It is but an evidence of the force of this new ideal that Benjamin Franklin, in whose life and writings it finds best expression, became the most influential American of his time and won in two continents the veneration that men accord to saints and prophets. At the age of sixteen some books against Deism came his way; but "the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me to be stronger than the refutations; [and] I soon became a thorough Deist." Yet experience straightway led this original pragmatist to the conclusion that, although a materialistic philosophy of life "might be true, it was not very useful." Without faith in religions, yet unable to do without religion, he set down the list of virtues which he thought might be of benefit to himself and at the same time of service to his fellows; qualities which all the sects might unite in proclaiming good, and which any man might easily acquire by a little persistence in self-discipline. Aiming to become himself "completely virtuous," he dreamed of some day formulating the universal principles of the "Art of Virtue," and of uniting all good men throughout the world in a society for promoting the practice of it. And what was this Art of Virtue but a socialized religion divested of doctrine and ritual? "I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue; and the Scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined what we thought, but what we did; and our recommendation will be that we did good to our fellow creatures." The evangelist Whitefield, when Franklin once promised to do him a personal service, assured the philosopher that if he made that kind offer for Christ's sake he should not miss a reward. It was in the spirit of the new age speaking to the old that the sage replied: "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for yours."
Franklin spoke indeed for the new age and the New World. He was the first American: the very personification of that native sense of destiny and high mission in the world, and of that good-natured tolerance for the half-spent peoples of Europe, which is the American spirit; a living and vocal product, as it were, of all the material and spiritual forces that were transforming the people of the British plantations into a new nation. All racial and religious antagonisms, all sectional and intercolonial jealousies, all class prejudice, were in some manner comprehended and reconciled in Franklin. He was as old as the century and touched it at every point. What an inclusive experience was that of this self-made provincial who as a printer's boy heard Increase Mather preach in Boston and in his old age stood with Voltaire in Paris to be proclaimed the incomparable benefactor of mankind! Provincial! But was this man provincial? Or was that, indeed, a province which produced such men? Was that country rightly dependent and inferior where law and custom were most in accord with the philosopher's ideal society? In that transvaluation of old values effected by the intellectual revolution of the century, it was the fortune of America to emerge as a kind of concrete example of the imagined State of Nature. In contrast with Europe, so "artificial," so oppressed with defenseless tyrannies and useless inequalities, so encumbered with decayed superstitions and the débris of worn-out institutions, how superior was this new land of promise where the citizen was a free man, where the necessities of life were the sure reward of industry, where manners were simple, where vice was less prevalent than virtue and native incapacity the only effective barrier to ambition! In those years when British statesmen were endeavoring to reduce the "plantations" to a stricter obedience, some quickening influence from this ideal of Old World philosophers came to reinforce the determination of Americans to be masters of their own destiny.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
For the constitutional and political tendencies in this period, see Channing, History of the United States, II, chaps, X-XII; Greene, Provincial America, chaps, V, XII; Andrews, The Colonial Period, chap. VII. Economic, social, and intellectual characteristics are well described in Channing, II, chaps, XV-XVII; Greene, chaps, XVI-XVIII; Andrews, The Colonial Period, chaps, III, IV. The best account of religious changes in the eighteenth century is in Walker, History of Congregationalism in America. See also, Fiske, New France and New England, chap. VI. Of special importance for the influence of Princeton College and for the religious conditions in the up-country are The Life of Devereaux Jarrett (Baltimore, 1806); and Alexander, Biographical Sketches of the Founder and the Alumni of Log College (Princeton, 1845). The expansion of population into the interior and the coming of the Germans and Scotch-Irish are well described in Channing, II, chap, XIV; and Greene, chap. XIV. For a full treatment of the German migration see Faust, The German Element in the United States (2 vols. 1909); for the Scotch-Irish see Hanna, The Scotch-Irish (2 vols. 1902). The best account of the characteristics of frontier society in this period is in Turner, The Old West, in Proceedings of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 1908, p. 184. Of considerable importance for understanding colonial society in this period are the observations of foreign travelers, notably Kalm and Burnaby whose narratives are printed in Pinkerton, Voyages (London, 1808-14), vol. XIII. For understanding the temper and ideals of America in the eighteenth century, no writings are of equal importance with those of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, especially the Diary of the former (Works of John Adams, 10 vols. Boston, 1856) and the Autobiography of the latter, in his collected works and separately printed in many editions. See Bigelow edition. The Life of Benjamin Franklin written by Himself.
CHAPTER VI
THE WINNING OF INDEPENDENCE
If they accept protection, do they not stipulate obedience?
Samuel Johnson.
The decree has gone forth, and cannot now be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth, must be established in America.