Summary

Benjamin Franklin recounts his life until the late 1750s and shares his life lessons and best practices.

Key Takeaways

• Father Abraham’s Sermon (aka The Way To Wealth)
• How Franklin improved his writing: copywork & rearrangement.
• Speak not of certainty when positing one’s opinion. Phrasing matters.
• The chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade.
• So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.
• Our sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life. 
• Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself.
• A proverb of Solomon: “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.”
• Franklin’s 13 virtues and plan to “acquire” them.
• Though I never arrived at the perfection, I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man.
• No qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.
• It is true that, if you can clamber and get to the top of a staircase without using the steps, you will more easily gain them in descending; but certainly, if you begin with the lowest you will with more ease ascend to the top.
• “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
• That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
• Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

What I got out of it

It’s a shame Franklin’s autobiography doesn’t cover his entire life. As it’s written 250 years ago, it can be difficult to read at times. Sentences are much longer and he uses commas where we now use full stops.

That said, there’s plenty I took away from his life:

• Read, read, read.
• Surround yourself with readers: this circle or mastermind based around a hobby and improving together has an added benefit of bringing each other business.
• Copywork: how he improved his writing. Focus not just on clarity but also melody and prose.
• His use and reduction in use of the Socratic Method.
• Becoming a vegetarian, participating in Lent, then giving up vegetarianism.
• His 13 virtues (to be a good person with a good life) and his 13-week plan to living these virtues.
• Phases of life: education and apprenticeship first, business (for good of others) and masterminding second, public service (government, library and university) third.
  • This reinforced my belief that the best in any field are practitioners and doers, not professors and talkers.
• When starting anything, ask yourself: who do I know that would benefit from or enjoy working on or teaching me about this?
• On business partners: find partners, establish clear responsibility, then hands-off and trust.
• Similar to what Scott Adams advocates in his autobiography, Franklin always focused on failing forward. He would do things within his circle of competence, with a high success rate, but even if it would fail, would result in new skills/knowledge and/or relationships.
• Every position Franklin took on was to benefit and further his main business and life mission (improvement of young people). He had a strong focus, knew his circle of competence and simplified his activities. He was always stacking and leveraging resources, and increasing commitment (bias) of his partners, while benefiting increasingly more people (his business -> his mastermind -> public library -> university).

Reading Franklin’s autobiography has made me interested in reading his Poor Richard’s Almanack and other writings.

Note: The last 30 pages (military against Indians + travel & politics with England) can be skipped.

Summary Notes

Introductory Note

In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanac, he printed in it “Father Abraham’s Sermon,” now regarded as the most famous piece of literature produced in Colonial America.

TWYFORD, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s, 1771

I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.

But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions that if he did not find one for me more agreeable, I should break away and get to sea, as his son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he might observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land.

How Franklin improved his writing – copywork & rearrangement:

• Find writing you like.
• I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, 
• and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. 
• Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. 
• But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. 
• Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. 
• I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. 
• By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. 
• My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays.

Socratic method: I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter.
I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence. Never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.
This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade.

For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire.

“Men should be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.”

A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.

I began now to have some acquaintance among the young people of the town, that were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; and gaining money by my industry and frugality, I lived very agreeably.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

On having a reading circle: read to one another, and conferred on what we read.

I approved the amusing one’s self with poetry now and then, so far as to improve one’s language, but no farther. On this it was proposed that we should each of us, at our next meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity.

He wished to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations.

Thus I spent about eighteen months in London; most part of the time I worked hard at my business, and spent but little upon myself except in seeing plays and in books.

I had by no means improved my fortune; but I had picked up some very ingenious acquaintance, whose conversation was of great advantage to me; and I had read considerably.

We never worked on Saturday, that being Keimer’s Sabbath, so I had two days for reading.

My mind having been much more improved by reading than Keimer’s, I suppose it was for that reason my conversation seemed to be more valued.

I grew convinced that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; and I formed written resolutions, which still remain in my journal book, to practice them ever while I lived.

On a mastermind: I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings.
The rules that I drew up:

• No more than 12 people.
• The group is secret.
• Every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discussed by the company;
• Once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. 
• Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; 
• To prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.

The club (40 years) was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province; for our queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us upon reading with attention upon the several subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose; and here, too, we acquired better habits of conversation, every thing being studied in our rules which might prevent our disgusting each other.

But my giving this account of it here is to show something of the interest I had, every one of these exerting themselves in recommending business to us.

In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary.

I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. 

• I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden 
• By the help of my friends in the Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. 
• We afterwards obtained a charter, the company being increased to one hundred: this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous.

“I know of no character living, nor many of them put together, who has so much in his power as thyself to promote a greater spirit of industry and early attention to business, frugality, and temperance with the American youth.
Your biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man.
You are ashamed of no origin; a thing the more important, as you prove how little necessary all origin is to happiness, virtue, or greatness. As no end likewise happens without a means, so we shall find, sir, that even you yourself framed a plan by which you became considerable; but at the same time we may see that though the event is flattering, the means are as simple as wisdom could make them; that is, depending upon nature, virtue, thought and habit.”

Our sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life. Your attribution appears to have been applied to your life, and the passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment instead of being tormented with foolish impatience or regrets. Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves in countenance by examples of other truly great men, of whom patience is so often the characteristic.

The impact of libraries: the institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people, having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.

This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continued as indefatigable as it was necessary.

I was indebted for my printing-house; I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men,” I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encouraged me.

Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. 

The essentials of every religion:

• The existence of the Deity; 
• That he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; 
• That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving;
• That the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; 
• That our souls are immortal; 
• That all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. 

I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.

I concluded that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. 

Franklin’s 13 virtues to moral perfection:

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; i.e., 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 uncleanliness in body, cloaths, 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’s method to acquire these virtues:

• Don’t attempt them all at once.
• Make 1 your own, before moving on to the next.
• Do them in the above order, one week per virtue.
• Keep a log and reflect daily on your performance in every virtue, paying special attention to the virtue you focus on that week.
• After 13 weeks, start all over again.

Like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplished the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a clean book, after a thirteen weeks’ daily examination.

Franklin’s daily schedule (based on his virtue of Order):

• MORNING.
  • Question – What good shall I do this day? 
  • { 5, 6, 7 } Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness! Contrive day’s business, and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study, and breakfast. 
  • { 8, 9, 10, 11 } Work. 
• NOON.
  • { 12, 1 } Read, or overlook my accounts, and dine. 
  • { 2, 3, 4, 5 } Work. 
• EVENING.
  • Question – What good have I done today? 
  • { 6, 7, 8, 9 } Put things in their places. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day. 
• NIGHT.
  • { 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4 } Sleep.

Though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, though they never reach the wished – for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor, and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible.

Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful.

No qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.

On replacing certain statements with “I think”: I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

I had begun in 1733 to study languages; I soon made myself so much a master of the French as to be able to read the books with ease. I then undertook the Italian. I afterwards with a little painstaking, acquired as much of the Spanish as to read their books also.

It is true that, if you can clamber and get to the top of a staircase without using the steps, you will more easily gain them in descending; but certainly, if you begin with the lowest you will with more ease ascend to the top.

On expansion of Junto: I was one of those who were against any addition to our number, but, instead of it, made in writing a proposal, that every member separately should endeavor to form a subordinate club, with the same rules respecting queries, etc., and without informing them of the connection with the Junto. The advantages proposed were: 

• The improvement of so many more young citizens by the use of our institutions; 
• Our better acquaintance with the general sentiments of the inhabitants on any occasion, as the Junto member might propose what queries we should desire, and was to report to the Junto what passed in his separate club; 
• The promotion of our particular interests in business by more extensive recommendation;
• The increase of our influence in public affairs, and our power of doing good by spreading through the several clubs the sentiments of the Junto.

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

Colonel Spotswood, late governor of Virginia, and then postmaster-general took from him the commission and offered it to me. I accepted it readily, and found it of great advantage; for, though the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that improved my newspaper, increased the number demanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income.

A lesson to those young men who may be employed in managing affairs for others: always render accounts, and make remittances, with great clearness and punctuality. The character of observing such a conduct is the most powerful of all recommendations to new employments and increase of business.

I experienced, too, the truth of the observation, “that after getting the first hundred pound, it is more easy to get the second.”

On expanding his business via partnerships: The partnership at Carolina having succeeded, I was encouraged to engage in others, and to promote several of my workmen, who had behaved well, by establishing them with printing-houses in different colonies, on the same terms with that in Carolina. Most of them did well, being enabled at the end of our term, six years, to purchase the types of me and go on working for themselves, by which means several families were raised.
Mine were all carried on and ended amicably, owing, I think, a good deal to the precaution of having very explicitly settled, in our articles, every thing to be done by or expected from each partner, so that there was nothing to dispute, which precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into partnerships.

That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.

On establishing an academy: 

• The first step I took was to associate in the design a number of active friends, of whom the Junto furnished a good part; 
• The next was to write and publish a pamphlet, entitled Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania. 
• This I distributed among the principal inhabitants gratis; and as soon as I could suppose their minds a little prepared by the perusal of it, I set on foot a subscription for opening and supporting an academy; it was to be paid in quotas yearly for five years.
• In the introduction to these proposals, I stated their publication, not as an act of mine, but of some public-spirited gentlemen, avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual rule, the presenting myself to the public as the author of any scheme for their benefit. 
• The subscribers, to carry the project into immediate execution, chose out of their number twenty-four trustees, and appointed Mr. Francis, then attorney-general, and myself to draw up constitutions for the government of the academy; which being done and signed, a house was hired, masters engaged, and the schools opened, I think, in the same year, 1749.

When I disengaged myself, as above mentioned, from private business, I flattered myself that, by the sufficient though moderate fortune I had acquired, I had secured leisure during the rest of my life for philosophical studies and amusements.

On fund raising: I advise you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next, to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give any thing or not, and show them the list of those who have given; and, lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing, for in some of them you may be mistaken.

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

To promote the association necessary to form the militia, I wrote a dialogue, stating and answering all the objections I could think of to such a militia, which was printed, and had, as I thought, great effect.

On labour and idleness: 

• When men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day’s work, they spent the evening jollily; 
• But on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, the bread, etc., and in continual ill-humor;
• This put me in mind of a sea-captain, whose rule it was to keep his men constantly at work; and, when his mate once told him that they had done every thing, and there was nothing further to employ them about, “Oh,” says he, “Make them scour the anchor.”