The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin’s account of his own life between the years of 1706 and 1758 (and therefore not covering American Revolution, which started in 1775).

In Volume 1 of [[The Harvard Classics]]^N.

EPUB: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/148 (not OCR, actually transcribed).
Videos:

Not something I would usually read but it’s the first book in the [[The Harvard Classics]]^N, a famous collection of classic literature from before 1910. There were a few really interesting parts (such as the description of Franklin’s search for “moral perfection”) but also found a lot of it boring, like long descriptions of disputes he’d had in his political career. But there was a strong theme of his quest for self-improvement and industriousness – one of the lectures I’ve linked to above describes him as being a “true American” before America was what we know it as today.

This might be the reason that the then president of Harvard, Charles William Eliot, chose to open the Harvard Classics with an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The idea of the Harvard Classics was to emulate a liberal education by self-study, and at the time perhaps the key icon of self-study was Benjamin Franklin. This is evident in the book: reading and writing at a very young age, reading late into the night, and doing this all with 13 siblings and little support.

One thing I didn’t realise before starting reading was that it was incomplete. The autobiography includes a lot of his early life, like the invention of the Franklin stove and the lightning rod, but since he only describes his life from the years 1706 to 1758, it misses out a lot, not least his role in the American Revolution.

Highlights

Family history

Benjamin Franklin’s grandfather is buried in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Reading late into the night

Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest parts of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.

Teaching himself to write better

With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’‘d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some my faults, and corrected them.

Vegetarian

When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet.

Some books mentioned

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
Art of Thinking, Messrs. du Port Royal.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan

Changing his mind

If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix’d in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.

Secret writer

When he was 15, he adopted the pseudonym of Silence Dogood so that he could get letters he’d written published without his brother, the owner of the newspaper, published.

I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printing-house.

Lots of drinking

Talking about his co-workers in a London printing house:

My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o’clock, and another when he had done his day’s work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he suppos’d, to drink strong beer, that he might be strong to labour.

I endeavoured to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer.

Printing house and chapels

In a footnote:

A printing-house is always called a chapel by the workmen, the origin of which appears to have been that printing was carried on in England in an ancient chapel converted into a printing-house, and the title has been preserved by tradition.

Good swimmer

He had heard by some means or other of my swimming from Chelsea to Blackfriar’s, and of my teaching Wygate and another young man to swim in a few hours. He had two sons, about to set out on their travels; he wish’d to have them first taught swimming, and proposed to gratify me handsomely if I would teach them.

…I thought it likely that, if I were to remain in England and open a swimming-school, I might get a good deal of money; and it struck me so strongly, that, had the overture been sooner made me, probably I should not so soon have returned to America.

My friend has got this idea…

Talking about opening a subscription library:

…The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting oen’s self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos’d to raise one’s reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s neighbours, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading.

Original self-help guru

…It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty that I had imagined. While my care was employ’d in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I proposed to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occured to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a precent, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifiling conversation.

Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its itme.

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

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

Industry: Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

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

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

Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

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

Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Unhealthy discourse

In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country.

Chess

Talking about chess and learning Italian:

…Finding this took up too much of the time I had to spare for study, I at length refus’d to play any more, unless on this condition, that the victor in every game should have a right to impose a task, either in parts of the grammar to be got by heart, or in translations, etc., which tasks the vanquish’d was to perform upon honour, before our next meeting. As we play’d pretty equally, we thus beat one another into that language.

First fire service

…This was much spoken of as a useful piece, and gave rise to a project, which soon followed it, of forming a company for the more ready extinguishing of fires, and mutual assistance in removing and securing goods when in danger.

Science experiment at a sermon

…I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards the river; and I found his voice distinct till I came near Front-street, when some noise in that street obscur’d it.