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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 66
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effects upon your vast and rising country, as well as upon England and upon
Europe) that it should stand respectable and eternal. For the furtherance of
human happiness, I have always maintained that it is necessary to prove that
man is not even at present a vicious and detestable animal; and still more to
prove that good management may greatly amend him; and it is for much the same
reason, that I am anxious to see the opinion established, that there are fair
characters existing among the individuals of the race; for the moment that all
men, without exception, shall be conceived abandoned, good people will cease
efforts deemed to be hopeless, and perhaps think of taking their share in the
scramble of life, or at least of making it comfortable principally for
themselves. Take then, my dear sir, this work most speedily into hand: shew
yourself good as you are good; temperate as you are temperate; and above all
things, prove yourself as one, who from your infancy have loved justice,
liberty and concord, in a way that has made it natural and consistent for you
to have acted, as we have seen you act in the last seventeen years of your
life. Let Englishmen be made not only to respect, but even to love you. When
they think well of individuals in your native country, they will go nearer to
thinking well of your country; and when your countrymen see themselves well
thought of by Englishmen, they will go nearer to thinking well of England.
Extend your views even further; do not stop at those who speak the English
tongue, but after having settled so many points in nature and politics, think
of bettering the whole race of men. As I have not read any part of the life in
question, but know only the character that lived it, I write somewhat at
hazard. I am sure, however, that the life and the treatise I allude to (on the
Art of Virtue) will necessarily fulfil the chief of my expectations; and still
more so if you take up the measure of suiting these performances to the
several views above stated. Should they even prove unsuccessful in all that a
sanguine admirer of yours hopes from them, you will at least have framed
pieces to interest the human mind; and whoever gives a feeling of pleasure
that is innocent to man, has added so much to the fair side of a life
otherwise too much darkened by anxiety and too much injured by pain. In the
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