Page:Benjamin Franklin, self-revealed; a biographical and critical study based mainly on his own writings (IA cu31924092892177).pdf/22

 CHAPTER I

Franklin's Moral Standing and System

NTIL a comparatively recent period totally false conceptions in some respects of Franklin's character were not uncommon. To many he was merely the father of a penurious, cheese-paring philosophy, and to no little extent the idea prevailed that his own nature and conduct corresponded with its precepts. There could be no greater error. Of the whole science of prudential economy a master indeed he was. HIs observations upon human life, in its pecuniary relations, and upon the methods, by which affluence and ease are to be wrested from the reluctant grasp of poverty, are always sagacious in the highest degree. Poor Richard is quite as consummate a master of the science of rising in the world as Aristotle is of the Science of Politics or Mill of the Science of Political Economy. Given health and strength, a man, who faithfully complied with his shrewd injunctions and yet did not prosper, would be as much a freak of nature as a man who thrust his hand into the fire and yet received no physical hurt. The ready and universal assent given to their full truth and force by human experience is attested by the fact that The Way to Wealth, or The Speech of Father Abraham, "the plain, clean old Man with white Locks," in whih Franklin, when writing one of the prefaces of Poor Richard's Almanac, condensed the wit and wisdom, original and