Response to Franklin’s List

Franklin’s list of virtues generate a response from a variety of people over the centuries.  For example, Mark Twain:

“The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys forever—boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler; and probably for no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers. With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day and then sit up nights and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smouldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and water, and studying astronomy at meal time—a thing which has brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin’s pernicious biography.”—Mark Twain, “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” The Galaxy, July 1870, pp. 138-9.

Another example is from D.H. Lawrence, who wrote,

“Then for a ‘list’. It is rather fun to play at Benjamin.

1. TEMPERANCE: Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods.

2. SILENCE: Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.

3. ORDER: Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest. Recognize your superiors and your inferiors, according to the gods. This is the root of all order.

4. RESOLUTION: Resolve to abide by your own deepest promptings, and to sacrifice the smaller thing to the greater. Kill when you must, and be killed the same: the must coming from the gods inside you, or from the men in whom you recognize the Holy Ghost.

5. FRUGALITY: Demand nothing; accept what you see fit. Don’t waste your pride or squander your emotion.

6. INDUSTRY: Lose no time with ideals; serve the Holy Ghost; never serve mankind.

7. SINCERITY: To be sincere is to remember that I am I, and that the other man is not me.

8. JUSTICE: The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.

9. MODERATION: Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.

10. CLEANLINESS: Don’t be too clean. It impoverishes the blood.

11. TRANQUILITY: The soul has many motions, many gods come and go. Try and find your deepest issue, in every confusion, and abide by that. Obey the man in whom you recognize the Holy Ghost; command when your honour comes to command.

12. CHASTITY: Never ‘use’ venery at all. Follow your passional impulse, if it be answered in the other being; but never have any motive in mind, neither offspring nor health nor even pleasure, nor even service. Only know that ‘venery’ is of the great gods. An offering-up of yourself to the very great gods, the dark ones, and nothing else.

13. HUMILITY: See all men and women according to the Holy Ghost that is within them. Never yield before the barren.

“There’s my list. I have been trying dimly to realize it for a long time, and only America and old Benjamin have at last goaded me into trying to formulate it.

“And now I, at least, know why I can’t stand Benjamin. He tries to take away my wholeness and my dark forest, my freedom. For how can any man be free, without an illimitable background? And Benjamin tries to shove me into a barbed wire paddock and make me grow potatoes or Chicagoes.”—D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, (New York, T. Seltzer, 1923).

Basis of Inspiration for Other Works

“Expect to hear tunes from their June release, ‘The Art of Virtue,’ also on Addiebelle. Spanning the musical landscape from Cajun to bluegrass and old-time fiddle tunes, the album draws its inspiration and title from Benjamin Franklin’s ‘The Thirteen Virtues,’ and it’s one of the year’s most creative and thoughtful recordings. [Adrienne] Young wrote or co-wrote nine of the album’s 15 songs, which extol moral values.

“‘I had been reading a lot of Ben Franklin’s works and came across a passage in his autobiography where he offered an idea for the United Party of Virtue,’ Young says. ‘It would be a new political party where there wouldn’t be any kind of affiliation other than anybody who was a member would have to exhibit a character that was the highest quality and had…devoted his or her life to the greater good. Thematically, the record is loosely designed around that. The box holding all the goodies together is scripted with the idea that, as individuals, we hold tremendous power with our daily choices, our words and our actions. And we form our collective reality with the choices we make as individuals.’”—Jack Bernhardt, “Adrienne Young is mindful in her music-making,” The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), December 30, 2005.

1. A later group closely identified or sympathetic with the Jewish people;
2. A Jewish group with a different identity and culture than that of the Twelve Tribes;
3. An anointed or holy group; or
4. One of the lost tribes, more commonly referred to as ‘one of the Ten Lost Tribes.’

The “Battlestar Galactica” science fiction series used the Biblical numbered list of the Twelve Tribes in developing its civilization by creating a similar structured “Twelve Colonies” and a legendary “13th Tribe,” which is the humans on the planet Earth:

• “On Battlestar Galactica, the Sci Fi Channel’s darkly relevant reimagining of the 1970s campy space opera, the One Big Solution is us—that is, Earth. Somewhere in space, a few thousand humans have escaped near genocide by the Cylons, a race of robots of their own creation and indistinguishable from humans. The survivors are driven by the search for a planet—ours—on which a religious legend says the ‘13th tribe‘ of man long ago settled.”—James Poniewozik, “Life After Earth,” Time, January 19, 2009, p. 62.

Year

Founded

State of New Hampshire

State of Vermont

June 21, 1788 (9^th)

March 4, 1791 (14^th)

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

State of Maine

February 6, 1788 (6^th)

March 15, 1820 (23^rd)

Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

State of New York

State of Vermont

July 26, 1788 (11^th)

March 4, 1791 (14^th)

Commonwealth of Virginia

Commonwealth of Kentucky

State of West Virginia

June 25, 1788 (10th)

June 1, 1792 (15th)

June 20, 1863 (35th)

State of North Carolina

State of Tennessee

November 21, 1789 (12th)

June 1, 1796 (16th)

NOTE: Both the Province of New Hampshire and the Province of New York claimed the territory that became the State of Vermont.