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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 63
of 154
give a noble rule and example of self-education. School and other education
constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed
at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark a true one; and
while parents and young persons are left destitute of other just means of
estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course in life, your
discovery that the thing is in many a man's private power, will be invaluable!
Influence upon the private character, late in life, is not only an influence
late in life, but a weak influence. It is in youth that we plant our chief
habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party as to profession,
pursuits and matrimony. In youth, therefore, the turn is given; in youth the
education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and
public character is determined; and the term of life extending but from youth
to age, life ought to begin well from youth, and more especially before we
take our party as to our principal objects. But your biography will not merely
teach self-education, but the education of a wise man; and the wisest man will
receive lights and improve his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of
another wise man. And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we
see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in
this particular, from the farthest trace of time? Show then, sir, how much is
to be done, both to sons and fathers; and invite all wise men to become like
yourself, and other men to become wise. When we see how cruel statesmen and
warriors can be to the human race, and how absurd distinguished men can be to
their acquaintance, it will be instructive to observe the instances multiply
of pacific, acquiescing manners; and to find how compatible it is to be great
and domestic, enviable and yet good-humored.
"The little private incidents which you will also have to relate, will have
considerable use, as we want, above all things, rules of prudence in ordinary
affairs; and it will be curious to see how you have acted in these. It will be
so far a sort of key to life, and explain many things that all men ought to
have once explained to them, to give, them a chance of becoming wise by
foresight. The nearest thing to having experience of one's own, is to have
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