Benjamin Franklin - an influential thinker and doer

 

Robert Peel (Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Discovery) seems to want us to expand our education through looking up the famous and influential thinkers of history.

I am particularly interested in his reference to Benjamin Franklin. On page 10 he speaks of Mary’s mother’s Franklinesque maxims, his example being invoked when Mary picked up a pine cone in a neighbour’s woods and was rebuked by her mother for stealing.

Lower down in the page Peel speaks of Franklin’s prudential ethics and his anti-Puritanism.

Benjamin Franklin is a great hero of mine. Carl van Doren’s biography of him has been with me since I inherited it from my brother in 1943, and I think I have been greatly influenced by it on my path to being a thinker (with a small “t”). He was a great Thinker of his era, although he had very little schooling. He was also a printer, which made him interesting to our family of printers. And he produced a famous calendar with wise thoughts and “maxims” printed on its pages: Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Here are some of his “maxims”:

• Hide not your Talents, they for Use were made. What’s a Sun-Dial in the shade!
• Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.
• What more valuable than Gold? Diamonds. Than Diamonds? Virtue.
• Haste makes Waste.
• Search others for their virtues, thy self for thy vices.
• It is better to take many Injuries than to give one.

Benjamin Franklin's "Plan", made up of 13 Virtues, each with short descriptions, is famous:

1.      Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.

2.      Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.

3.      Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.

4.      Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

5.      Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.

6.      Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.

7.      Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8.      Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9.      Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10.  Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.

11.  Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

12.  Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

13.  Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin was a Founding Father of the Unites States of America, printer, publisher, author, inventor and scientist, diplomat.

On page 13 Peel gives us reference points to the time of Mary’s birth and to great names of that time. Napoleon had just died, Beethoven had not yet composed his Ninth Symphony, Goethe had not yet written Wilhelm Meister. President Monroe gets a mention as do Castlereagh, Talleyrand, Metternich, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. All thinkers and doers who influenced the “news” of Mrs. Eddy time.

“Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.” Notes on Chapter Two – p. 315, note 12.

Joyce Voysey

Ed. In looking up the final quote in Joyce's piece today, I have finally devised a system for easily finding the correlation between the main text and Peel's excellent Notes. The idea came to place coloured sticky tabs numbered 1-7 for the chapters, and corresponding seven coloured tabs in the Notes section. Voila!