Benjamin Franklin (1) (1706–1790)

I’m in a little “book club” that meets once a month. I put book club in quotes because it’s just one other friend and myself. (Cassie calls it a man date to keep me humble.) We meet at a bar and, depending on the book, spend about 25%-35% of the night talking about it between other topics. We alternate who picks the book each month which has been really fun. He usually picks books that I’d never consider picking up on my own. (I like to think that I’ve done the same.) One such show more book my friend picked was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

I’m not really a history buff. Despite my healthy dose of cynicism about “official accounts” I can appreciate the purpose and role of recorded histories, but it just kind of bores me. Needless to say I wasn’t really excited about reading this book. I’ve seen the Walt Disney movie Ben and Me, so I knew the basic facts about Ben Franklin. He ran a printing press, was an inventor, a statesman, and an enlightened thinker. So what? I was skeptical of how much I’d enjoy the book. How could knowing anything more about Ben Franklin benefit my existence? Thankfully it turned out to be a really charming and delightful read and I walked away appreciating Ben Franklin more than ever. Not so much his “official” achievements, but the man himself.

What broke down my defenses right away was his wit and levity in the opening paragraphs. The book starts off with letter written to Franklin’s son. He first claims that the reason he is recording a history of his life is for his son’s benefit; so that his children can have an easier time tracking the family heritage and history. Almost immediately though, as if breaking from a joke, he admits that since he can’t relive his life “the next thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.”

His honesty and charm continue to increase in the next paragraph where he admits the real reason for the book.

“Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.”

The book was written at various points between 1770 and 1790, and because of the disjointed nature of the composition suffers from large gaps in time. Franklin begins at his birth and describes much of his childhood relationships with his father and brothers. He covers a multitude of events including some of the well known ones like flying a kite in a lightning storm and his time as a printing press apprentice. Surprisingly most of those famous events from school history books are given little or no time at all. It’s almost as if Franklin himself didn’t find the events all that important or momentous.

What Ben did find important enough to record were his attempts at self discipline and social engineering. His first exploit was as a young apprentice at his brother’s printing house. Benjamin wanted to publish some of this thoughts in his brothers paper, but his older sibling dismissed him as childish. Not to be thwarted — another endearing trait of Franklin — he wrote letters to the editor using a pen name. His older brother and friends found the letters so thought provoking and well written that they published them. Later on we see Benjamin use that same cleverness to procure his own printhouse, put his old boss out of business, and to playfully manipulate the diets, work patterns, and attitudes of co-workers and friends.

One accomplishment Franklin was most proud of was his Junto club which he formed with a small group of friends to debate politics, philosophy, and morality. Franklin handpicked the original group from diverse occupations and chose readers with sharp minds and a desire for self improvement. The group met on Fridays and used a list of questions to guide discussions. Often these meetings led to great community action and organization. It spawned many social changes and helped to birth the public library and volunteer fire department we have today.

My favorite section of the book however, was Ben’s “arduous project of arriving at moral pefection.” Of course this seems silly, but almost every person I’ve ever know who is as systematic and clever as Benjamin Franklin has tried it. I certainly find a great joy in order and processes myself and the idea of codifying morality is certainly a struggle I can relate to. Franklin sets about in it in timelessly, geeky fashion. He developed the following list of thirteen virtues and precepts that he found to be desirable.

TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
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 employed 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.
TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
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.
HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

He then created a chart with a column for each day of the week and a row for each virtue. Starting with only one virtue in the first week and cumulatively adding a virtue as he completed each week, He tracked each time he failed with a little black dot in the corresponding day. Only when he had made it through an entire week without any failures could he add the next virtue. Needless to say he didn’t fair well in such a lofty endeavor.

“I enter’d upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continu’d it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. After a while I went thro’ one course only in a year, and afterward only one in several years, till at length I omitted them entirely.”

This book is filled with many more of Benjamin’s experiments and thoughts. His stories not only give you a clear insight into man himself, but also the stark difference between his time and ours. While I’m not that interested in history, I did find it much more compelling to read first hand accounts of historical events and times rather than the usual post-event retellings generally presented in history books.

As with any autobiography there is a degree of bias. Despite that, the work still reveals many of Franklin’s flaws and failures. It leaves you with the impression of a driven and ambitious person, sometimes arrogant and egotistical, but always likeable and humorous. If you like history or even just biographies you will certainly find much to enjoy in Ben Franklin’s autobiography. show less

Everyone should read this book. The narrative of Benjamin Franklin’s life is full of adventure, including leaving Boston to make his fortune as a printer in Philadelphia, two extended stays in London, involvement in Pennsylvania politics, scientific experiments and participation in the French and Indian Wars. (The autobiography ends before the American Revolution). Franklin’s observations on colonial life are an important source for information on colonial America and its relationship show more with Great Britain. The insights on how Franklin achieved his success as a printer and politician provide practical advice that still resonates today. Even his description of his efforts to discipline himself to live a life of virtue and hard work is not only still relevant but also contributes to the overall pleasure to be derived from reading this autobiography.

Franklin addresses his autobiography to his son, and indeed many people would benefit from reading the book when they start out in life. He lays out his daily effort to master thirteen virtues in which every day’s successes and failures were recorded on a chart listing the virtues and every day of the week. He acknowledges that when a friend pointed out that pride was one of his faults, he added humility to his list of virtues to be pursued. His total list consisted of the following twelve virtues in addition to humility: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility and chastity. Concerning order (“Let all your things have their place; let each part of your business have its time“), he bemoans that he was never able to teach himself to keep his papers neat and tidy.

More important than his schema of virtues is the wisdom to be derived from numerous examples of practical choices made in his political and business life. For example, Franklin tells the story of a man in the Pennsylvania Assembly who sought to defeat Franklin’s reappointment as clerk to the Assembly because the man had another candidate he was backing. Fortunately for Franklin, the man’s efforts fell short and Franklin was reappointed. Rather than treat this man henceforth as an enemy, however, Franklin, knowing the gentleman had a valuable collection of books, asked the man if he could borrow a particular book he knew was in the collection. The man was very happy to lend the book to Franklin, and became a close friend who did other favors for Franklin in the future. Franklin draws the lesson that a person who does a kindness for another person is much more likely to do additional kindnesses for that person in the future, while a person who does a kindness for another person is much less likely to receive a kindness in return.

He identifies several actions which he labels “errata.” These include his failure to correspond from London with his future wife, who married someone else and only became Franklin’s wife much later after her first husband died. He also thinks it was a mistake for him when starting out to accept a large sum of money from a friend of his father’s, which because he lent it on to friends who never paid him back he himself was not in a position to pay back, although he was fortunate that his father’s friend did not ask for the money until many years later when Franklin did have the resources to pay.

Franklin’s formal education ended in grade school and his father than began to seek an apprenticeship position for him. (He wanted to go to sea, which his father strongly opposed, and the initial plans for him to become a cleric fell through.) He ended up as an apprentice to one of his elder brothers who was a printer in Boston. (Benjamin was the 10th child in his family.) On moral grounds, he became a vegetarian. Later he discloses that he rationalized eating fish when he saw that the fish to be eaten had in their stomachs smaller fish they had devoured.

Franklin loved to read and pursued his own self education. He learned foreign languages and Latin. (One of his recommendations for education is that students should study Latin after learning a romance language rather than before.) To improve his writing, he would take brief notes of articles in the Spectator magazine, and then rewrite the articles in his own language. He would then compare his writing to the original.

He also loved to discuss issues and ideas with contemporaries. At first he would argue his positions forcefully, but soon learned that this approach was not persuasive. He then adopted the Socratic method and reveled in his ability to put his interlocutors into Socratic dilemmas. He was brought up as a Dissenter but reading books critical of Deism convinced him that Deism was the proper attitude toward God.

On his first stay in London, he got a job with a printer. He lived on Little Britain near Clerkenwell, where the printers were located. He moved to Duke Street closer to the West End when he changed printers. Before returning to America, he gave some swimming lessons (in the Thames!) to sons of aristocrats and concluded he could have made a career out of this. He would swim from Chelsea to Blackfriar’s.

While he was making his way and his fortune in Philadelphia as a printer, he also became involved in a variety of nonbusiness activities. He and his friends formed a discussion group, called the Junto, and these efforts eventually led to subscriptions to start the first library in America and to found a school which eventually became the University of Pennsylvania. He learned early on not to put himself forward as the founder of a new enterprise but rather to create it as an initiative of a number of friends. By not permitting one’s vanity to seek to raise one’s reputation above one’s friends, he found, it was much easier to get general consensus and financial support for new initiatives because a group of individuals could take the credit.

By making his annual Poor Richard’s Almanac entertaining and useful, he “reaped considerable profit” from its sales. He was particularly proud of his newspaper. In a discussion that reminds us of debates concerning the role of free speech in social media today, he states the following:

“In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libeling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stagecoach, in which anyone who would pay had a right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as they please to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction; and that, having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation, in which they had no concern, without doing the manifest injustice.”

During the French and Indian War, he assisted General Braddock in obtaining wagons from Pennsylvania farmers, even though the farmers required Franklin guarantee compensation if the wagons were not returned. General Loudoun, Braddock’s successor put off paying Franklin for a long time, but fortunately he was paid shortly before the guarantee would have been exercised. At this time he made his second stay in London. He noticed how dirt would accumulate in the streets and then become mud in the rains. He came up with a proposal for keeping the streets clean, based on having a drain in the middle of the street. He also developed in Philadelphia an efficient method to operate street gas lights that he recommended be adopted in London.

He relates how initially his discoveries in electricity were overlooked by the British but were acclaimed by the French. He favored teaching young women the basics of business accounting because widows who outlived their husbands engaged in business would need such knowledge to protect their interests.

It is a pity that the autobiography ends before the American Revolution, but apparently his later years are covered by correspondence and other papers. He also had a falling out with his son William during the revolution. William, who was illegitimate, became a loyalist rather than supporting the patriot cause.

Franklin’s autobiography is one of the most important primary sources for historians of the period at the same time that it is a readable and interesting narrative of part of the life of one of the most important founding fathers. The full richness of this autobiography cannot be adequately summarized in a review without repeating the autobiography itself. Start reading it (in my edition it was only 114 pages long) and see if it catches you within the first ten pages. show less

Benjamin Franklin has a wonderful voice. It is consistently sincere and earnest while having a strange combination of humility and smugness. I found Part I of the Autobiography most interesting. It describes Franklin's early experiences, his start in printing, his flight from Boston to Philadelphia, the rivalries between different print shops, and his trip to England. In part this was interesting because it was a single unified narrative, whereas much of what came later was more of a show more collection of miscellanies about Franklin's role in everything from the legislation provisioning armed forces to Poor Richard's Almanac to the Indian wars to inventions as varied as the Franklin stove to how to best arrange the gutter in public streets. Unfortunately it had only a very brief part on the runup to the revolution and nothing on the revolution or what followed. It is a loss that Franklin never wrote a complete autobiography. show less

Over Christmas, I started my journey with the "Books of American Wisdom" series from Applewood Books, snagging Benjamin Franklin's "Book of Virtues" as my first read. This work, published in a small 4x7 hardbound volume, is a brief primer on American values during Revolutionary times.

Written in the mid-18th century, this guide was Franklin's attempt to define and cultivate the virtues essential for living a virtuous life. He crafted this 28-page essay during a time of enlightenment, aiming show more to provide a blueprint for personal improvement and moral excellence. Years ago, while teaching at Squadron Officer School, I did a leadership lecture series based on this short but important work. I've summarized some of that for you below.

Spoilers follow: If you want skip the read but get the gist of the book continue below.

1. Temperance: "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." Temperance means moderation in all aspects of consumption. Today, this virtue translates to mindful eating and drinking—being aware of what and how much we consume—and choosing health and well-being over indulgence. In an era of fast food and faster lives, Franklin reminds us to slow down and make intentional choices for our physical and mental health.
   
   
2. Silence: "Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation." In Franklin's age (or even up to about twenty years ago), this might have meant refraining from idle gossip. In today's digital age, this translates to keeping a thoughtful presence both on social media and in our personal interactions. Silence reminds us to contribute positively and constructively while avoiding the pitfalls of meaningless or harmful conversation. Use your voice for positive benefit.
   
   
3. Order: "Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time." Franklin's order is not about physical tidiness but the organization of life and setting priorities. Today, we need to seek work-life balance and set boundaries. Schedule yourself to prevent the stress of disorganization. In today's "work from home" or "always on" environment, this is increasingly difficult. Strive for balance.
   
   
4. Resolution: "Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve." Resolution is about commitment and reliability. In the words of another Patriot (John Stuart Mill), "Do your duty in all things. You can never do more; you should never wish to do less." Stick to your principles. Keep your promises. In a world full of distractions and ever-shifting priorities, be a pillar of dependability.
   
   
5. Frugality: "Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing." Frugality for Franklin wasn't about mere penny-pinching; it was about value and intentionality in how resources are used. In a society driven by consumerism, frugality challenges us to rethink our relationship with money and material things, encouraging a life of simplicity, generosity, and mindful consumption. Make choices that align with your values and contribute to a larger good to ensure a legacy of not just wealth, but also kindness and responsibility.
   
   
6. Industry: "Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." Industry is about diligence and productivity. In the modern world, it means embracing a work ethic that values proactivity and contributing meaningfully to our communities and workplaces. Balance ambition with well-being and don't let yourself burn out. Strive to find joy and value in your work. In an age where time is precious, spend it wisely to benefit yourself and others.
   
   
7. Sincerity: "Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly." Sincerity is about truthfulness and authenticity in our thoughts and communications. Today, it urges us to engage with the world with integrity and kindness. Be genuine in interactions with others. Avoid deceit. Foster relationships based on trust and respect. In an era where misinformation can spread rapidly, sincerity is a reminder to be thoughtful and to communicate with the intention of building understanding. Be authentic.
   
   
8. Justice: "Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty." Justice is about fairness and righteousness. In today's world, it means standing up for what is right and ensuring fairness in our actions and decisions. It's about recognizing our duty to others and society, and not shying away from it. It doesn't mean "an eye for an eye." It's about acknowledging our shared humanity and the responsibilities that come with it, ensuring that our actions contribute positively to the lives of others and the rest of the world.
   
   
9. Moderation: "Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve." Moderation is about balance and self-control. Avoid extremes in emotions, actions, and opinions. Today, we must recognize the value of middle ground and the dangers of excess. Manage your reactions. Choose forgiveness over resentment. Cultivate behaviors that favor thinking over impulsive actions. In a world that is polarized and extreme, moderation is a reminder of the strength found in wisdom and in seeking different perspectives.
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10. Cleanliness: "Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation." For Franklin, cleanliness was not just about the physical but also about maintaining an environment that fosters health and efficiency. Today, it encompasses personal hygiene, an organized living space, and a clutter-free mind. Create surroundings that promote well-being and productivity and recognize that environments can significantly impact our state-of-mind. Respect yourself and others through the care you take in your personal and shared spaces. Aim for a life that is not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally well-ordered.
    
    
11. Tranquility: "Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable." Franklin defines tranquility as maintaining inner peace and composure, even in the face of difficulty. It's about cultivating a mindset that can withstand stress and upheaval—finding serenity amidst the chaos. Develop resilience. Practice mindfulness. Choose to react to situations with calm and thoughtful consideration. In an age of constant connectivity and immediate reactions, tranquility is a reminder of the power of a peaceful mind and the importance of keeping a good spirit in everything you do.
    
    
12. Chastity: "Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of another's peace or reputation." This is a fun one. Chastity, to Franklin, was about prudent and respectful engagement in sexual activities. "Venery" is an old term for sexual indulgence, which Franklin cautions against. Today, this virtue emphasizes the importance of consent, respect, and understanding in all relationships. It's about recognizing the profound impact behaviors have on your physical and emotional well-being, as well as that of others. Be mindful and responsible in your closest connections. Strive for healthy, respectful, and mutually beneficial relationships.
    
    
13. Humility: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates." And the last...often the virtue that is most ignored. Franklin's reference to Jesus and Socrates highlights the virtues of modesty and open-mindedness. Today, humility is about acknowledging your limitations, being receptive to new ideas, and valuing others' contributions. Recognize that there is always room for growth and learning. In a society that often values self-promotion and certainty, humility reminds you to stay grounded, embrace your imperfections, and continuously strive to be better, more compassionate person.
    

After presenting his 13 virtues, Franklin delves into his own practical application of these principles. He shares his own approach to improvement, and even his schedule (bed at 1 am, then up at 5 am!), offering insights into the challenges and benefits of living a virtuous life. Franklin doesn't just dictate; he invites readers into his own journey of self-improvement, revealing his struggles and successes with candor and humility. This portion of the book is particularly engaging as it moves beyond theory into real experience, providing a better understanding of how these virtues can be cultivated and sustained over time.

Reading Franklin's "Book of Virtues" is like having a conversation with a wise mentor who understands the complexities of human nature. I recommend it for anyone interested in personal development, history, or philosophy. Franklin's approachable narrative and the timeless relevance of his virtues offer valuable insights for anyone looking to navigate life's challenges. The book serves as a reminder that the pursuit of virtue is never ending, but something we must all strive for. show less