Happiness and virtue rested on reason. And reason advanced apace, which further encouraged Franklin. “I have long been impressed,” he wrote an admirer in 1788, “with the same sentiments you so well express of the growing felicity of mankind, from the improvements in philosophy, morals, politics, and even the conveniences of common living.” Present progress was rapid, and would continue far into the future. “I have sometimes almost wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence.”
