[CHAPTER IX]
SCIENCE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Of the Fellows of the Royal Society, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is the most representative of that age of enlightenment which had its origin in Newton's Principia. Franklin represents the eighteenth century in his steadfast pursuit of intellectual, social, and political emancipation. And in his long fight, calmly waged, against the forces of want, superstition, and intolerance, such as still hamper the development of aspiring youth in America, England, and elsewhere, he found science no mean ally.
There is some reason for believing that the Franklins (francus—free) were of a free line, free from that vassalage to an overlord, which in the different countries of Europe did not cease to exist with the Middle Ages. For hundreds of years they had lived obscurely near Northampton. They had early joined the revolt against the papal authority. For generations they were blacksmiths and husbandmen. Franklin's great-grandfather had been imprisoned for writing satirical verses about some provincial magnate. Of the grandfather's four sons the eldest became a smith, but having some ingenuity and scholarly ability turned conveyancer, and was recognized as able and public-spirited. The other three were dyers. Franklin's father Josiah and his Uncle Benjamin were nonconformists, and conceived the plan of emigrating to America in order to enjoy their way of religion with freedom.
Benjamin, born at Boston, twenty-one years after his father's emigration, was the youngest of ten sons, all of whom were eventually apprenticed to trades. The father was a man of sound judgment who encouraged sensible conversation in his home. Uncle Benjamin, who did not emigrate till much later, showed interest in his precocious namesake. Both he and the maternal grandfather expressed in verse dislike of war and intolerance, the one with considerable literary skill, the other with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom, as his grandson said.
Benjamin was intended as a tithe to the Church, but the plan was abandoned because of lack of means to send him to college. After one year at the Latin Grammar School, and one year at an arithmetic and writing school, for better or worse, his education of that sort ceased; and at the age of ten he began to assist in his father's occupation, now that of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. He wished to go to sea, and gave indications of leadership and enterprise. His father took him to visit the shops of joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, cutlers, and other artisans, thus stimulating in him a delight in handicraft. Finally, because of a bookish turn he had been exhibiting, the boy was bound apprentice to his brother James, who about 1720 began to publish the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper to be established in America.
Among the books early read by Benjamin Franklin were The Pilgrim's Progress, certain historical collections, a book on navigation, works of Protestant controversy, Plutarch's Lives, filled with the spirit of Greek freedom, Dr. Mather's Bonifacius, and Defoe's Essay on Projects. The last two seemed to give him a way of thinking, to adopt Franklin's phraseology, that had an influence on some of the principal events of his life. Defoe, an ardent nonconformist, educated in one of the Academies (established on Milton's model) and especially trained in English and current history, advocated among other projects a military academy, an academy for improving the vernacular, and an academy for women. He thought it barbarous that a civilized and Christian country should deny the advantages of learning to women. They should be brought to read books and especially history. Defoe could not think that God Almighty had made women so glorious, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.
Benjamin still had a hankering for the sea, but he recognized in the printing-office and access to books other means of escape from the narrowness of the Boston of 1720. Between him and another bookish boy, John Collins, arose an argument in reference to the education of women. The argument took the form of correspondence. Josiah Franklin's judicious criticism led Benjamin to undertake the well-known plan of developing his literary style.
Passing over his reading of the Spectator, however, it is remarkable how soon his mind sought out and assimilated its appropriate nourishment, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, which began the modern epoch in psychology; the Port Royal Logic, prepared by that brilliant group of noble Catholics about Pascal; the works of Locke's disciple Collins, whose Discourse on Freethinking appeared in 1713; the ethical writings (1708-1713) of Shaftesbury, who defended liberty and justice, and detested all persecution. A few pages of translation of Xenophon's Memorabilia gave him a hint as to Socrates' manner of discussion, and he made it his own, and avoided dogmatism.