The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (63 page)

Most people naturally had some virtues, but none naturally had
all
the virtues. To secure those bestowed by nature, and to acquire those wanting, was the subject of an art.

It is as properly an art as painting, navigation, or architecture. If a man would become a painter, navigator, or architect, it is not enough that he is
advised
to be one, that he is
convinced
by the arguments of his adviser that it would be for his advantage to be one, and that he
resolves
to be one; but he must also be taught the principles of the art, be shewn all the methods of working, and how to acquire the
habits
of using properly all the instruments. And thus regularly and gradually he arrives by practice at some perfection in the art.

Franklin distinguished virtue from religion. Christians were exhorted to have faith in Christ as the means to achieving virtue; having spent his life among Christians, Franklin was by no means inclined to deny the possibility of this path to virtue. But that same life among Christians disinclined him to assert its inevitability. Besides, Christians—either nominal or practicing—were not the whole world.

All men cannot have faith in Christ; and many have it in so weak a degree that it does not produce the effect. Our
Art of Virtue
may therefore be of great service to those who have not faith, and come in aid of the weak faith of others. Such as are naturally well-disposed, and have been carefully educated, so that good habits have been early established, and bad ones prevented, have less need of this art; but all may be more or less benefited by it. It is, in short, to be adapted for universal use.

Franklin’s
Art of Virtue
became his unfinished masterpiece. His friends encouraged him to put his project to paper. Kames had been
thinking about something similar as applied to thinking; at the beginning of 1761 he published his
Introduction to the Art of Thinking.
Franklin was impressed. “I never saw more solid useful matter contained in so small a compass,” he told the author. “A writer can hardly conceive the good he may be doing when engaged in works of this kind.” He was speaking as much to himself as to Kames. “With these sentiments you will not doubt my being serious in the intention of finishing my Art of Virtue.” He explained that the work had been under way for thirty years. “I have from time to time made and caused to be made experiments of the method, with success. The materials have been growing ever since; the form only is now to be given.”

Yet the form was never given. Exactly what form Franklin had in mind cannot be known. In his autobiography, which he began writing ten years later, he included the tale of his attempt at moral perfection, with the charts recording his daily progress in each of thirteen virtues. Perhaps this provided the basis for his projected work. But perhaps not, considering the failure of that experiment.

A lifelong writer and a career publisher, Franklin almost never suffered from the perfectionism that prevents many would-be authors from committing themselves to print. Perhaps he suffered so in this case, thinking a work about perfection ought to be perfect. Perhaps perfectionism of a different sort crept into his thinking. He may have recalled that early failure to achieve perfect virtue and deemed presumptuous any attempt to instruct others in what he had not mastered. In the letter to Kames containing the outline of his project, Franklin concluded, “I imagine what I have now been writing will seem to savour of great presumption; I must therefore speedily finish my little piece and communicate the manuscript to you, that you may judge whether it is possible to make good such pretensions.”

Kames never had the opportunity, for Franklin—perhaps judging on his own that it was impossible to make good his pretensions—never finished the work.

Yet if he
could not direct the public at large to perfection, he did manage to provide guidance to a particular friend. Polly Stevenson, leaving her mother’s Craven Street house to live with an elderly aunt in Essex, had proposed a correspondence touching matters of moral and natural philosophy. Franklin was happy to oblige. He sent her books to seed the
conversation, urging her to write regarding “whatever occurs to you that you do not thoroughly apprehend, or that you clearly conceive and find pleasure in.”

Polly proved an apt pupil, and inquisitive. Why did the tide in rivers rise first at the mouth? she asked. Franklin had remarked that sailors at sea did not catch cold from wet clothes, the way landsmen did; she wondered whether the salt in the water had something to do with it. Spring-water at a particular location seemed warmer after being pumped than it was at the spring itself; could Franklin explain?

On the last question Franklin remarked that he expected the pumping “to warm not so much the water pumped as the person pumping.” He would not impugn Polly’s observation, but, especially as he had never heard of nor encountered this phenomenon, he wished to verify its existence before trying to explain it. “This prudence of not attempting to give reasons before one is sure of facts,” he said, “I learnt from one of your sex, who, as Selden [John Selden, jurist and Orientalist] tells us, being in company with some gentlemen that were viewing and considering something which they called a Chinese shoe, and disputing earnestly about the manner of wearing it, and how it could possibly be put on, put in her word, and said modestly,
Gentlemen, are you sure it is a shoe? Should not that be settled first?
”

On the other points he endeavored to instruct. He devoted many pages of correspondence and at least one detailed diagram to explain the theory of waves and tides. The causes of colds stumped him. “No one catches cold by bathing, and no clothes can be wetter than water itself. Why damp clothes should then occasion colds is a curious question, the discussion of which I reserve for a future letter, or some future conversation.” (Eventually Franklin would decide that colds had nothing to do with wet clothes, or even wet bodies.)

The correspondence and their now-occasional conversations convinced Franklin that Polly was an unusual young woman. Apparently through her mother, he learned that she did not wish to wed; he jokingly asked, “Why will you, by the cultivation of your mind, make yourself still more amiable, and a more desirable companion for a man of understanding, when you are determined, as I hear, to live single? If we enter, as you propose, into
moral
as well as natural philosophy, I fancy, when I have fully established my authority as a tutor, I shall take upon me to lecture you a little on that chapter of duty.”

Franklin was teasing Polly here, but his words were not without significance. Recognizing what an intelligent and thoughtful young woman
she was, he naturally considered what sort of wife she would make some man. Scarcely a month later he wrote her, “The knowledge of nature may be ornamental, and it may be useful, but if to attain an eminence in that, we neglect the knowledge and practice of essential duties, we deserve reprehension. For there is no rank in natural knowledge of equal dignity and importance with that of being a good parent, a good child, a good husband, or wife, a good neighbour or friend, a good subject or citizen, that is, in short, a good Christian.”

The more Franklin corresponded with Polly, the more he became convinced she would make some lucky man a fine wife. In fancy he might have wished he himself were twenty-five or thirty again and had met such a charmingly intelligent young woman. Polly, like Katy Ray and the numerous women to whom Franklin would become attached in subsequent years, could hardly have contrasted more sharply with Debbie, his old country Joan. He would never leave Debbie—not permanently, at any rate. But he could dream.

Franklin
obviously was in no hurry to get home to Debbie. The Privy Council’s decision of September 1760 fairly well concluded the business he had been sent to London to transact. Not till two years later—the end of August 1762—did he cast off from Portsmouth for Philadelphia. In the interim he found a few things to do to earn his keep as the Assembly’s agent, such as overseeing the investment of Pennsylvania’s funds. Yet this might easily have been left to Robert Charles, who could hardly have handled it worse than Franklin did.

For the most part Franklin continued to enjoy the life of the celebrity philosopher. Oxford University awarded him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, holding a special convocation for the purpose. He met David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and historian who was completing the final volumes of his
History of England,
the work that would earn him a large income to accompany his already substantial reputation. Franklin and Hume talked philosophy, politics, and etymology; on the last subject Franklin lamented a deficiency of English compared to certain other languages.

I cannot but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words when we want them, by composition of old ones whose meanings are already well understood. The German allows of it, and it is a common practice with their writers. Many of our present English words were originally so made; and many of the Latin words. In point of clearness such compound words would have the advantage of any we can borrow from the ancient or from foreign languages. For instance, the word
inaccessible,
though long in use among us, is not yet, I dare say, so universally understood by our people as the word
uncomeatable
would immediately be, which we are not allowed to write.

Alexander Dick and Lord Kames consulted Franklin on the matter of internal combustion—to wit, fireplaces in their homes, and how to keep them from smoking. Franklin responded with customized suggestions for their particular circumstances. George Keith, the Earl of Marischal, wanted to know how to protect his house from lightning; Franklin responded with practical advice informed by his electrical theory.

This same Lord Marischal, in his capacity as governor of Neuchâtel, found himself required to adjudicate a theological dispute over the duration of damnation, namely, was time in hell apportioned according to the grievousness of sin, or did all sinners suffer eternally? Franklin, through David Hume, forwarded an anecdote appropriate to the matter:

The Church [of England] people and the Puritans in a country town had once a bitter contention concerning the erecting of a Maypole, which the former desired and the latter opposed. Each party endeavoured to strengthen itself by obtaining the authority of the mayor, directing or forbidding a Maypole. He heard their altercation with great patience, and then gravely determined thus: You that are for having no Maypole shall have no Maypole; and you that are for having a Maypole shall have a Maypole. Get about your business and let me hear no more of this quarrel. So methinks Lord Marischal might say: You that are for no more damnation than is proportioned to your offences have my consent that it may be so; and you that are for being damned eternally, G-d eternally d—n you all, and let me hear no more of your disputes.

With other interlocutors Franklin examined other topics. Why were the oceans salty? Many naturalists said this was because the rivers and
streams of the planet dissolved rock salt, such as that found in salt mines, and carried it downstream to the sea. “But this opinion takes it for granted that all water was originally fresh, of which we can have no proof,” Franklin said. “I am inclined to a different opinion, and rather think all the water on this globe was originally salt, and that the fresh water we find in springs and rivers is the produce of distillation. As to the rock-salt found in mines, I conceive that instead of communicating its saltness to the sea, it is itself drawn from the sea, and that of course the sea is now fresher than it was originally.” (On this matter Franklin was partly right and partly wrong. The salt in mines did indeed come from the sea, but the seas were—and are—getting saltier.) On a similar subject Franklin noted the presence of fossil fishes and seashells in highlands far from the sea. “Either the sea has been higher than it now is, and has fallen away from those high lands; or they have been lower than they are, and were lifted up out of the water to their present height, by some internal mighty force such as we still feel some remains of, when whole continents are moved by earthquakes.”