Charles William Eliot - Four American Leaders
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Charles William Eliot >> Four American Leaders
FOUR
AMERICAN LEADERS
BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT
BOSTON
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
1906
Copyright, 1906
American Unitarian Association
_Note_
The four essays in this volume were written for celebrations or
commemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is,
therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of its
subject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive and
proportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects and
qualities.
_Contents_
I. Franklin 1
An address delivered before the meeting
of the American Philosophical Society to
commemorate the two hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia,
April 20, 1906.
II. Washington 31
An address given before the Union League
Club of Chicago at the exercises in commemoration
of the birth of Washington, February
23, 1903.
III. Channing 57
An address made at the unveiling of the
Channing statue on the occasion of the one
hundredth anniversary of the birth of William
Ellery Channing, Boston, June 1, 1903.
IV. Emerson 73
An address delivered on the commemoration
of the centenary of the birth of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Boston, May 24, 1903.
_Four American Leaders_
FRANKLIN
The facts about Franklin as a printer are simple and plain, but
impressive. His father, respecting the boy's strong disinclination to
become a tallow-chandler, selected the printer's trade for him, after
giving him opportunities to see members of several different trades at
their work, and considering the boy's own tastes and aptitudes. It was
at twelve years of age that Franklin signed indentures as an apprentice
to his older brother James, who was already an established printer. By
the time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the trade in all its
branches so completely that he could venture, with hardly any money in
his pocket, first into New York and then into Philadelphia without a
friend or acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly in
earning his living. He knew all departments of the business. He was a
pressman as well as a compositor. He understood both newspaper and book
work. There were at that time no such sharp subdivisions of labor and no
such elaborate machinery as exist in the trade to-day; and Franklin
could do with his own eyes and hands, long before he was of age,
everything which the printer's art was then equal to. When the faithless
Governor Keith caused Franklin to land in London without any resources
whatever except his skill at his trade, the youth was fully capable of
supporting himself in the great city as a printer. Franklin had been
induced by the governor to go to England, where he was to buy a complete
outfit for a good printing office to be set up in Philadelphia. He had
already presented the governor with an inventory of the materials needed
in a small printing office, and was competent to make a critical
selection of all these materials; yet when he arrived in London on this
errand he was only eighteen years old. Thrown completely on his own
resources in the great city, he immediately got work at a famous
printing house in Bartholomew Close, but soon moved to a still larger
printing house, in which he remained during the rest of his stay in
London. Here he worked as a pressman at first, but was soon transferred
to the composing room, evidently excelling his comrades in both branches
of the art. The customary drink money was demanded of him, first by the
pressmen with whom he was associated, and afterwards by the compositors.
Franklin undertook to resist the second demand; and it is interesting
to learn that after a resistance of three weeks he was forced to yield
to the demands of the men by just such measures as are now used against
any scab in a unionized printing office. He says in his autobiography:
"I had so many little pieces of private mischief done me by mixing my
sorts, transposing my pages, breaking my matter, and so forth, if I were
ever so little out of the room ... that, notwithstanding the master's
protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money,
convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live
with continually." He was stronger than any of his mates, kept his head
clearer because he did not fuddle it with beer, and availed himself of
the liberty which then existed of working as fast and as much as he
chose. On this point he says: "My constant attendance (I never making a
St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at
composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was
generally better paid. So I went on now very agreeably."
On his return to Philadelphia Franklin obtained for a few months another
occupation than that of printer; but this employment failing through the
death of his employer, Franklin returned to printing, becoming the
manager of a small printing office, in which he was the only skilled
workman and was expected to teach several green hands. At that time he
was only twenty-one years of age. This printing office often wanted
sorts, and there was no type-foundry in America. Franklin succeeded in
contriving a mould, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supplied the
deficiencies of the office. The autobiography says: "I also engraved
several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was warehouse man and
everything, and in short quite a factotum." Nevertheless, he was
dismissed before long by his incompetent employer, who, however, was
glad to re-engage him a few days later on obtaining a job to print some
paper money for New Jersey. Thereupon Franklin contrived a copperplate
press for this job--the first that had been seen in the country--and cut
the ornaments for the bills. Meantime Franklin, with one of the
apprentices, had ordered a press and types from London, that they two
might set up an independent office. Shortly after the New Jersey job was
finished, these materials arrived in Philadelphia, and Franklin
immediately opened his own printing office. His partner "was, however,
no compositor, a poor pressman, and seldom sober." The office prospered,
and in July, 1730, when Franklin was twenty-four years old, the
partnership was dissolved, and Franklin was at the head of a
well-established and profitable printing business. This business was the
foundation of Franklin's fortune; and better foundation no man could
desire. His industry was extraordinary. Contrary to the current opinion,
Dr. Baird of St. Andrews testified that the new printing office would
succeed, "for the industry of that Franklin," he said, "is superior to
anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home
from the club, and he is at work again before the neighbors are out of
bed." No trade rules or customs limited or levied toll on his
productiveness. He speedily became by far the most successful printer
in all the colonies, and in twenty years was able to retire from active
business with a competency.
One would, however, get a wrong impression of Franklin's career as a
printer, if he failed to observe that from his boyhood Franklin
constantly used his connection with a printing office to facilitate his
remarkable work as an author, editor, and publisher. Even while he was
an apprentice to his brother James he succeeded in getting issued from
his brother's press ballads and newspaper articles of which he was the
anonymous author. When he had a press of his own he used it for
publishing a newspaper, an almanac, and numerous essays composed or
compiled by himself. His genius as a writer supported his skill and
industry as a printer.
The second part of the double subject assigned to me is Franklin as
philosopher. The philosophy he taught and illustrated related to four
perennial subjects of human interest--education, natural science,
politics, and morals. I propose to deal in that order with these four
topics.
Franklin's philosophy of education was elaborated as he grew up, and was
applied to himself throughout his life. In the first place, he had no
regular education of the usual sort. He studied and read with an
extraordinary diligence from his earliest years; but he studied only the
subjects which attracted him, or which he himself believed would be good
for him, and throughout life he pursued only those inquiries for
pursuing which he found within himself an adequate motive. The most
important element in his training was reading, for which he had a
precocious desire which was imperative, and proved to be lasting. His
opportunities to get books were scanty; but he seized on all such
opportunities, and fortunately he early came upon the "Pilgrim's
Progress," the Spectator, Plutarch, Xenophon's "Memorabilia," and Locke
"On the Human Understanding." Practice of English composition was the
next agency in Franklin's education; and his method--quite of his own
invention--was certainly an admirable one. He would make brief notes of
the thoughts contained in a good piece of writing, and lay these notes
aside for several days; then, without looking at the book, he would
endeavor to express these thoughts in his own words as fully as they had
been expressed in the original paper. Lastly, he would compare his
product with the original, thus discovering his shortcomings and errors.
To improve his vocabulary he turned specimens of prose into verse, and
later, when he had forgotten the original, turned the verse back again
into prose. This exercise enlarged his vocabulary and his acquaintance
with synonyms and their different shades of meaning, and showed him how
he could twist phrases and sentences about. His times for such exercises
and for reading were at night after work, before work in the morning,
and on Sundays. This severe training he imposed on himself; and he was
well advanced in it before he was sixteen years of age. His memory and
his imagination must both have served him well; for he not only acquired
a style fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learned to
use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dialogue. The third
element in his education was writing for publication; he began very
early, while he was still a young boy, to put all he had learned to use
in writing for the press. When he was but nineteen years old he wrote
and published in London "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity,
Pleasure and Pain." In after years he was not proud of this pamphlet;
but it was, nevertheless, a remarkable production for a youth of
nineteen. So soon as he was able to establish a newspaper in
Philadelphia he wrote for it with great spirit, and in a style at once
accurate, concise, and attractive, making immediate application of his
reading and of the conversation of intelligent acquaintances on both
sides of the ocean. His fourth principle of education was that it should
continue through life, and should make use of the social instincts. To
that end he thought that friends and acquaintances might fitly band
together in a systematic endeavor after mutual improvement. The Junto
was created as a school of philosophy, morality, and politics; and this
purpose it actually served for many years. Some of the questions read at
every meeting of the Junto, with a pause after each one, would be
curiously opportune in such a society at the present day. For example,
No. 5, "Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or
elsewhere, got his estate?" And No. 6, "Do you know of a fellow-citizen
... who has lately committed an error proper for us to be warned against
and avoid?" When a new member was initiated he was asked, among other
questions, the following: "Do you think any person ought to be harmed in
his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions or his external
way of worship?" and again, "Do you love truth for truth's sake, and
will you endeavor impartially to find it, receive it yourself, and
communicate it to others?" The Junto helped to educate Franklin, and he
helped greatly to train all its members.
The nature of Franklin's own education accounts for many of his opinions
on the general subject. Thus, he believed, contrary to the judgment of
his time, that Latin and Greek were not essential subjects in a liberal
education, and that mathematics, in which he never excelled, did not
deserve the place it held. He believed that any one who had acquired a
command of good English could learn any other modern language that he
really needed when he needed it; and this faith he illustrated in his
own person, for he learned French, when he needed it, sufficiently well
to enable him to exercise great influence for many years at the French
court. As the fruit of his education he exhibited a clear, pungent,
persuasive English style, both in writing and in conversation--a style
which gave him great and lasting influence among men. It is easy to say
that such a training as Franklin's is suitable only for genius. Be that
as it may, Franklin's philosophy of education certainly tells in favor
of liberty for the individual in his choice of studies, and teaches that
a desire for good reading and a capacity to write well are two very
important fruits of any liberal culture. It was all at the service of
his successor Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia.
Franklin's studies in natural philosophy are characterized by remarkable
directness, patience, and inventiveness, absolute candor in seeking the
truth, and a powerful scientific imagination. What has been usually
considered his first discovery was the now familiar fact that northeast
storms on the Atlantic coast begin to leeward. The Pennsylvania
fireplace he invented was an ingenious application to the warming and
ventilating of an apartment of the laws that regulate the movement of
hot air. At the age of forty-one he became interested in the subject of
electricity, and with the aid of many friends and acquaintances pursued
the subject for four years, with no thought about personal credit for
inventing either theories or processes, but simply with delight in
experimentation and in efforts to explain the phenomena he observed. His
kite experiment to prove lightning to be an electrical phenomenon very
possibly did not really draw lightning from the cloud; but it supplied
evidence of electrical energy in the atmosphere which went far to prove
that lightning was an electrical discharge. The sagacity of Franklin's
scientific inquiries is well illustrated by his notes on colds and their
causes. He maintains that influenzas usually classed as colds do not
arise, as a rule, from either cold or dampness. He points out that
savages and sailors, who are often wet, do not catch cold, and that the
disease called a cold is not taken by swimming. He maintains that people
who live in the forest, in open barns, or with open windows, do not
catch cold, and that the disease called a cold is generally caused by
impure air, lack of exercise, or overeating. He comes to the conclusion
that influenzas and colds are contagious--a doctrine which, a century
and a half later, was proved, through the advance of bacteriological
science, to be sound. The following sentence exhibits remarkable
insight, considering the state of medical art at that time: "I have long
been satisfied from observation, that besides the general colds now
termed influenzas (which may possibly spread by contagion, as well as by
a particular quality of the air), people often catch cold from one
another when shut up together in close rooms and coaches, and when
sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other's
transpiration; the disorder being in a certain state." In the light of
present knowledge what a cautious and exact statement is that!
There being no learned society in all America at the time, Franklin's
scientific experiments were almost all recorded in letters written to
interested friends; and he was never in any haste to write these
letters. He never took a patent on any of his inventions, and made no
effort either to get a profit from them, or to establish any sort of
intellectual proprietorship in his experiments and speculations. One of
his English correspondents, Mr. Collinson, published in 1751 a number of
Franklin's letters to him in a pamphlet called "New Experiments and
Observations in Electricity made at Philadelphia in America." This
pamphlet was translated into several European languages, and established
over the continent--particularly in France--Franklin's reputation as a
natural philosopher. A great variety of phenomena engaged his attention,
such as phosphorescence in sea water, the cause of the saltness of the
sea, the form and the temperatures of the Gulf Stream, the effect of oil
in stilling waves, and the cause of smoky chimneys. Franklin also
reflected and wrote on many topics which are now classified under the
head of political economy,--such as paper currency, national wealth,
free trade, the slave trade, the effects of luxury and idleness, and the
misery and destruction caused by war. Not even his caustic wit could
adequately convey in words his contempt and abhorrence for war as a mode
of settling questions arising between nations. He condensed his opinions
on that subject into the epigram: "There never was a good war or a bad
peace."
Franklin's political philosophy may all be summed up in seven
words--"first freedom, then public happiness and comfort." The spirit of
liberty was born in him. He resented his brother's blows when he was an
apprentice, and escaped from them. As a mere boy he refused to attend
church on Sundays in accordance with the custom of his family and his
town, and devoted his Sundays to reading and study. In practising his
trade he claimed and diligently sought complete freedom. In public and
private business alike he tried to induce people to take any action
desired of them by presenting to them a motive they could understand and
feel--a motive which acted on their own wills and excited their hopes.
This is the only method possible under a regime of liberty. A perfect
illustration of his practice in this respect is found in his successful
provision of one hundred and fifty four-horse wagons for Braddock's
force, when it was detained on its march from Annapolis to western
Pennsylvania by the lack of wagons. The military method would have been
to seize horses, wagons, and drivers wherever found. Franklin persuaded
Braddock, instead of using force, to allow him (Franklin) to offer a
good hire for horses, wagons, and drivers, and proper compensation for
the equipment in case of loss. By this appeal to the frontier farmers of
Pennsylvania he secured in two weeks all the transportation required. To
defend public order Franklin was perfectly ready to use public force,
as, for instance, when he raised and commanded a regiment of militia to
defend the northwestern frontier from the Indians after Braddock's
defeat, and again, when it became necessary to defend Philadelphia from
a large body of frontiersmen who had lynched a considerable number of
friendly Indians, and were bent on revolutionizing the Quaker
government. But his abhorrence of all war was based on the facts, first,
that during war the law must be silent, and, secondly, that military
discipline, which is essential for effective fighting, annihilates
individual liberty. "Those," he said, "who would give up essential
liberty for the sake of a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety." The foundation of his firm resistance on behalf of
the colonies to the English Parliament was his impregnable conviction
that the love of liberty was the ruling passion of the people of the
colonies. In 1766 he said of the American people: "Every act of
oppression will sour their tempers, lessen greatly, if not annihilate,
the profits of your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt;
for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can
eradicate them." Because they loved liberty, they would not be taxed
without representation; they would not have soldiers quartered on them,
or their governors made independent of the people in regard to their
salaries; or their ports closed, or their commerce regulated by
Parliament. It is interesting to observe how Franklin's experiments and
speculations in natural science often had a favorable influence on
freedom of thought. His studies in economics had a strong tendency in
that direction. His views about religious toleration were founded on his
intense faith in civil liberty; and even his demonstration that
lightning was an electrical phenomenon brought deliverance for mankind
from an ancient terror. It removed from the domain of the supernatural a
manifestation of formidable power that had been supposed to be a weapon
of the arbitrary gods; and since it increased man's power over nature,
it increased his freedom.
This faith in freedom was fully developed in Franklin long before the
American Revolution and the French Revolution made the fundamental
principles of liberty familiar to civilized mankind. His views
concerning civil liberty were even more remarkable for his time than his
views concerning religious liberty; but they were not developed in a
passionate nature inspired by an enthusiastic idealism. He was the very
embodiment of common sense, moderation, and sober honesty. His standard
of human society is perfectly expressed in the description of New
England which he wrote in 1772: "I thought often of the happiness in New
England, where every man is a freeholder, has a vote in public affairs,
lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with
whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture perhaps of his own
family. Long may they continue in this situation!" Such was Franklin's
conception of a free and happy people. Such was his political
philosophy.
The moral philosophy of Franklin consisted almost exclusively in the
inculcation of certain very practical and unimaginative virtues, such as
temperance, frugality, industry, moderation, cleanliness, and
tranquillity. Sincerity and justice, and resolution--that indispensable
fly-wheel of virtuous habit--are found in his table of virtues; but all
his moral precepts seem to be based on observation and experience of
life, and to express his convictions concerning what is profitable,
prudent, and on the whole satisfactory in the life that now is. His
philosophy is a guide of life, because it searches out virtues, and so
provides the means of expelling vices. It may reasonably determine
conduct. It did determine Franklin's conduct to a remarkable degree, and
has had a prodigious influence for good on his countrymen and on
civilized mankind. Nevertheless, it omits all consideration of the
prime motive power, which must impel to right conduct, as fire supplies
the power which actuates the engine. That motive power is pure,
unselfish love--love to God and love to man. "Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart ... and thy neighbor as thyself."
Franklin never seems to have perceived that the supreme tests of
civilization are the tender and honorable treatment of women as equals,
and the sanctity of home life. There was one primary virtue on his list
which he did not always practise. His failures in this respect
diminished his influence for good among his contemporaries, and must
always qualify the admiration with which mankind will regard him as a
moral philosopher and an exhorter to a good life. His sagacity,
intellectual force, versatility, originality, firmness, fortunate
period of service, and longevity combined to make him a great leader of
his people. In American public affairs the generation of wise leaders
next to his own felt for him high admiration and respect; and the strong
republic, whose birth and youthful growth he witnessed, will carry down
his fame as political philosopher, patriot, and apostle of liberty
through long generations.
WASHINGTON
The virtues of Washington were of two kinds, the splendid and the
homely; I adopt, for my part in this celebration, some consideration of
Washington as a man of homely virtues, giving our far-removed generation
a homely example.
The first contrast to which I invite your attention is the contrast
between the early age at which Washington began to profit by the
discipline of real life and the late age at which our educated young men
exchange study under masters, and seclusion in institutions of learning,
for personal adventure and responsibility out in the world. Washington
was a public surveyor at sixteen years of age. He could not spell well;
but he could make a correct survey, keep a good journal, and endure the
hardships to which a surveyor in the Virginia wilderness was inevitably
exposed. Our expectation of good service and hard work from boys of
sixteen, not to speak of young men of twenty-six, is very low. I have
heard it maintained in a learned college faculty that young men who were
on the average nineteen years of age, were not fit to begin the study of
economics or philosophy, even under the guidance of skilful teachers,
and that no young man could nowadays begin the practice of a profession
to advantage before he was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Now,
Washington was at twenty-one the Governor of Virginia's messenger to the
French forts beyond the Alleghanies. He was already an accomplished
woodman, an astute negotiator with savages and the French, and the
cautious yet daring leader of a company of raw, insubordinate
frontiersmen, who were to advance 500 miles into a wilderness with
nothing but an Indian trail to follow. In 1755, at twenty-three years of
age, twenty years before the Revolutionary War broke out, he was a
skilful and experienced fighter, and a colonel in the Virginia service.
What a contrast to our college under-graduates of to-day, who at
twenty-two years of age are still getting their bodily vigor through
sports and not through real work, and who seldom seem to realize that,
just as soon as they have acquired the use of the intellectual tools and
stock with which a livelihood is to be earned in business or in the
professions, the training of active life is immeasurably better than the
training of the schools! Yet Washington never showed at any age the
least spark of genius; he was only "sober, sensible, honest, and
brave," as he said of Major-General Lincoln in 1791.
