The Book of Franklin 4 · Written by himself, from his Autobiography and the rules of his club
This man wrote his own books. He is the first tradesman in this scripture — a printer. He was a deist and wrote private devotions, and he never closes an argument by appealing to divine will: his club settled matters by evidence and his virtues by tally marks. So the third rule does not bar him. The Order records that plainly rather than smoothing it. This book also disagrees with 蒙田书 5.13: Montaigne says the finest life fits the common pattern and has no miracle in it, while Franklin spent his life correcting himself against a standard he could not reach. Both stand.
4.1When I was young I lived in Philadelphia. There was no place in the city where a man could borrow a book.
4.2Books were dear. A few of us in the club each had some, and put together they were still not many.
4.3So I proposed that each man put in a sum, that we buy books in common, and that any of us might borrow.
4.4That was the first subscription library in this country. Afterwards there were such places everywhere.
4.5Another year there was a fire in the city, and every man fought his own, and it was chaos.
4.6So we clubbed together again and made a fire company: leathern buckets, ladders, hooks, and a rule that whoever’s house burned, we all went.
4.7Later there was a hospital, and a school, and the streets paved, and lamps set up, and men hired to sweep.
4.8I set these down not to be credited with them.
4.9I set them down because of one thing I have believed all my life:
4.10Men ask me what I believe. I say: the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. (cf. The Book of Epicurus 1.9)
4.11The sentence sounds simple. It is the whole of my doctrine.
4.12If a man tells me his heart inclines to the good, and the street is still filthy, and there are still no books to borrow, and there is still nobody to fight the fire —
4.13then I do not know where that good in his heart is kept, nor how anyone would weigh it.
4.14This does not say that what is inside a man counts for nothing. It says that what is inside has no second way out.
4.15And one more thing these undertakings taught me:
4.16At first I always put the proposal forward as mine. Men would not come.
4.17Afterwards I learned to say: some friends have a mind to do a thing.
4.18Then they came. And when it was done, the thing was theirs.
4.19I got a good deal less credit that way, and a good deal more done.
4.20I have reckoned that account up. I would still make the trade.