Page:Benjamin Franklin, self-revealed; a biographical and critical study based mainly on his own writings (IA cu31924092892177).pdf/40



The virtue, which this new art was to fabricate, was obviously too much in keeping with the national tendency to turn over tasks of every sort to self-directed machinery. The Art of Virtue, however, was never actually penned, owing to the demands of private and public business upon Franklin's time, and the world was consequently left to get along as it best could with virtue of the old impulsive and untutored type. We are also surprised in the Autobiography that the Art of Virtue itself was to be but an incident of a great and extensive project which liikewise never reached maturity for the same reasons that arrested the completion of that work. This project was the forma-