Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/202

 192 communities, who acquiesced in the banishment of some and the whipping or execution of others, in order that by uniform obedience to the theocratic ideal the purpose of the founders might be fulfilled.

But in the eighteenth century there began to be a change. The growing interest in science, the influence of such writers as John Locke, the rise of other learned professions than the ministry, the advance of the merchant class, the increasing concern about political relations with the mother country, the founding of other churches than the Congregational ones which hitherto had virtually constituted an Establishment—all of these influences make American life and letters in the eighteenth century radically different from the century of colonization. Strikingly unlike each other as Franklin and Woolman are in most respects, they agree in representing aspects of the American mind that could hardly flourish in American literature until in the eighteenth century that literature began to move out of New England and its intolerant church.

FRANKLIN'S METHODS IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

The career of Franklin well illustrates these changes. He finds himself cramped in Boston and moves to Philadelphia. He pays the most careful attention to the matter of writing well, because he sees that it pays to consult the convenience of the reader. In his writing he employs the secular arts of humor and irony and takes particular care to "forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertions of [his] own." He seeks the convenience of mankind also by various mechanical improvements and by the better organization of certain departments of the public service. His experiments in pure science mark him as patient, observant, and logical to an unusual degree. But most of his attention—in business, science, and public service—is given to matters of immediate utility.

FRANKLIN IN POLITICS

In politics he was eminently successful, though probably not entirely uncorrupt. He managed delicate affairs of state with conspicuous coolness and skill. He was particularly useful to the