The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Part 9

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Part 9

Bonus: 

“But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.

Summary: Ben Franklin's virtues and schedule.

Commentary: Oh boy, back at this again! Wow, these blog entries have gotten a lot shorter. I want to shout out Standard ebooks for getting the virtues chart to paste format in a way that was easy to copy and paste. I've worked with this however many times for blogs and classes and it's always a pain in the ass. The schedule doesn't go quite as well, but is readable.

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.

"Moral perfection", not improvement, not development, perfections. That's a lofty (impossible) goal. He is like 20/21 at this point. We all had lofty ambitious at that age. 

 But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.

I think this is a thing I've seen from working on this blog and my other goals. Sometimes I'm focused on making sure I work out enough in a week and I wind up skimping on the blog, or writing a lot for the blog so I don't do as much other writing.

Honestly, he really repeats this in different forms a lot (it's basically what order is, and then it's the next paragraph after the virtue list.) It's probably the most valuable thing. If you can do that well, it'd make all the others easier, which is why he puts it early.

This being acquired and established, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place.

Eliminating puns is not a virtue!

“I conceive,” “I apprehend,” or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or it “so appears to me at present.” 

This is still a good critiquing trick. I talked to my students about it last week.

 My ideas at that time were, that the sect should be begun and spread at first among young and single men only; that each person to be initiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks’ examination and practice of the virtues, as in the beforementioned model; that the existence of such a society should be kept a secret

Starting a secret society of virtue is probably the best thing Ben Franklin meant to do but didn't.