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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 13
of 154
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I
think it was 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 soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable
Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was
charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive
argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from
reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our
religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing
to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it
continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior
knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee,
entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate
themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always
deserved. I continu'd this method some few years, but gradually left it,
retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence;
never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words
certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an
opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it
appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I
imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe,
has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my
opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time
engag'd in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to
be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would
not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom
fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those
purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving
information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical
manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a
candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of
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