Sincerity
Justice (wrong none by doing injuries)
Moderation
Cleanliness
Tranquillity
Chastity
Humility (imitate Jesus and Socrates)
Franklin’s ambitious project was to try to achieve all these virtues, thus to approach as near as possible moral perfection. This was no New Year’s Resolution to be lightly made and quickly forgotten. He purchased a small notebook, ruled the pages with red ink, making seven vertical columns, one for each day of the week, and thirteen horizontal columns, one for each virtue.
Each time he felt he had failed to practice one of his virtues he made a black mark in the proper square. Thus if he put a cross in the Tuesday column opposite Silence, he judged he had that day talked too much about trivial matters. The thirteenth virtue, Humility, suggested by a Quaker friend, was a check on the others; if he was proud of his mastery over any of his virtues, he would be lacking in humility.
He kept this notebook regularly for a long time. The virtue which gave him most trouble was Order (let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time). Eventually he had to decide that he was not an orderly person and never would be. Nor did he ever claim that he achieved anywhere near “moral perfection” in any of the others, although he did give credit years later to his daily discipline for “the constant felicity of my life.”