Benjamin Franklin Part 4

This is anything but the corollary of a defender of state rights.

Franklin was convinced that the permanence of the national view alone could prevent federal anarchy. Addressing himself to the problem of delegated authority Madison observed: "This prerogative of the General Govt. is the great pervading principle that must controul the centrifugal tendency of the States; which, without it, will continually fly out of their proper orbits and destroy the order & harmony of the political system."[i-354] One is tempted to see here Newton's principle of gravity translated into terms of political nationalism; one wonders whether it is probable that (like Madison's) Franklin's emphasis on the harmony of the whole could have been partly conditioned by the cohesiveness and harmony of universal physical laws incarnate in Newtonian physics, of which he was a master.

Franklin was "apprehensive ...--perhaps too apprehensive,--that the Government of these States may in future times end in a Monarchy."[i-355] He suggested that moderate rather than kingly salaries paid the chief executive would tend to allay this danger. Between Randolph, who belabored a single executive as the "foetus of monarchy,"

and Wilson, who harbored it as the "best safeguard against tyranny,"

stood Franklin, who saw it as subversive of democratic sovereignty but not necessarily fatal. He declared himself emphatically against the motion that the executive have a complete negative.[i-356] Extolling popular sovereignty, he warned that "In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors & sovereigns."[i-357] He refused to consider a plan which sought to establish a franchise only for freeholders: "It is of great consequence that we shd. not depress the virtue & public spirit of our common people; of which they displayed a great deal during the war, and which contributed princ.i.p.ally to the favorable issue of it."[i-358] Pinckney had made a motion that rulers should have unenc.u.mbered estates:

Doctr Franklin expressed his dislike of every thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If honesty was often the companion of wealth, and if poverty was exposed to peculiar temptation, it was not less true that the possession of property increased the desire of more property--[i-359].... This Const.i.tution will be much read and attended to in Europe, and if it should betray a great partiality to the rich--will not only hurt us in the esteem of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common people from removing to this Country.[i-360]

Pinckney's motion was rejected. Franklin within the Convention did not seem to fear Gerry's threat--"the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy."[i-361]

Franklin suggested the adoption of a unicameral legislature, but does not seem to have made any struggle for it. His article of 1789 in defense of the Pennsylvania (unicameral) legislature, however, shows that he clung to the principle as firmly as he had in 1776.[i-362] He questioned: "The Wisdom of a few Members in one single Legislative Body, may it not frequently stifle bad Motions in their Infancy, and so prevent their being adopted?" In addition the bicameral house is c.u.mbersome and provocative of delay.

Little is known of Franklin's att.i.tude toward the violent controversy attendant upon efforts toward ratification. In his _Ancient Jews and Anti-Federalists_[i-363] he warned the traducers of the new Const.i.tution against voiding an instrument which in his opinion was as sound as the frailty of human reason would allow it to be. In fact, said he, it "astonishes me, ... to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does."[i-364] He may be said to have been anti-federalistic to the extent that he feared a strong executive, guarded jealously the legislative sphere, worried little about checks and balances, sought to accelerate popular sovereignty; he was federalistic to the extent that he opposed state localism with national sovereignty, was not blind to the depravity of human nature and hence felt the need for a vigorous coercive government. To M. Le Veillard he confessed an almost Hamiltonian distrust of the mult.i.tude: The Const.i.tution "has ... met with great opposition in some States, for we are at present a nation of politicians. And, though there is a general dread of giving too much power to our _governors_, I think we are more in danger from too little obedience in the _governed_."[i-365] He made the same complaint a year later: "We have been guarding against an evil that old States are most liable to, _excess of power_ in the rulers, but our present danger seems to be _defect of obedience_ in the subjects."[i-366] It is difficult to reconcile his inveterate distrust of men with his activity in behalf of an almost universal franchise, reluctance to sanction the principle of checks and balances, and belief in a unicameral legislature; it is difficult to reconcile the Plutarchan fervor with which he advocated the wisdom of following great leaders with his fear of a vigorous executive. It is not improbable that those ideas which are generally anti-federalistic in Franklin's political view are in part the result of his hatred of proprietary abuses which he witnessed as a provincial statesman during his middle age.

VII. FRANKLIN AS SCIENTIST AND DEIST

Jan Ingenhousz, the celebrated physician to Maria Theresa of Austria, wrote a letter to Franklin on May 3, 1780, which doubtless caused the patriarch of Pa.s.sy to reflect--not without sadness of heart--on the diversified fortune which time and circ.u.mstance had devised for him. The physician (no friend to the American revolution) implored Franklin not to abandon "entirely the world Nature whose laws made by the supreme wisdom and is constant and unalterable as its legislature himself [_sic_]." Ingenhousz lamented that Franklin, "a Philosopher so often and so successfully employed in researches of the most intricate and the most mysterious operations of Nature,"[i-367] should have given his time to politics.

Franklin is now most commonly viewed as a utilitarian moralist, a successful tradesman and printer, a shrewd propagandist and financier, the diplomat of the Revolution, and if at all as a scientist, then only as a virtuoso, fashioning devices, such as open stoves, bifocal spectacles, and lightning rods, for practical uses. Probably few general readers are aware that Franklin was a disinterested scientist in the sense that he interrogated nature with an eye to discovering its immutable laws. It is conversely supposed that Franklin himself was unaware of any inclination to pursue natural science to the exclusion of those political achievements which have identified him as one of the wiliest and sagest diplomats of the Enlightenment.

It may be learned, however (not without astonishment), that Franklin almost from the beginning of his partic.i.p.ation in politics resented the time given over to such activities, as so much time lost to his speculations and research in natural science. As early as 1752 he wistfully (though realistically) confessed that "business sometimes obliges one to postpone philosophical amus.e.m.e.nts."[i-368] A month after this, he wrote to Cadwallader Colden: "I congratulate you on the prospect you have, of pa.s.sing the remainder of life in philosophical retirement."[i-369] In the midst of investigating waterspouts, he observed to John Perkins: "How much soever my Inclinations lead me to philosophical Inquiries, I am so engag'd in Business, public and private, that those more pleasing pursuits [of natural science] are frequently interrupted...."[i-370] He urged Dr. John Fothergill to give himself "repose, delight in viewing the Operations of nature in the vegetable creation."[i-371] In 1765, upon completing his negotiations in behalf of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly, he promised Lord Kames that he would "engage in no other" political affairs.[i-372] To the notable professor of physics of the University of Turin, Giambatista Beccaria, he wrote in 1768 from London (where he had sought to have the Stamp Act rescinded) that he had to "take away entirely" his "attention from philosophical matters, though I have constantly cherished the hope of returning home where I could find leisure to resume the studies that I have shamefully put off from time to time."[i-373] Again, in 1779, he confessed to Beccaria: "I find myself here [Pa.s.sy] immers'd in Affairs, which absorb my Attention, and prevent my pursuing those Studies in which I always found the highest Satisfaction; and I am now grown so old, as hardly to hope for a Return of that Leisure and Tranquillity so necessary for Philosophical Disquisitions."[i-374] He longed (in 1782) to have Congress release him so that he might "spend the Evening of Life more agreeably in philosophic [devoted to natural science]

Leisure."[i-375] He who, John Winthrop claimed, "was good at starting Game for Philosophers,"[i-376] acknowledged that he had thrown himself on the public, which, "having as it were eaten my flesh, seemed now resolved to pick my bones."[i-377] Reverend Mana.s.seh Cutler visited Franklin a few months before the patriarch's death. They ardently discussed botany, Franklin boyish in his eagerness to show the Reverend Mr. Cutler a ma.s.sive book, containing "the whole of Linnaeus' Systema Vegetabilies." "The Doctor seemed extremely fond, through the course of the visit, of dwelling on Philosophical subjects, and particularly that of natural History, while the other Gentlemen were swallowed up with politics."[i-378] In a fict.i.tious (?) conversation between Joseph II of Austria and Franklin, the Newton of electricity is reported as explaining that he was early in life attracted by natural philosophy: "Necessity afterwards made me a politician.... I was Franklin, the _Philosopher_ to the world, long after I had in fact, become Franklin the Politician."[i-379] After reviewing the evidence, it seems incredulous to doubt that, regardless of his achievements in other fields, Franklin sought his greatest intellectual pleasure in scientific research and speculation, and that his doctrines of scientific deism antedated and conditioned his political, economic, and humanitarian interests.

If Franklin's inventions have been justly praised, his affections for the empirical scientific method and his philosophic interest in Nature's laws have been unjustly ignored. He observed to Ebenezer Kinnersley "that a philosopher cannot be too much on his guard in crediting their ["careless observers'"] relations of things extraordinary, and should never build an hypothesis on any thing but clear facts and experiments, or it will be in danger of soon falling ... like a house of cards";[i-380] and to Abbe Soulavie, "You see I have given a loose to imagination; but I approve much more your method of philosophizing, which proceeds upon actual observation, makes a collection of facts, and concludes no farther than those facts will warrant."[i-381] In 1782 he wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, that he longed to "sit down in sweet Society with my English philosophic Friends, communicating to each other new Discoveries, and proposing Improvements of old ones; all tending to extend the Power of Man over Matter, avert or diminish the Evils he is subject to, or augment the Number of his Enjoyments."[i-382] A careful study of his scientific papers discloses that he was not untrained in the method of hypotheses sustained or rejected by patient and laborious experimentation: not fortuitously did he arrive at conclusions in electricity, which were epochal in (1) "His rejection of the two-fluid theory of electricity and subst.i.tution of the one-fluid theory; (2) his coinage of the appropriate terms _positive_ and _negative_, to denote an excess or a deficit of the common electric fluid; (3) his explanation of the Leyden jar, and, notably, his recognition of the paramount role played by the gla.s.s or dielectric; (4) his experimental demonstration of the ident.i.ty of lightning and electricity; and (5) his invention of the lightning conductor for the protection of life and property, together with his clear statement of its preventive and protective functions."[i-383] Not only an inventor, Franklin inductively observed natural phenomena, and drew conclusions until he had created a virtual _Principia_ of electricity. His contemporaries were not loath to honor him as a second Newton. Franklin, however, was in all of his researches under a self-confessed yoke which doubtless tended to deny him access to the profoundest reaches of scientific inquiry: from Philadelphia he wrote in 1753 to Cadwallader Colden, eminent mathematician (as well as versatile scientist): "Your skill & Expertness in Mathematical Computations, will afford you an Advantage in these Disquisitions [among them, researches in electricity], that I lament the want of, who am like a Man searching for some thing in a dark Room where I can only grope and guess; while you proceed with a Candle in your Hand."[i-384]

In an effort to learn the _modus operandi_ of Franklin's philosophic thought, let us now review its genetic development, its probable sources, its relation to scientific deism, and the degree to which he achieved that serene repose for which he ever strove. A pioneer American rationalist, not without his claims to being "another Voltaire,"

Franklin as a youth read those works which were forming or interpreting the thought patterns of the age. Born in an epoch presided over by a Locke and a Newton, an epoch of rationalism and "supernatural"

rationalism, alike fed by physico-mathematical speculation. Franklin, barely beyond adolescence, felt the impacts of the age of reason.

Scholars before and since M. M. Curtis have explained that "in religion he was a Deist of the type of Lord Herbert of Cherbury."[i-385] M. Fa has sought, without convincing doc.u.mentary evidence, to interpret Franklin's philosophic mind in terms of Pythagoreanism.[i-386] We may find that these views are over simple and historically inadequate--even wrong.

Franklin was reared "piously in the Dissenting way"[i-387] by a "pious and prudent" Calvinistic father who died as he lived, with "entire Dependence on his Redeemer."[i-388] "Religiously educated as a Presbyterian,"[i-389] young Benjamin was taught that _Major est Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenu capacitas_. He was nurtured on the Bible and "books in polemic divinity," and he regularly attended services at the Old South Church. Doubtless without reflection he was led to identify goodness with the church and its worship. He was a part of New England's bibliolatry. Not long before he was apprenticed to his brother James he read Cotton Mather's _Bonifacius--An Essay upon the Good that is to be Devised and Designed by those who desire to Answer the Great End of Life, and to do good while they live_, and Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects: or Effectual Ways for Advancing the Interests of the Nation_. He confessed in 1784 that _Bonifacius_ "gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a _doer of good_ than on any other kind of reputation."[i-390] Mather, as an exponent of Christian charity, urged that man help his neighbors "with a rapturous a.s.siduity,"[i-391] that he may discover the "ravishing satisfaction which he might find in relieving the distresses of a poor miserable neighbor."[i-392] It is ironic that Mather should have apparently aided a young man to divorce himself from the strenuous subtleties of theology. (Franklin was too young to gather that Mather circ.u.mspectly warned against a covenant of works, and hence was Pauline in his advocacy of _charity_ rather than of humanitarianism.) And from Defoe's _Essays_ Franklin received more than a penchant for projects.

Like Mather, Defoe observed that "G.o.d Almighty has commanded us to relieve and help one another in distress."[i-393] Defoe seemed to young Franklin to dwell on fellow-service--to promise that the good man need not have understood all of the dogma of Old South meetinghouse.

Apprenticed to James, Franklin admitted that he "now had access to better books."[i-394] Whatever the extent of James's library in 1718, by 1722 the _New England Courant_ collection included Burnet's _History of the Reformation_, _Theory of the Earth_, the _Spectator_ papers, _The Guardian_, _Art of Thinking_ [Du Port Royal], _The Tale of a Tub_, and the writings of Tillotson.[i-395] After reading most probably in these, and, as we are told, in Tryon's _Way to Health_, Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, digests of some of Boyle's lectures, Anthony Collins, Locke, and Shaftesbury, Franklin became in his Calvinist religion a "real doubter."[i-396] He became at the age of sixteen, as a result of reading Boyle's Lectures,[i-397] a "thorough Deist."[i-398] We cannot be certain of the Lectures read by Franklin, but we may observe Bentley's _Folly of Atheism_ (1692) and Derham's _Physico-Theology_ (1711-1712), which are representative of the series provided for by Boyle. Like Mather's _The Christian Philosopher_ (1721)[i-399] they both employ science and rationalism to reinforce (never as equivalent to or subst.i.tute for) scriptural theology. Fed by Newtonian physics, Bentley discovers in gravity "the great basis of all mechanism," the "immediate _fiat_ and finger of G.o.d, and the executions of the divine law."[i-400]

Gravity, "the powerful cement which holds together this magnificent structure of the world,"[i-401] is the result of the Deity "who _always acts geometrically_." Borrowing from c.o.c.kburne, Ray, Bentley, and Fenelon, Derham offers likewise to prove the existence and operations of the Workman from his Work.[i-402]

It is unlikely that Boyle's Lectures (characterized by orthodox rationalism, augmented by Newtonianism) would alone have precipitated in Franklin a "thorough deism." Not improbably Locke, Shaftesbury, and Anthony Collins (whom Franklin mentions reading) were most militant in overthrowing his inherited bibliolatry. Although he does not say exactly which of Collins's works he read, Collins's rationale is repeated clearly enough in any one of his pieces. Warring against "crack-brain'd Enthusiasts," the "prodigious Ignorance" and "Impositions of Priests,"

against defective scriptural texts, Collins defends "our natural Notions" against the authoritarianism of priests. Vilifying the authority of the surplice, he apotheosizes the authority of reason.[i-403] He intensifies the English tradition of every-man-his-own-priest, and exclaims "How uncertain Tradition is!"[i-404] From this militant friend of John Locke, Franklin was doubtless impregnated with an _odium theologic.u.m_ and an exalted idea of the sanct.i.ty of Reason.

Having read _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_,[i-405] Franklin may have remembered that Locke there observed, "Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or a.s.sented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do."[i-406] Like Collins, Locke urged a deistic rationale:

Since then the precepts of Natural Religion are plain, and very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom to come to be controverted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words; methinks it would become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and imperious, in imposing our own sense and interpretations of the latter.[i-407]

In addition Franklin may have been influenced by Locke's implied Newtonianism; he would suspect the subtleties of the Old South Church when he read: "For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity."[i-408] Like Newton, Locke inferred an infinite and benevolent Geometrician from "the magnificent harmony of the universe."

Franklin also read Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, which Warburton quotes Pope as saying "had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity put together."[i-409] Although he may have pondered over Shaftesbury's "virtuoso theory of Benevolence," he was not one to be readily convinced of the innate altruism of man. His Puritan heritage linked with an empirical realism prevented him from becoming prey to Shaftesbury's a priori optimism. He was aware of the potential danger of a complacent trust in natural impulses, which often lead to

The love of sweet security in sin.

To what extent did Franklin's nascent humanitarianism--mildly provoked by the neighborliness of Mather and Defoe--receive additional sanction from Shaftesbury's doctrine that "compa.s.sion is the supreme form of moral beauty, the neglect of it the greatest of all offenses against nature's ordained harmony"?[i-410] Identifying self-love and social, Shaftesbury saw the divine temper achieved through affection for the public, the "universal good."[i-411] Born among men who were convinced of the supremacy of scripture, Franklin would at first be astonished (then perhaps liberated) upon reading in the _Characteristics_ that "Religion excludes only perfect atheism."[i-412] From such a piece as Shaftesbury's _An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit_ Franklin learned that not all men preserved a union between theology and ethics, scripture and religion. Although Shaftesbury occasionally indicated a reverence for sacred scriptures, the totality of his thought was cast in behalf of natural religion. He was convinced that the "Deity is sufficiently revealed through natural Phenomena."[i-413] Extolling the apprehension of the Deity through man's uniform reason, Shaftesbury urbanely lampooned enthusiasm, that private revelation which threatened to prevail against the _consensus gentium_.

By 1725 Franklin had divorced theology from morality and morality from conscience, having punctuated his youth with faunish "errata."[i-414]

Although he was as a youth too much at ease in Zion, he did not lose substantial (if then a theoretic) faith in the struggle between the law of the spirit and the law of the members. Nurtured by the Bible, Bunyan, Addison and Steele, Tryon, Socrates, and Xenophon--a blend of Christian and cla.s.sical traditions--he felt the reasonableness, if not the saintliness, of curbing the resolute sway of his natural self.[i-415]

After five years with James, a year in Philadelphia where part of the time he worked with Samuel Keimer,[i-416] a fanatic and bearded Camisard, Franklin, through the duplicity of Governor Keith, found himself in November, 1724, aboard the _London-Hope_, England-bound. It would be unfair to Franklin were we to think him a primitive colonist to whom England was an unreal, incalculable land. We remember that James knew the London of Anne, Addison, Steele, Locke, and Newton. And we have seen that the _New England Courant_ library was one of which no London gentleman and scholar need have been ashamed. As a worker on this newspaper Franklin had set up the names and some indications of the thoughts of such men as Fenelon, Tillotson, Defoe, Swift, Butler, Bayle, Isaac Watts, Blount, Burnet, Whiston, Temple, Trenchard and Gordon, Denham, Garth, Dryden, Milton, Locke, Flamstead, and Newton.[i-417]

During his two years in London, working successively in the printing houses of Samuel Palmer and James Watts, he mingled with many of the leaders of the day. Probably because he had, while yet in America, read (in the transactions of the Royal Society) of the virtuosi's interest in asbestos, he wrote to Sir Hans Sloane, offering to show him purses made of that novel stuff.[i-418] And we know that Sir Hans Sloane received Franklin in his home at Bloomsbury Square. Before he met other notables he published (what he called later an "erratum") _A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_ (1725).[i-419] Franklin himself said this work was the result of his setting up Wollaston's _The Religion of Nature Delineated_[i-420] at Palmer's and his not agreeing with the author's "reasonings." Coming to Wollaston's work (with Franklin's _Dissertation_ and _Articles of Belief_ in mind) we can, however, see much that Franklin agreed with, general principles which do little more than reflect the current patterns of thought. Like Franklin, Wollaston saw Reason as "the great law of our nature."[i-421] With Locke he denied innate ideas.[i-422] That part of _The Religion of Nature Delineated_ in which he searched with laborious syllogistic reasoning for the Ultimate Cause (which could not produce itself) may have been boring to the less agile mind of the young printer. Wollaston, however, apologized for his syllogistic gymnastics offered in proof of Deity since "much more may those greater motions we see in the world, and the phenomena attending them" afford arguments for such a proof:

I mean the motions of the planets and the heavenly bodies.

For _these_ must be put into motion, either by one Common mighty Mover, acting upon them immediately, or by causes and laws of His Appointment; or by their respective movers, who, for reasons to which you can by this time be no stranger, must depend upon some _Superior_, that furnished them with the power of doing this.[i-423]

With Newtonian rapture he marveled at "the grandness of this fabric of the world,"[i-424] at "the chorus of planets moving periodically, by uniform laws." Rapt in wonder, he gazed "up to the fixt stars, that radiant numberless host of heaven." Like a Blackmore, Ray, Fontenelle, or Newton, he felt that they were "probably all possest by proper inhabitants."[i-425] He wondered at the "just and geometrical arrangement of things."[i-426] These are all sentiments that Franklin expressed in his philosophical juvenilia.[i-427] But then, Franklin (after reading this sublimated geometry which reduced the parts of creation to an equally sublime simplicity) noted in Wollaston that man must be a free agent,[i-428] that good and evil are as black and white, distinguishable,[i-429] that empirically the will is free, the author urging with Johnsonian good sense, "The short way of knowing this certainly is to try."[i-430] Franklin's _Dissertation_ was dedicated to his friend James Ralph and prefaced by a misquotation from Dryden and Lee's _Oedipus_. It purports, as Franklin wrote in 1779, "to prove the doctrine of fate, from the supposed attributes of G.o.d ... that in erecting and governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew what would be best; infinitely good, he must be disposed, and infinitely powerful, he must be able to execute it: consequently all is right."[i-431] With confidence lent him by his a priori method, he proposed: "I. There is said to be a First Mover, who is called G.o.d, Maker of the Universe. II. He is said to be all-wise, all-good, all-powerful."[i-432] With the nonchalance of an abstractionist, he concluded, "Evil doth not exist."[i-433] Transcending the sensational necessitarianism[i-434] of Anthony Collins and John Locke, Franklin observed (with an eye on Newton's law of gravitation) that man has liberty, the "Liberty of the same Nature with the Fall of a heavy Body to the Ground; it has Liberty to fall, that is, it meets with nothing to hinder its Fall, but at the same Time it is necessitated to fall, and has no Power or Liberty to remain suspended."[i-435] As a disciple of Locke's psychology, Franklin reflected his concept of the _tabula rasa_ in describing an infant's mind which "is as if it were not." "All our Ideas are first admitted by the Senses and imprinted on the Brain, increasing in Number by Observation and Experience; there they become the Subjects of the Soul's Action."

In the _Dissertation_ one can discover the extent to which Franklin had absorbed (if not from Newton's own works, then from his popularizers and intellectual sons such as Pemberton, Franklin's friend) several of the essential tenets of Newtonianism. Here we see his belief in a universe motivated by immutable natural laws comprising a sublimely harmonious system reflecting a Wise Geometrician; a world in which man desires to affect a corresponding inner heaven. Enraptured by the order of the natural laws of Newtonianism, and like a Shaftesbury searching for a demonstrable inner harmony, Franklin (carrying his a priorism to logical absurdity) was unable to reconcile free will with Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Goodness. (In how far was this partly the result of his having been steeped in Calvinism's doctrine of Election?)

The _Dissertation_ is as appreciative of Newton's contribution to physics and thought as Thomson's[i-436] _To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton_. Not unlike Franklin's framework is Shaftesbury's thought in _An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit_.[i-437] Since Franklin acknowledged his reading of Shaftesbury and since as late as 1730 he borrowed heavily from the _Characteristics_, it seems probable that Shaftesbury lent Franklin in this case some sanction for his only metaphysical venture.[i-438]

As one result of his printing _A Dissertation_ he made the acquaintance of Lyons, author of _The Infallibility of Human Judgement_[i-439] who introduced him to Mandeville[i-440] and Dr. Henry Pemberton, who in turn "Promis'd to give me an opportunity, some time or other, of seeing Sir Isaac Newton, _of which I was extreamly desirous_; but this never happened [the italics are the editors']."[i-441] Dr. Pemberton, physician and mathematician, met Newton in 1722, and during the time Franklin enjoyed his friendship was helping Newton to prepare the third edition of the _Principia_. As a result of his aiding Newton "to discover and understand his writings,"[i-442] Pemberton in 1728 published _A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy_. It is obvious that Franklin could have discovered few men with a more concentrated and enthusiastic knowledge of Newtonianism than that possessed by Dr.

Pemberton. As we have already noted, Franklin undoubtedly derived his appreciation of Newtonian speculation not from grubbing in the _Principia_ but from secondary sources. There is no reason to apologize for Franklin on this score when we remember that Voltaire, who popularized Newtonianism in France, exclaimed: "Very few people read Newton because it is necessary to be learned to understand him. But everybody talks about him." Desaguliers, coming to London from Oxford in 1713, observed that "he found all Newtonian philosophy generally receiv'd among persons of all ranks and professions, and even among the ladies by the help of experiments."[i-443] Pemberton wrote that the desire after knowledge of Newtonianism "is by nothing more fully ill.u.s.trated, than by the inclination of men to gain an acquaintance with the operations of nature; which disposition to enquire after the causes of things is so general, that all men of letters, I believe, find themselves influenced by it."[i-444] Through the sublimated mathematics of the _Principia_, Pemberton observed, "the similitude found in all parts of the universe makes it undoubted, that the whole is governed by one supreme being, to whom the original is owing of the frame of nature, which evidently is the effect of choice and design."[i-445] To what extent Franklin later gave evidence of his knowledge of Newtonian speculation we shall further discover in his _Articles of Belief_.

He returned in the summer of 1726 on the _Berkshire_ to Philadelphia with Mr. Denham, a sweetly reasonable Quaker.[i-446] During this journey he wrote his _Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia_, indicating a virtuoso's interest in all novel phenomena of nature. In Philadelphia he worked for Denham, then Keimer, and finally established his own printing house in 1728, a year after founding the Junto,[i-447]

and the year of his _Articles of Belief_. By this time, Franklin, like Hume, wearied of metaphysics. Commonly this creed has been described as ill.u.s.trating the deism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It is true that Franklin admits a G.o.d who ought to be worshipped, the chief parts of worship being the cultivation of virtue and piety; but there is no suggestion of Lord Herbert's fourth and fifth dogmas, that sin must be atoned for by repentance, and that punishment and rewards follow this life. His reaction against Calvinism may be shown in his failure to include reference to scripture, the experience of faith, and the triune G.o.dhead presided over by the redeemer Christ. As a deist he accepted "one supreme, most perfect Being." This Deity is the "Author and Father of the G.o.ds themselves." "Infinite and incomprehensible," He has created many G.o.ds, each having "made for himself one glorious Sun, attended with a beautiful and admirable System of Planets." Franklin offered his adoration to that "Wise and Good G.o.d, who is the author and owner of our System." It is conventional to suggest that his interest in the plurality of worlds and G.o.ds should be traced to Plato's _Timaeus_.[i-448] In the absence of any conclusive evidence concerning Franklin's study of Plato, and in view of his profound awareness of contemporary scientific and philosophical thought, it seems more reasonable to see the source of this idea in the thought of his own age.

Let us remember that with the growth of the heliocentric cosmology there resulted a vast expanse of the unknown, bound to intrigue the speculations of the philosophers of the age. We know that Ray, Fenelon, Blackmore, Huygens, Fontenelle, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Newton all wondered about the plurality of worlds and G.o.ds.

In company with the supernatural rationalists and deists, Franklin exalted Reason as the experience through which G.o.d is discovered and known. Through Reason he is "capable of observing his Wisdom in the Creation." With Newtonian zeal, upon observing "the glorious Sun, with his attending Worlds," he saw the Deity responsible first for imparting "their prodigious motion," and second for maintaining "the wondrous Laws by which they move." As we have seen above, this argument from the design of creation to a Creator was one of the most influential and popular of the impacts of Newtonian physics. Like Fenelon, Blackmore, and Ray, whom he read and recommended that others read,[i-449] Franklin exclaimed:

Thy Wisdom, thy Power, and thy Goodness are everywhere clearly seen; in the air and in the water, in the Heaven and on the Earth; Thou providest for the various winged Fowl, and the innumerable Inhabitants of the Water; thou givest Cold and Heat, Rain and Sunshine, in their Season, [et cetera].

In addition to the works mentioned above which aided Franklin in arriving at a natural religion, it is certain that his views and even idiom received stout reinforcement from such a pa.s.sage as follows from Ray's cla.s.sic work:

There is no greater, at least no more palpable and convincing argument of the existence of a Deity, than the admirable act and wisdom that discovers itself in the make and const.i.tution, the order and disposition, the ends and uses of all the parts and members of this stately fabric of heaven and earth; for if in the works of art ... a curious edifice or machine, counsel, design, and direction to an end appearing in the whole frame, and in all the several pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and operation of some intelligent architect or engineer, why shall not also in the works of nature, that grandeur and magnificence, that excellent contrivance for beauty, order, use &c. which is observable in them, wherein they do as much transcend the effects of human art as infinite power and wisdom exceeds finite, infer the existence and efficacy of an omnipotent and all-wise Creator?[i-450]

Then he directly referred to the Archbishop of Cambray's _Traite de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu_. Oliver Elton observes that this work "with its appeal to popular science, is the chief counterpart in France to the 'physico-theology' current at the time in England."[i-451]

From the skeleton of the smallest animal, "the bones, the tendons, the veins, the arteries, the nerves, the muscles, which compose the body of a single man"[i-452] to "this vaulted sky" which turns "around so regularly,"[i-453] all show "the infinite skill of its Author."[i-454]

Although Fenelon is applying Cartesian physics, here Descartes reinforced Newtonianism; like Newton, Fenelon argued that cosmic motion is ordered by "immutable laws," so "constant and so salutary."

Blackmore's _Creation, a Philosophical Poem_ (1712), aiming to demonstrate "the existence of a G.o.d from the marks of wisdom, design, contrivance, and the choice of ends and means, which appear in the universe"[i-455] also furnished additional sanction for Franklin's emphasis on the wondrous laws of the creation and the discovery of the Deity in his Work. Like James Thomson, Blackmore seeks to show how

The long coherent chain of things we find Leads to a Cause Supreme, a wise Creating Mind.[i-456]

In revolt against the contractile elements in Calvinism, Franklin believed that G.o.d "is not offended, when he sees his Children solace themselves in any manner of pleasant exercises and Innocent Delights."[i-457] In his _Articles of Belief_ Franklin retains from his _Dissertation_ his a priori concept of the Deity as a creator and sustainer of "Wondrous Laws," immutable and beneficent. To the depersonalized First Mover, however, he has added "some of those Pa.s.sions he has planted in us," and he suggests furthermore that the Deity is mildly providential. A maker of systematic, if inhuman, metaphysics in the _Dissertation_, the author of the _Articles_, in spite of the superficial and embryonic metaphysics, succeeds better in making himself at home in his world. To this embryonic religion (linked with Franklin's obsession with the plurality of worlds and G.o.ds--of no real significance save to indicate picturesquely the extent to which he had, with the scientists of his age, extended the limits of the physical universe) Franklin welded a pattern of ethics, prudential but stern.

Mr. Hefelbower's description of the growth of free thought might appropriately be applied to Franklin's _Articles_: "As the supernatural waned in radical Deism, the ethical grew in importance, until religion was but a moral system on a theistic background."[i-458] Although the metaphysical portions of this work are far too neighborly and casual to be inspiring and provocative of saintliness, the ethical conclusions (would that they were uttered less consciously and complacently!) are worthy of the introspective force of New England's stern mind, of the cla.s.sic tradition of Socrates and Aristotle, and of England's unbending emphasis on the middle way.[i-459] One could learn from the _Articles_ how to be just, if he did not discover what is meant by the beauty of holiness. In 1728 Franklin, though bewildered by the tenuousness of metaphysics, based his religion on the "everlasting tables of right reason," plumbing the "mighty volumes of visible nature." He was thus our pioneer scientific deist, who discovered his chief sanction in popularized Newtonian physics.

Following Franklin's formal profession of deism b.u.t.tressed by Newtonian science in 1728, one must depend on scattered references to plot the persistence of his philosophic ideology. His _Dialogues between Philocles and Horatio_ (1730), borrowed[i-460] from Shaftesbury's _The Moralists_, suggest that his _moral_ speculations were dual and not reconciled; he seems torn between humanitarian compa.s.sion and the self-development of the individual, unable to decide which is the n.o.bler good. One may observe that this moral bifurcation was inveterate in Franklin's mind, never resolving itself into a fondness for the idea that human nature is inexorably the product of inst.i.tutions and outward social forms. _A Witch Trial at Mount Holly_ suggests that he felt free to handle scriptures with Aristophanic levity. His intellectual conviction of a matchless physical harmony, as yet unmatched in the world by a corresponding moral harmony, is joyously seen in _Preface to Poor Richard, 1735_:

Whatever may be the Musick of the Spheres, how great soever the Harmony of the Stars, 'tis certain there is no Harmony among the Stargazers; but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange Curs....[i-461]