New York, 1859), 10.

[i-483] Franklin's English friends, Dr. Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Rev. David Williams, Dr. John Fothergill, Peter Collinson, Sir Joseph Banks, Jonathan Shipley, Lord Kames, Sir William Jones, et cetera, though not all deists, found Newtonian science useful in augmenting their philosophies.

[i-484] A Discourse... (London, 1775), 33. For background material on the history of this concept see L. E. Hicks, A Critique of Design-Arguments (New York, 1883).

[i-485] N. Meredith, Considerations on the Utility of Conductors for Lightning... (London, 1789), 44-5. See especially the characteristic notice in Monthly Review..., XLII (London, 1770), 199-210, 298-308.

[i-486] For references see B. Faÿ, The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America; E. E. Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr., Franklin in France; L. Amiable, Un loge maçonnique d'avant 1789....

[i-487] Writings, IX, 436.

[i-488] W. T. Franklin ed. of Franklin's Writings (London, 1818), I, 433.

[i-489] See similar expression in letter to Mme Brillon, cited in J. M. Stifler, The Religion of Benjamin Franklin, 55-6.

[i-490] Writings, III, 135.