|
"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 74
of 154
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| S.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| J.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| M.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| C.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| T.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| C.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| H.| | | | | | | |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues
successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard was to avoid every the
least offence against Temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary
chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in the first
week I could keep my first line, marked T, clear of spots, I suppos'd the habit
of that virtue so much strengthen'd and its opposite weaken'd, that I might
venture extending my attention to include the next, and for the following week
keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro' a
course compleat in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him who,
having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at
once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works on one of the
beds at a time, and, having accomplish'd the first, proceeds to a second, so I
should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the
progress I made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines of their spots,
till in the end, by a number of courses, I should he happy in viewing a clean
book, after a thirteen weeks' daily examination.
This my little book had for its motto these lines from Addison's Cato:
"Here will I hold. If there's a power above us
(And that there is all nature cries aloud
Thro' all her works), He must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy."
Another from Cicero,
"O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix
expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis
tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus."
Another from the Proverbs of Solomon, speaking of wisdom or virtue:
|