Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

Although the posts were unpaid, Josiah practiced the art, which his son would perfect, of marrying public virtue with private profit: he made money by selling candles to the night watchmen he oversaw.

prudential

“that nothing was useful which was not honest.”18

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

Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good,

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.

Franklin honed the Socratic method he found so useful for winning arguments without antagonizing opponents. He would ask Keimer questions that seemed innocent and tangential but eventually exposed his logical fallacies.

people

are more likely to admire your work if you’re able to keep them from feeling jealous of you.6

“Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop—as you go through this world—and you’ll miss many hard thumps.” As Franklin later recalled to Mather’s son, “This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me, and I often think of it when I see pride mortified and misfortunes brought upon people by carrying their heads too high.”

A secret to being more revered than resented, he learned, was to display (at least when he could muster the discipline) a self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and unaggressive style in conversation.9

For Franklin, it was an insight into human foibles rather than evil. “He wished to please everybody,” Franklin later said of Keith, “and having little to give, he gave expectations.”11

Finally, after three weeks, he relented and paid up, “convinced of the folly of being on ill terms” with his workmates.

It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid

what I owe.

To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action—the ...

To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industr...

I resolve to speak ill of no man...

slovenly

The tone Franklin set for Junto meetings was earnest. Initiates were required to stand, lay their hand on their breast, and answer properly four questions: Do you have disrespect for any current member? Do you love mankind in general regardless of religion or profession? Do you feel people should ever be punished because of their opinions or mode of worship? Do you love and pursue truth for its own sake?

Knowledge, he realized, “was obtained rather by the use of the ear than of the tongue.”

That became the preferred style for Junto meetings. Discussions were to be conducted “without fondness for dispute or desire of victory.”

Franklin taught his friends to push their ideas through suggestions and questions, and to use (or at least feign) naïve curiosity to avoid contradicting people in a manner that could give offense.

“Would you win the hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with them, but to admire them. Give them every opportunity of displaying their own qualifications, and when you have indulged their vanity, they will praise you in turn and prefer you above others . . . Such is the vanity of mankind that minding what others say is a much surer way of pleasing them than talking well ourselves.”6

Franklin went on to catalog the most common conversational sins “which cause dislike,” the greatest being “talking overmuch . . . which never fails to excite resentment.”

The other sins on his list were, in order: seeming uninterested, speaking too much about your own life, prying for personal secrets (“an unpardonable rudeness”), telling long and pointless stories (“old folks are most subject to this error, which is one chief reason their company is so often shunned”), contradicting or disputing someone directly, ridiculing

or railing against things except in small witty doses (“it’s like salt, a little of which in some cases gives relish, but if thrown on by handfuls spoils all”), and spreading scandal (though he would later write lighthearted defenses of gossip).