Kitabı oku: «Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2)», sayfa 33

SUMMARY

Such was Benjamin Franklin, as mirrored for the most part in his own written and oral utterances. Whether his fame is measured by what he actually accomplished, or by the impression that he made upon his contemporaries, or by the influence that he still exercises over the human mind, he was a truly great man.⁵⁹ Not simply because he was one of the principal actors in a revolutionary movement destined to establish in the free air of the Western World on lasting foundations, and on a scale of moral and material grandeur, of which history furnishes few examples, a state, without king, noble or pontiff, and deriving its inspiration and energy solely from the will of the People; nor yet merely because his brilliant discoveries in the province of electricity conspicuously helped to convert one of the most elusive and defiant of all the forces of nature into an humble and useful drudge of modern industry and progress; nor yet merely because, in addition to many other productions, marked by the indefinable charm of unerring literary intuition, he wrote several which are read in every part of the globe where a printed page is read; nor even because of all these things combined. They are, of course, the main pillars upon which his splendid fame rests. But what imparts to Franklin his aspect of greatness, and endows him with his irresistible appeal to the interest and admiration of the whole human race is the striking extent to which he was, in point of both precept and example, representative of human existence in all its more rational, more fruitful and more sympathetic manifestations. His vision was not that of the enthusiast; his was no Pentecostal tongue – cloven and aflame. He took little account of the higher spiritual forces which at times derange all the sober, prudent calculations of such a materialist as Poor Richard, and his message to mankind was blemished, as we have seen, by the excessive emphasis placed by it upon pecuniary thrift and the relations of pecuniary thrift to sound morals as well as physical comfort. But all the same, limited to the terrestrial horizon as he is, he must be reckoned one of the great leaders and teachers of humanity. He loved existence, shared it joyously and generously with his fellow-creatures, and vindicated its essential worth by bringing to bear upon everything connected with the conduct of life the maxims of a serene and almost infallible wisdom, and by responding with a mind as completely free from the prejudices and errors of his age as if he had lived a hundred years later, and with a heart as completely unconstrained by local considerations as if men were all of one blood and one country, to every suggestion that tended to make human beings happier, more intelligent and worthier in every respect of the universe which he found so delightful. It is this harmony with the world about him, this insight into what that world requires of everyone who seeks, to make his way in it, this enlightenment, this sympathy with human aspirations and needs everywhere, together with the rare strain of graphic and kindly instruction by which they were accompanied that cause the name of Franklin to be so often associated with those of the other great men whose fame is not the possession of a single class or land, but of all mankind. The result is that, when the faces of the few individuals, who are recognized by the entire world as having in the different ages of human history rendered service to the entire world, are ranged in plastic repose above the shelves of some public library or along the walls of some other institution, founded for the promotion of human knowledge or well-being, the calm, meditative face of Franklin is rarely missing.

It is to be regretted that a character so admirable and amiable in all leading respects as his, so strongly fortified by the cardinal virtues of modesty, veracity, integrity and courage, and so sweetly flavored with all the finer charities of human benevolence and affection, should in some particulars have fallen short of proper standards of conduct. But it is only just to remember that the measure of his lapses from correct conduct is to be mainly found in humorous license, for which the best men of his own age, like Dr. Price and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, had only a laugh,⁶⁰ and in offences against sexual morality, which, except so far as they assumed in his youth the form of casual intercourse with low women, whose reputations were already too sorely injured to be further wounded, consisted altogether in the adoption by a singularly versatile nature of a foreign code of manners which imposed upon the members of the society, by which it was formed, the necessity of affecting the language of gallantry even when gallantry itself was not actually practised. There is at any rate no evidence to show that the long married life of Franklin, so full of domestic concord and tenderness, was ever sullied by the slightest violation of conjugal fidelity.

On the whole, therefore, it is not strange that, repelled as we are at times by some passing episode or revelation in his life or character, everyone who has lingered upon his career finds it hard to turn away from it except with something akin to the feelings of those friends who clung to him so fondly. He was so kind, so considerate, so affectionate, so eager to do good, both to individuals and whole communities, that we half forget the human conventions that his bountiful intellect and heart overflowed. Of him it can at least be said that, if he had some of a man's failings, he had all of a man's merits; and his biographer, in taking leave of him, may well, mindful of his eminent virtues as well as of his brilliant achievements and services, waive all defence of the few vulnerable features of his life and conduct by summing up the final balance of his deserts in the single word engraved upon the pedestal of one of his busts in Paris at the time of his death. That word was "Vir" – a Man, a very Man.