Ben Franklin As the Antithesis of Wilderness

The Work

I really liked Ben Franklin's Autobiography Part II. His reasoning for believing in a deity and "that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing of Good to Man" resonated with me, and seemed to be the most inclusive ideology of the writers we've read so far. That aside, what really pulled me into his story was the comical approach he took in presenting the problem of achieving virtue. He also had a good natured way of dismissing the possibility of being truly virtuous.




The Antithesis of Wilderness

His detailed reasoning behind his beliefs and his orderly plan of attaining virtue are good examples of Ben Franklin's antithesis to Wilderness. He creates the "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion" and the 13 Virtues. He has a chart that he uses to track each offense against the virtues. I would say this is the opposite of wilderness.

The funny thing is that Franklin fails miserably in the area of virtue. "I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish. To avoid the Trouble of renewing now and then my little Book, which by scraping out the marks on the Paper of old Faults to make room for new ones in a new Course, became full of Holes: I transfer'd my Tables and precepts into the Tables and Precepts of the Ivory Leaves of Memorandum Book. . ." (288). These little swiss cheese sheets of paper sum up Franklin's entire purpose of including the story.

Another good example of his desire to corral even human nature is seen in this great quote:


"In reality, there is perhaps no one of  our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. You will see it perhaps often in this History. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my Humility" (292).

I think the fact that Franklin tries to subdue what he calls "natural passions" shows his tendency for order vs. wilderness. You can see his control and sensibility in the way he used an old dish for years until his wife finally bought him a single china bowl and silver spoon. You can see it in the one reference to nature in the text. "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 bed at a time. . ." (287). Franklin took things-problems, ideas, people, politics-and worked them into something new. If he couldn't he made sure he understood why. At least that's how I see it.

Also, this really great blog helped me understand the topic. See the quote below for a snippet:

"Ben Franklin didn't invent electricity. He invented the lightning rod (in other words, he took the wild, natural existence of it, and contained it. He cultivated it.). . .Everything is invented. Language. Childhood.  Careers. Relationships. Religion. Philosophy. The Future. They are not there for the taking. They don't exist in some Natural state. They must be invented by people. And that, of course, is a great thing."  -Maira Kalman






The Source for the beautiful paintings of Benjamin Franklin's life is here.