Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

History is a tale, Franklin came to believe, not of immutable forces but of human endeavors.

Instead, after stumbling across some rhetoric books that extolled Socrates’ method of building an argument through gentle queries, he “dropped my abrupt contradiction” style of argument and “put on the humbler enquirer” of the Socratic method. By asking what seemed to be innocent questions, Franklin would draw people into making concessions that would gradually prove whatever point he was trying to assert.

. Such is the vanity of mankind that minding what others say is a much surer way of pleasing them than talking well ourselves.”6

The purpose of religion should be to make men better and to improve society, and any sect or creed that did so was fine with him.

Edwards and the Great Awakeners sought to recommit America to the anguished spirituality of Puritanism, whereas Franklin sought to bring it into an Enlightenment era that exalted tolerance, individual merit, civic virtue, good deeds, and rationality.8

“Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding,” Franklin said, but they should remember that “human felicity is produced . . . by little advantages that occur every day.”10

I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present; but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.” In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us . . . I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the ad...

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

again, there’s something to be said for Franklin’s outlook, for his pragmatism and occasional willingness to compromise. He believed in having the humility to be open to different opinions. For him that was not merely a practical virtue, but a moral one as well. It was based on the tenet, so fundamental to most moral systems, that every individual deserves respect.