Paul Elmer More

“ France was glad to encourage America because the loss of the colonies would weaken the British Empire, and that was natural; but it is, I think, a mistake not to acknowledge the generous sentiments of the people and even of the grandees of the land. Voltaire and Rousseau had not been preaching in vain; the American Declaration of Independence was quite in the drift of French political ideas. But to awaken trust in a people who dwelt in a far-off wilderness and who were commonly esteemed little better than savages, the presence of such a man as Franklin was of incalculable value. ”

“ When, therefore, a man errs, it is because, the choice between evil with its attendant suffering and good with its attendant happiness being presented to him, the man, having full knowledge of the consequences and being impelled by no momentary preponderance of the one or the other from his innate disposition, deliberately and freely chooses what is evil and painful. Such an account of human action is monstrous, inconceivable; it offered an easy mark for so sharp a logician as Edwards. ”

“ Philadelphia knew that she had lost her most distinguished citizen, and he was followed to the grave by a procession including all that was honorable in the city.
In closing this brief Life of a great and good man we cannot do better than quote the words sent to him by America's greatest citizen: "If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talent, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in vain. ”

“ Hence it is that Emerson often loses value for his admirers in proportion to their maturity and experience. He is above all the poet of religion and philosophy for the young; whereas men, as they grow older, are inclined to turn from him, in their more serious moods, to those sages who have supplemented insight with a firm grasp of the darker facts of human nature. That is undoubtedly true; nevertheless, as time passes, the deficiencies of this brief period of New England, of which Emerson was the perfect spokesman, may well be more and more condoned for its rarity and beauty. ”

“ Yet for all that, though we may follow Edwards's logical system to the breaking point, as we can follow every metaphysical system, and though we may feel that, in his revulsion from the optimism of the deists, he distorted the actual evil of existence into a nightmare of the imagination,—yet for all that, he remains one of the giants of the intellect and one of the enduring masters of religious emotion. ”

“ Although the letters had been given to Franklin for the express purpose of having them conveyed to America, Wedderburn accused him of base treachery; turning to the committee he said: "I hope, my Lords, you will mark and brand the man, for the honor of this country, of Europe, and of mankind. Private correspondence has hitherto been held sacred, in times of the greatest party rage, not only in politics but religion." "He has forfeited all the respect of societies and of men. Into what companies will he hereafter go with an unembarrassed face, or the honest intrepidity of virtue? ”

“ This simple encomium, calling to mind Napoleon's This is a man after meeting Goethe, sums up better than a volume of eulogy what Franklin was in his own day and what his life may still signify to us. He acted at one time as a commander of troops, yet cannot be called a soldier; he was a great statesman, yet not among the greatest; he made famous discoveries in science, yet was scarcely a professional scientist; he was lauded as a philosopher, yet barely outstepped the region of common sense; he wrote ever as a moralist, yet in some respects lived a free life ”

“ Edwards believed that religion was essentially a matter of the emotions or affections. A man might have perfect knowledge of divine things, as indeed the devil had, but unless the love of God was implanted in his heart by the free act of Grace he had no lot with the faithful. To develop this theme he wrote his great Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, a work which may without exaggeration be said to go as far as the human intellect can go in the perilous path of discriminating between the purely spiritual life and the life of worldly morality. ”

“ After the passage of the Stamp Act, Franklin wrote to a friend: "Depend upon it, my good neighbor, I took every step in my power to prevent the passing of the Stamp Act. Nobody could be more concerned and interested than myself to oppose it sincerely and heartily.... We might as well have hindered the sun's setting. That we could not do. But since it is down, my friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good a night of it as we can. We can still light candles. Frugality and industry will go a great way towards indemnifying us. ”

“ If we are right, as we indubitably are right, in detesting evil in itself and whereever seen, and if we hold with Edwards that the will of God, like the will of man, is merely the inclination towards the best object presented to its choice, and there is no power either in God or in man above the will, in what essential way, then, does the act of God in creating a world mixed with evil differ from the act of Judas in betraying God, and how are we relieved from hating God for the evil of his work with the same sort of hatred as that which we fed for Judas? ”

“ It is safe to say that no book written primarily for a boy is a good book for a boy to read. Apart from lessons in generous living, Franklin may have had his natural tendency to moralize strengthened by this study of Plutarch. It is indeed notable that in one respect eighteenth-century literature has marked affinity with the Greek. The writers of that age, and among them Franklin, were like the Greeks distinctly ethical. In telling a story or recording a life, their interest was in the moral to be drawn, rather than in the passions involved. ”

“ The founder of Christianity saw, indeed, “with open eye the mystery of the soul,” but what as a man he saw and knew of man’s divinity cannot be given to man to-day by instruction, but only on the terms of a like intuition. The Unitarians of Massachusetts had travelled far from the Calvinistic creed of the Pilgrim Fathers, but Emerson’s suave displacement of the person of Jesus for the “chorus of thoughts and hopes” in any human soul perhaps even more his implicit rejection of all rites and institutions, raised loud protest among the worshippers of the day. ”

“ Now the deists of the eighteenth century, of whom Voltaire was the great champion, denied revelation and sought to banish the emotions from religion. They believed in a God who manifested himself in the splendid pageantry of nature, and this they called natural revelation. They laid especial emphasis on morality, but in their attempt to sever morals from enthusiasm (enthousiasmos, god-in-us) they too often reduced human life to a barren formula. From this brief account it will be seen how naturally Franklin, with his parentage and particular genius, fell a prey to the teachings of Shaftesbury. ”

“ He can accept nothing as fact that tells against his dogma. His optimism becomes a bigotry, and, though of a nobler typethan the common American conceit of the preeminent excellence of American things as they are, has hardly less of the quality of fatalism. To him this is the best of all possible worlds, and the best of all possible times. He refuses to believe in disorder or evil.... But such inveterate and persistent optimism, though it may show only its pleasant side in such a character as Emerson’s, is dangerous doctrine for a people. ”

“ But another reflection comes to relieve me, whispering: 'You know that the soul is immortal. Why, then, should you be such a niggard of a little time, when you have a whole eternity before you?' So, being easily convinced, and, like other reasonable creatures, satisfied with a small reason when it is in favor of doing what I have a mind to, I shuffle the cards again, and begin another game. ”

“ Perturbation, in truth, is not properly so called when it is the means of rousing the cold and indifferent from their lethargy; we are bound to suppose that not even the man “of the strongest reason and greatest learning” can remain master of himself if “strongly impressed with a sense of divine and eternal things.” It comes in the end to this, that, notwithstanding his verbal reservations, Edwards had no critical canon to distinguish between the order and harmony governed by a power higher than either the imagination or the emotions, and the order and harmony that are merely stagnation. ”

“ Franklin was in England from December, 1764, until March of 1775, and during these ten years was busily engaged in supporting the colonies in their unequal struggle against the British Parliament. He was the accredited representative of Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, and before the government and the people of England stood as the champion of the whole province. Every one knows the nature of the acts which finally created a new empire in the West,—the Stamp Act, the duty on tea, the Boston Port bill. ”

“ Edwards had denied the communal efficacy, so to speak, of rites, but had insisted on inner conformity with an established creed. Emerson disavowed even a conformity in faith, demanding in its stead the entire liberty of each soul to rise on its own spiritual impulse. He was perspicacious and honest enough to acknowledge to himself the danger of such a stand. “I know very well,” he wrote in his journal at the time of his decision, “that it is a bad sign in a man to be too conscientious, and stick at gnats. The most desperate scoundrels have been the over-refiners. ”