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Autobiography

Autobiography

by Benjamin Franklin
 
Benjamin Franklin is best known as a historical figure, for his role in the American Revolution and experiments with electricity. But as Franklin scholar Ormond Seavey notes in his introduction to the Autobiography, his great influence on the affairs of the eighteenthcentury western world in business, politics, and science was built on his skill as a writer. In the history books he looms large as a co-drafter of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, but the Autobiography has been lauded by biographer Richard Amacher as “The first great book written in America.”
It helped to create the modern literary form of the autobiography and has been a bestseller for two centuries, despite the fact that it was never finished or properly edited. Franklin’s attitude to written work is summed up in one of his own aphorisms:
 
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
 

The book

The Autobiography was not a chronicle of Franklin’s brilliance; the idea was to show how a person’s life and character could become a noble one through constant self-assessment. Franklin, as a scientist, wrote it almost as if it were a report on the failures and successes of experiments in living.
At no point did he claim any special mastery over how to live life, but he was committed to finding a formula that could assure a person of some success. This motivation makes the Autobiography one of the original self-help classics.
Franklin never tried to show superiority; he spoke directly to the reader and laced the book with subtle humor, giving it the intimate feel of a fireside chat. The first part detailed experiences with family, friends, bosses, and work colleagues, in addition to travels and attempts to start new businesses, all of which will strike chords with today’s reader.
 

Creating the best possible self

Franklin believed that virtue had worth for its own sake, whether or not it was to the glory of God. His background was Puritan and culturally he remained one, self-examining and self-improving. In his famous The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber names Franklin as a key exponent of this ethic. Franklin was a printer by trade and believed that character was the result of correcting the “errata” that prevent us attaining perfection. Life is not something we must suffer through, but is ripe for endless tinkering.
This is why Franklin is seminal in self-help literature—he disregarded any religious conception that we are naturally bad or good people, but saw humans rather as blank slates designed for success. Seavey notes, “It was always natural for Franklin to be trying on a fresh identity, as if he were putting on new clothes.” He was truly modern in seeing that the individual was not a fixed proposition at all, but self-creating.
 
 

Franklin’s law of constant self-improvement

Franklin wrote the Autobiography as an old man, considered a great man. He had arrived in Philadelphia from Boston with a couple of shillings and three bread rolls, two of which, characteristically, he gave to a woman in need. Instinctively knowing that mastery of words would be his ticket out of mediocrity, he would persuade a friend working at a booksellers to “lend” him books overnight, devouring them between finishing his day’s work and starting another. Franklin would have agreed with the phrase “leaders are readers”: Read at least a dozen non-fiction books a year and your life will be immeasurably enriched and improved.
Nevertheless, as a young man Franklin never dreamed of becoming an independence leader or ambassador to France. The reader of his life should not dwell on his actual accomplishments; they are less important than the efforts to achieve self-mastery that he described.
Franklin’s message is timeless: Greatness is not for the few, but is the duty of all of us. We protest that we are not that special, that we don’t have the talent or the drive, but Franklin knew that an ethic of constant self-improvement is the yeast that makes an individual rise.
 

Franklin and the self-help ethic

The famous example of Franklin’s self-help ethic is what has become known as The Art of Virtue, in which he listed the 12 qualities he aimed to possess.
By a system of graphs and daily self-appraisal, he claimed to have (mostly) achieved the desired virtues, having some difficulty with Order, or what we might now call time management; but realizing he was too proud at having lived up to his own standards, he created a thirteenth, Humility!
 
  1. Temperance. Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation.
  2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
  3. Order. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time.
  4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
  5. Frugality. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, Waste nothing.
  6. Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
  7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
  8. Justice. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.
  9. Moderation. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
  10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Clothes or Habitation.
  11. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.
  12. Chastity. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; never to Dullness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation.
  13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
 
Franklin also advocated use of a “morning question”—“What good shall I do this day?”—and an “evening question”—“What good have I done today?”
The Autobiography has had a major influence on self-help writing. Anthony Robbins’s blockbuster "Awaken the Giant Within" recommends these questions as part of a daily success ritual. Franklin’s slightly bizarre idea of writing one’s own epitaph early on in life, in order to gain control of what you do in it, is now an established self-improvement technique. Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) makes no secret of his debt to Franklin, whose life he describes as “the story of one person’s heroic effort to make principles the basis of existence.” This attention to character, rather than personality techniques, is the foundation of Covey’s seven habits.
 

The secret of influence

Finally, Franklin’s built-in skill at winning friends and influencing people did not escape the attention of Dale Carnegie. As a young man, Franklin believed himself to be highly skilled in argument, but came to the conclusion that this “skill” actually stood in the way of getting things done. He developed the habit of only ever expressing himself in terms of “modest Diffidence,” never saying words like “undoubtedly” or trying to correct people. Instead, he used measured phrases such as “It appears to me...” or “If I am not mistaken...” The result was that, even though he was not a great speaker, people focused on his ideas and he was quick to gain credibility.
 

Final comments

Franklin’s Autobiography is an up-by-the-bootstraps story representing the freedom to create and prosper that is the essence of American morality. Yet given the author’s great sense of humor, his chameleon qualities, and his skill at self-promotion, it would be naïve to take The Art of Virtue or the Autobiography as one’s gospel. Reverence is not a very Franklinesque trait.
His prescriptions have not gone without criticism. Thoreau believed that they made for a dreary race against time to amount wealth, never stopping to enjoy nature or the moment. Franklin scholar Russel B. Nye termed his subject “the first apostle of frugality and the patron saint of savings accounts.” This comment was probably more directed at Franklin’s collections of aphorisms on money and thrift, The Way to Wealth. The man’s life, however, did not fit the image of pennypinching Puritanism, for it is obvious that he lived with panache.
Franklin appreciated that the self-help ethic is not about earnest striving, but more about excitement at the prospect of a richer life.
 

Benjamin Franklin

Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the son of a chandler and the youngest of 17 children. His formal education lasted up until the age of 10. From age 12 to 17 he was an apprentice printer to his brother— who produced one of America’s first newspapers—before settling in Philadelphia. Eventually he set up his own printing shop, and by his late 20s was publishing the highly successful Poor Richard’s Almanacks, a mix of practical information with aphorisms, many of which are still in use. By age 42 he was wealthy enough to retire but pursued civic projects and experiments with electricity, inventing the lightning rod.
Franklin’s party leadership in the Pennsylvania Assembly led to involvement in negotiations between Britain and colonial America, and he served on a committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Made American ambassador to France at age 6y, during a decade in that post he negotiated France’s assistance for the US and a peace accord with Britain. He was selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
When he died in 1790, Franklin was arguably the most famous American in the world. The Autobiography was then published, but covered his life only up to 1758. It had been written in fits between 1771 and 1790 while he was living in France.
Franklin has been called America’s first entrepreneur. Apart from his other successes, he charted the Gulf Stream, designed a domestic heater, created a public library, originated a city fire department, and served on a French committee looking into hypnotism.
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