his comments on his own education have generic value. The mechanics of education, which distinguishes the modern systems, he knew well and prized little. Though they largely fill the eye of later generations, they did not blind him. He never suggested any device for shortening the distance between points measured on a straight line, nor to the armory of teaching did he contribute any instrument wherewith one may learn without thinking. To him life was a series of adjustments, and education was subjective because it is a process in self-adjustment. With him self-culture is a series into eternity and man is given a place in the file not of the worst rank. Unlike some of his eminent contemporaries he was not secretive. His experience like life itself was a property of man and akin to the experiences of others, therefore it had a general value, and its utilities truly comprehended contribute to the general welfare.

Unselfishness.

His unselfishness was of the kind that we see in trees and plants, which fruit in due season with no thought of making the human race their debtors. As the race cherishes trees and plants, so, and in greater degree, should it cherish the memory of its own members who have produced wholesome ideas and have left good works. To such as do these things education is not a secret art. It is a process open to all men. It is a condition, not an aspect of life. The economy of education is a moral thrift, and an individual as well as a social function. It is not a mere academic afterthought, an epilogue to reality spoken by the speculatist. The man of whom I am speaking was an economist, for he was the first to teach the world that the unit of the measure of value is labor; and he was among the first to confute the ancient and false doctrine that wealth consists only in the possession of land, of precious metals, of jewels and other chattels. He learned his economy by large and intimate association with his fellow-men. Obscure and isolated data were not sufficient to support his ideas. All the world was the parish of his intellection; he was a servant to truth. His work, like that of Homer, was as simple as art. His process in self-culture was natural.

Moral thrift.

This man was Benjamin Franklin. As Hume stands to philosophy, so stands Franklin to the world of affairs. He taught Malthus, Ricardo, and Adam Smith, because he knew men. His aptest scholar was himself. Nor did he omit that adjustment too often missed by men-the provision for the spread of his ideas. Yet he did not assume the oracular, though he proved to be a prophet. Nations have prospered by adhering to his principles. The general welfare of man has reached a higher level because he lived. His name is identified with the founding of institutions whose utility insures their permanency, and he was wise enough to know that the most permanent foundations in the world are educational. The public library which he founded in Philadelphia-the first in America and the parent of thousands of others--has contributed to the education of the people of the United States. The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in this country, was founded by him and has been a coordinating force in furthering the cause of all forms of knowledge. The University of Pennsylvania, in the inception of which he was the leading spirit, has trained nearly a hundred thousand men. Millions of men, ignorant of the wisdom of Adam Smith, of John Stuart Mill, and of later economists of eminence, have been taught habits of thrift and have better provided for their wives, their children, and themselves by practicing the homely precepts of Poor Richard. Who can estimate that multitude, in all lands blessed with civilization, who have found pleasure, encouragement, and instruction in reading and rereading the first of American biographies?

The theme.

It can not be unprofitable, therefore, to trace the principles and narrate the history of that educational process and that economy with which Franklin is identified. He who looks for simplicity in

modern educational methods is soon overwhelmed with dismay. On account of the system, the books, and the teachers he can not see the scholars. Theories and discussions often exclude economy. Not soldiers, but strategy and tactics possess the field. The tenant neglects to pay his rent in order to discuss it. The laborer forsakes his hire in order to speculate upon it. A system of education instead of being a natural process may be made a tyrannical schedule. It may become an exercise with books instead of an evolution of a soul by self-culture. Franklin stands easily with the first; with Homer, from whom all later poets take inspiration; with Plato, who distributes the germens of philosophy; with Cæsar, who taught war and politics with equal ease; with Hume and Burke, who examined the foundations of politics in the eighteenth century and revised the definitions of the state. With these stands Franklin, the apostle of individuality, upon which the modern representative state rests. Given the individual, and, according to Franklin, you have the state. The culture of the individual is a measure of the culture of the state.. Thus he is the Socrates of modern times; the American Socrates.

Peers.

Of permanent interest.

Franklin's ideas of education and economy and their influence on America are the subject of my story. In outlining his ideas of education, I shall touch on his economic notions, for a man's political economy must be understood before attempting to understand his ideas on other subjects. The interests of self-culture are permanent, and their direction and administration determine the course of public opinion. The influence of Franklin's self-culture is immeasurable; its regulating principles may for a time be obscured, but, like other principles, they ultimately prevail.

Birth and breeding.

He tells us that he "was born and bred in poverty and obscurity, from which he emerged to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and that he went through life with a considerable share of felicity." He frequently reflected on his worldly prosperity and was happy to record that his family was of homely but goodly stock of the middle class of ancient England, and that of his maternal grandfather, Peter Folger, even so distinguished a divine as Cotton Mather had made honorable mention as a godly, learned Englishman."

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He was not sent to college, because his father considered a college education too expensive; "the mean living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain" was a sufficient proof to the elder Franklin that worldly success was not surely to be won after so great an expense.

Franklin's childhood training.

To understand Franklin's notions of self-culture it is necessary to trace his own. He remembered in his old age how his father at his table liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life." This insight into his childhood shows how early in life his mind was impressed with the paramount importance of things ingenious or useful, and to the end he judged of the value of men's labors by their usefulness to mankind.

When it was to be decided at what employment he should be put, his father sought a practical solution of the problem by taking him to walk with him "and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he might observe my inclination and endeavor to fix it on some trade or profession that would keep me on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools, and it has been often useful to me to have learnt so much by it as to be able to do some trifling jobs in the house, when a workman

when a child.

could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for my experiments while the intention of making the experiment was fresh and warm in my mind.” From a child he was fond of reading, and the little money The books he read that came into his hands he spent for books. It is natural for a man to insist that the education of the young should be like that which he received himself. The books which Franklin read in his boyhood remained in his opinion the proper books for all children to read. The Pilgrim's Progress, Burton's Historical Collections, De Foe's Essay on Projects, and Dr. Mather's Essays to do Good had an influence on some of the principal events of his life. It may be said that two of these books, Pilgrim's Progress and De Foe's Essay on Projects, are among the most fertile books of all ages. In evidence it may be said that, except the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress is more freely read throughout the world than any other book, and De Foe's Essay on Projects contains intimations and projections of nearly all the most salutary reforms in morals, in law, and in practical ethics that have blessed the world since it was written.

It was his bookish inclinations which made him a printer, and to the end of his life he illustrated, whenever he had occasion to speak or write on such matters, how his training as a printer determined his ideas in education.

His mind was universal, and he was therefore interested in all human affairs. As a boy he took a peculiar interest in the drama, and throughout life was fond of the theater. On this mimic stage he saw the larger action of life epitomized, and from the conduct of the players on the stage he was doubtless able to draw conclusions of value to him in his large, diplomatic action. Throughout his works are constant references to the plays of the day, and he is fond of illustrating a letter to a friend by a passing remark on some popular piece. His boyhood was cast in the age of ballad mongery, and to the end of his days he enjoined that kind of scribbling. The petty vender of street ballads is the potent illustration in our day of the persistency of this kind of writing.

A bookish boy would make friends of bookish lads, and one John Collins, with whom he early became acquainted, enabled him to enter upon a new epoch in life-the epoch of conversation. Between these boys there were long controversies on the passing questions of the day, and the various theories in the projection of which youth is so fertile. Collins denied "the propriety of educating the female sex in learning and their abilities for study." Franklin took the opposite side and seems to have converted himself into an advocate of woman's education. This controversy, left unsettled in conversation, was carried on by correspondence, and Franklin thus began as a writer.

Three or four letters on a side had passed, he tells us, when his father happened to find the papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to his son about the manner of his writing; observed that, though he had the advantage of his antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which young Franklin owed to the printing house), he fell far short in elegance of expression, in method, and in perspicuity, of which he convinced his son by several instances. Franklin saw the justice of his father's remarks, and thence grew more attentive to style in writing, and determined to improve his own.

This proof of his ability to compare himself with others is significant, for it illustrates one of the chief powers of his mind. He was quick to notice points of superiority or of inferiority, and, being ambitious to excel, proImproves in com- ceeded in a practical way to overcome his deficiencies. His position. method became, in his opinion, the right procedure for all other persons in a similar condition, and it was later formulated by him as a method in education. It was in brief to imitate the best writings of the day. Happily for him Addison was then giving the Spectator to the world, and an odd volume, the third, fell into his hands. The reading of it produced a sensation new

to him; he read it again and again and was delighted, and he afterwards laid down the proposition that all children could derive the same benefit from the Spectator which he had derived.

His method was simple, yet original; it was to read the Spectator and to rewrite it from memory; to compare his version with the original, and to correct and rewrite it until his own composition was as perfect as that of Addison himself. This taught him the limitations of his own vocabulary, and led him afterwards to insert in his plan for the education of youth a provision for the study of the dictionary. In his Sketch of an English School he advises for the use of first or lowest class, to which children of the age at which he began reading the Spectator would belong, that a vocabulary of the most usual difficult words might be formed with explanations, and they might daily get a few of those words and explanations by heart, which would a little exercise their memories; or at least they might write a number of them in a small book for the purpose, which would help to fix the meaning of those words in their minds and at the same time furnish everyone with a little dictionary for his future use."

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His own boyish experiences taught him his need of a vocabulary, of his using the word exactly responsive to the thought, the best word that could be found. This opinion, formulated in the Sketch of an English School for the Consideration of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Academy, to which I shall again refer, was plainly the result of his experience in self-education; and when he tells us in his

verses.

Autobiography that he made verses because their composition Why he wrote laid him under the constant necessity of searching for a variety of words and for words exactly suited to the thought, and that he turned tales into verse, and after he had forgotten the prose turned them back again, and in this manner, by comparing his work afterwards with the original, discovered his faults and amended them, we catch a glimpse of the value of comparison in education; that is, comparison made for practical purposes. So perfectly did this scheme work that, as he tells us in a delightful way, he sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain parts of small import he had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language of the original, and this encouraged him to think that he might possibly in time come to be a "tolerable English writer."

To reach this height he was extremely ambitious, and to show how such a result was possible for anyone who, like himself, was an indented apprentice, he records that his time for making these exercises and for reading was at night after his work was done or in the morning before it began or even on Sundays when he was alone, and, as he rather disliked to attend church, he stayed at home and eased his conscience by perfecting himself in English style. Certainly the judgment of posterity has awarded him high rank in English composition. He takes pains to tell us how his self-education was a success and how all other people, if they choose, may educate themselves and become “tolerable English writers."

He studies arithmetic and logic.

He soon discovered his ignorance of mathematics, and at 17 was old enough to be ashamed of it. He overcame his deficiency as he had overcome that in composition. He took Cocker's Arithmetic and went through the whole by himself "with great ease." Not only arithmetic, but books of navigation (Seller's and Shermy's) were studied in the same manner, but having no practical use for the higher mathematics he never pursued them. About this time he read Locke On the Human Understanding, and the Art of Thinking, by Messrs. du Port Royal.

Intent on improving in language, he found an English grammar, Greenwood's, at the end of which "there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method,"

and he soon afterwards procured Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates. He had made a discovery. Addison had charmed him, but Xenophon captivated him, and from Xenophon he learned the greatest lesson of his life. "From that time," says he, "I adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter."

He anticipates the age of books.

Again and again from his Autobiography, and from other sources, we learn how, through his long life, he avoided dogmatic disputation and won his cause quite as much by his mastery of the art of doubting and questioning as by his powers of confutation. He was a born diplomat and his sense of the principles of diplomacy was thus early manifest. So important did the Socratic method become, in his ideas of education, that in drawing up his Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, out of which grew the University of Pennsylvania, he encouraged all those studies which involve conversation and writing. He would acquaint youth with the best models among the ancients. But his diplomatic experience made him familiar with the feebleness of mere talk, and he concluded that as modern political oratory is chiefly performed by the pen and press, its advantages over the ancients in some respects ought to be shown, as, for instance, that its effects are more extensive and more lasting.

Thus he anticipated the age of books, newspapers, magazines, and the numerous productions of pen and press in later times, and was fully conscious of the enormous and superior power of the printed page over the spoken word; so from his own experience he advocated studies by which the human mind is most widely reached and most powerfully influenced. His own writings are frequently in the Socratic method.

In his Sketch of an English School he advocated the reading of short pieces by the master, not exceeding the length of a number in the Spectator, with the proper modulations of voice, due emphasis, and suitable action where action is required, and that the youth should imitate the manner of the original. The beauties of the piece were to be discussed by the instructor, and, from a variety of readings by which good styles of all kinds were made known, children should learn to imitate such excellence and be able readily to put their thoughts into the form best adapted to accomplish the end.

His rule of modesty.

Having discovered the value of the Socratic method, he next discovered the value of expressing himself in terms of modest diffidence, and to the end of his life he was noted for the modesty with which he advanced his opinions. Perhaps no illustration of this quality is finer than his speech read to the convention of 1787 in its closing hours. Franklin himself was too feeble to deliver it, and his colleague, James Wilson, read it for him. Perhaps this speech gave us the Constitution of the United States:

I confess that there are several parts in this Constitution [said he] that I do not at present approve, but I am not sure that I shall never approve them; for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that whenever others differ from them it is so far error.

And then he characteristically points his speech by a happy illustration. Steele, a Protestant in education, tells Pope

that the only difference between our churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is that the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though so many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as they do of their sect, few express it as naturally as a