BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Introduction

If the several causes of the foundation of the Republic of the United States were ranged according to their respective importance, first of all would come the perverse policy of Mr. George Grenville, and the want of moral courage in Lord North to resist the unenlightened obstinacy of George the Third. If not demerits but only merits were classified, an equal rank, and that the highest, must be assigned to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. So far as any historical events can be appropriated to individuals, those two men were the joint authors of the great Republic.

Discussion

Benjamin Franklin would have been one of the most outstanding men in any country, in any era — but his life and work during the period of our nation's founding made him one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. In addition to his contribution in bringing the United States of America into the world, Franklin was an author, scientist, musician, inventor, statesman, diplomat - a wit, a sage, a philosopher — and so much more. His list of achievements is staggering. He invented the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, swim fins, the flexible urinary catheter, the battery, the odometer, and he implemented the first volunteer fire department and lending library. If that wasn't enough, Franklin is credited with drawing what may be the first real political cartoon in America (Morgan, 2002).

The pervading trait of Franklin's character was allegiance to the Practical. Few devotees of knowledge have so consistently manifested this instinct, the more remarkable because united to speculative tendencies which quickened his intelligence and occupied his leisure to the very close of his existence. For the intangible aims of the metaphysician, the vagaries of the imaginative, the "airy bubble—reputation," he exhibited no concern; but the application of truth to the facts of nature and of life,—the discovery of material laws and their conversion to human welfare,—the actual influence of morals, economy, politics, and education upon civil society and individual deportment,—were problems upon which he never failed to think, read, talk, write, and experiment.

If the prime of Franklin's life was the critical era of our national fortunes, it was no less a period of literary and political transition in Great Britain. It was the epoch when History assumed a more philosophical development under the thoughtful pen of Hume, when sentiment and humor grew bold and vagrant in expression through Sterne, when the greatest orator of the age recorded its events in the Annual Register, when humane letters rose in public esteem by virtue of Goldsmith's graceful style, when Garrick made the stage illustrious, when Methodism began its work, when the seer of Stockholm proclaimed spiritual science, and the bard of Olney sang the pleasures of rural and domestic life. Yet how diverse from them all was the renown their American contemporary won, and the method of its acquisition! It is the clear vista to a humble origin and the ...