Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/352

318 had in this respect gone through some instructive experiences with himself. Possessing a full share of the evil passions and dangerous frailties of human nature, he had found himself obliged to call upon his understanding to quicken and support his moral sense. His moral nature was originally not at all of the ideal stamp. His was essentially an intellectual morality. He had to try hard to become a good man by becoming a prudent and a wise man; he had to reason himself up to the highest standard of moral sense, and the measure of success he achieved in this, is largely the measure of his greatness. Many men have to reason themselves up to a high morality—only they do not succeed. Moreover, he had to appeal to a population still in a raw social state, poor, and in their struggles with the necessities of the day naturally disposed to understand the coarse voice of interest more easily than the whispers of the finer feelings. Poor Richard's homely lessons of thrift and general worldly wisdom, in showing them the way of prosperity through honesty and justice, pushed them forward at the same time in the way of moral elevation. The American people were after all much the better for Poor Richard's teachings.

The success of Poor Richard was prodigious. It gained a yearly circulation of 10,000 copies. It was translated into French, Spanish and modern Greek, and thus gave Franklin his first celebrity in Europe. Meantime he had also begun to make Philadelphia a literary and philosophical center. Philadelphia was then a town of from 9000 to 10,000 inhabitants, a stretched-out and shady place, every house having its garden and every family its cow. Pretty much everybody had enough to live on, but few people more than enough. Life was slow and dull; tolerant as to religion; few books to read except religious works; no mental activity except about trade