The Logos Scripture · The Book of Franklin

The Little Book

The Book of Franklin 1 · Written by himself, from his Autobiography and the rules of his club

Benjamin Franklin, born at Boston in 1706, died at Philadelphia in 1790. He ran from his brother at seventeen, took up printing, ran a newspaper, and published Poor Richard. In 1752 he tried lightning with a kite and made the lightning rod from it; he also made bifocal glasses and a new kind of stove, and patented none of them, saying the benefit should be common. He founded a lending library, a fire company, a hospital and a college. He helped draft the Declaration, then went to France as envoy and got the alliance that won the war. The Autobiography is unfinished and was printed after his death. He held slaves as a younger man, gave that up, and as an old one was president of an abolition society, petitioning Congress against slavery months before he died. This is set down not to catch him out: that a man will overturn what he himself did before is the thing this scripture values. This volume rests on what he wrote himself, not on another man’s record of him. He is the first tradesman in this scripture — a printer; and the one who did the greatest number of unrelated things well: ran a newspaper, tried lightning, founded a lending library and a hospital, drafted the founding papers, went abroad as an envoy. He was a deist and wrote private devotions, and he never closes an argument by appealing to divine will. The club he founded settled matters by evidence. As for virtue, he set down thirteen of them, ruled a table, and each day put a mark under whichever he had broken, hoping for one week with a clean page. He never got the clean page. What he did was uncommon; his manner was not. He joked, and got on as easily at court as among ordinary people.

1.1When I was young I set myself a thing that now looks presumptuous: I wanted to arrive at moral perfection.

1.2I supposed that once I knew what was right, I would not do what was wrong.

1.3I found soon enough that this is not so.

1.4Habit pulls at a man. Let your attention slip and your foot is back on the old road. And while I held one virtue steady, another came loose.

1.5So I understood: an intention is not enough. There has to be a method.

1.6I set down thirteen: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, humility.

1.7Each one I wrote as an instruction, not as a doctrine.

1.8For temperance I did not write "temperance is good." I wrote: eat not to dulness, drink not to elevation.

1.9I made a little book and ruled it: seven columns for the days of the week, thirteen rows, one row to a virtue.

1.10Every night before sleep I went over the day. Wherever I had failed, I put a black dot in that square.

1.11I did not go at all thirteen together. One week I gave my whole attention to one; the others I still marked, but did not press.

1.12Thirteen weeks made a course. Four courses made a year.

1.13The first courses left my book frightful with dots.

1.14But the dots were growing fewer.

1.15That was the first time I saw myself moving, instead of feeling that I was moving.

1.16This is what I leave to those who come after:

1.17Correct yourself only in your head, and what you correct is your impression of yourself. (cf. The Highest Covenant 1.1)

1.18Write it down and mark it once a day, and what you correct is yourself. (cf. The Rule 1.3)

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