S0034670513000892jra 69..92


Learning from Franklin’s Mistakes:
Self-Interest Rightly Understood

in the Autobiography

Christopher S. McClure

You are young and have all the world before you; STOOP as you go
through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.

–—Cotton Mather’s advice to the young Benjamin Franklin

Abstract: Benjamin Franklin divides the mistakes he lists in the Autobiography into
“errata” and “great errata.” He derived no benefit from the latter, but some benefit
from the former. Examining Franklin’s regret, or lack of regret, at these errata opens
a window onto Franklin’s understanding of morality. The laxity in his list of virtues
and his flexibility with regard to conventional morals stem from the insight
Franklin tells us he gained from these errata. For Franklin, or at least his persona in
the Autobiography, there was no conflict between egoism and altruism, and he is
therefore the embodiment of a type of self-interest well understood. Tracing the
story of the errata, which Franklin inserted into an earlier draft of the work’s first
part, and Franklin’s later actions provides the key to understanding the rhetorical
strategy of the Autobiography, and the reason he never wrote his proposed Art of Virtue.

In the opening of the Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin tells his son that if he
could live his life over again, he would ask only “the Advantages Authors
have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of the first.”1 He does not
say he would correct all of these faults, though, but that he would happily
repeat his life again, faults and all, if given the chance, thus implying that
he may in fact have gained something from some, if not all, of his mistakes.2

Throughout the first part of the work, Franklin points out several of the faults
in this first edition of his life, which, in keeping with the printer’s terminology,
he calls errata.

Christopher S. McClure is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, 1350
Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA, 02138 (cmcclure@fas.harvard.edu).

1Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Ormond Seavey (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 3.

2Franklin’s statement here is also ambiguous regarding the issue of whether, on
repeating his life, he would do so with the benefit of the wisdom he had gained on
his first attempt.

The Review of Politics 76 (2014), 69–92.
© University of Notre Dame
doi:10.1017/S0034670513000892

69

mailto:cmcclure@fas.harvard.edu


Commentators generally give little weight to these errata, and see them
simply as youthful indiscretions committed before Franklin’s moral and
religious conversion.3 Franklin, though, tells the story of these errata in
order to show how he arrived at his central insight into morality and
virtue and why he thought that a true understanding of these could
not be contained in a list of dogmatic injunctions, but required a kind
of reflective prudence that allowed one a degree of latitude in one’s
actions that could often appear to others as transgressions of conventional
moral standards.
The key to understanding the story of the errata is paying attention to what

Franklin says he gained or lost from each of the five he mentions, and his dis-
tinction between “great errata” and “errata” simply. With the former Franklin
gained nothing and gave himself a great deal of trouble, while with the latter
he in fact gained something, despite in one way or another contravening con-
ventional morality.4 He came to understand that the rules of virtue and the
dictates of revelation are set out not because they are ordained by God, or
in accord with some metaphysical order, but because they are good for us,
and, although Franklin never says as much in so many words, when
rightly understood, these do not require sacrifice, charity, or any kind of altru-
ism, but may in fact require some transgression of traditional moral stan-
dards.5 I will argue in this paper that this apparent moral flexibility and
Franklin’s unabashed self-interest were always simultaneously in the
service of others, which Franklin came to see was the route to the most satis-
fying kind of happiness, and were informed by the lesson Franklin learned
from the errata.
Scholars, and notably Aldridge, claim that Franklin’s motivation in later

life was primarily a sense of altruism and charity, and it is easy to read
him this way, but Franklin never makes any such claims about his own

3See, for example, Lorraine Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 65. Charles L. Sanford, “An
American Pilgrim’s Progress,” American Quarterly 6 (1954), quoted in Benjamin
Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 311, sees the errata as analogous to Christian’s sins
in Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.

4By conventional morality, or traditional standards of morality, I mean loosely what
would have been considered the moral norms of Franklin’s time and place (many of
which, of course, remain the moral standards of today). That is, one should be
honest, not steal, commit adultery, pay one’s debts, etc.

5Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 122, notes that “even when
[Franklin’s] appeal was to charity, he found a way of weaving prudent calculation
into the mix.” Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002), 17–25, 30, quoted in Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), xii, also notes that Franklin does not
include charity in his list of virtues.

70 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



actions.6 In the Autobiography Franklin explains even his most public-spirited
actions in terms of some benefit to himself, and primarily in terms of his own
happiness.7 For example, Franklin explains his motivation for starting a sub-
scription library, one of his best-known benefactions, first in terms of a benefit
to himself. “This Library afforded me the Means of Improvement by constant
Study,” Franklin says, since the booksellers in Philadelphia did not carry the
kinds of books Franklin needed and it was inconvenient to order books from
England (Autobiography, 81, 79). More importantly, Franklin was able to
gratify his sense of vanity by claiming at first that the library was not his
idea, and waiting until another claimed credit for it, and was then shown
to be taking credit for Franklin’s achievement: “If it remains a while uncertain
to whom the Merit belongs, some one more vain then yourself will be encour-
ag’d to claim it, and then envy will be dispos’d to do you Justice, by plucking
those assum’d Feathers, & restoring them to their right Owner”
(Autobiography, 81). Franklin was thus able to maintain a reputation for
modesty through this device, while taking credit for the populace of the colo-
nies being “better instructed & more intelligent than People of the same Rank
generally are in other Countries” (Autobiography, 80). The Library Company
was also incorporated in perpetuity by a charter a few years after its incep-
tion, and thus served as a lasting legacy (Autobiography, 80). Franklin similarly
says about his scheme for matching funds contributions for a hospital, “I do
not remember any of my political Maneuvres, the Success of which gave me at
the time more Pleasure. Or that in after-thinking of it, I more easily excused
my-self for having made some Use of Cunning” (Autobiography, 127).
This same pattern is apparent in Franklin’s other acts of public utility, which

frequently involve some manipulation of human nature. This manipulation
and Franklin’s self-interested motives were often the targets of famous detrac-
tors such as John Adams.8 I will show, however, that although these critics

6Alfred Owen Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature’s God (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1967), 58, says of Franklin that “the system he evolved was funda-
mentally altruistic.”

7See Steven Forde, “Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and the Education of
America,” American Political Science Review 86, no. 2 (1992): 359, who describes what
we could call Franklin’s hierarchy of goods, from wealth to virtue to happiness:
“The Autobiography first caters to the reader’s presumptive (and presumptively legiti-
mate) concern with wealth, then directs it toward a much fuller vision of human hap-
piness and the well-lived life.”

8John Adams, “John Adams on Franklin,” Boston Patriot, 15 May 1811, quoted in
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 244, speaks of the “the turpi-
tude of [Franklin’s] intrigues” and his ability to dissemble for the sake of different
audiences. For a good discussion of this phenomenon see Gordon Wood, The
Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Penguin, 2003), 9ff.: “In fact, the his-
toric Franklin, the Franklin of the eighteenth century, seems to elude us as much as
Gatsby’s ever receding green light eluded him. When we actually recover the

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 71



have seen through the upright façade Franklin presents of himself, they failed
to grasp his true motives.9 An important theoretical message of the
Autobiography, then, stems from a careful examination of the errata and
especially the difference between the great and non-great errata, or the conse-
quences Franklin drew from this distinction.
These errata, I will argue, provide the key to understanding both the moral

message of the Autobiography and the work’s rhetorical strategy. We know
from manuscript evidence and ink analysis that Franklin inserted all of the
errata in one sitting at some point after writing the first part, in which
they all appear.10 This quintessentially Franklinian strategy suggests very
strongly that the errata were inserted with a specific purpose in mind, and,
I argue, that purpose is conveying a subtler and less conventional message
than that which we find in the list of virtues he sets out in part 2. Franklin
engages in this rhetorical strategy because he believes it will be a more effec-
tive means of conveying this message to those who can be so persuaded.
The most significant difference between the message he conveys in his list

of virtues and that gleaned from the errata is that the former exhibits a tension
between egoism and altruism that is absent from the latter. Franklin presented
his teaching this way, I suggest, because he understood that the American
character, informed both by deep Christian conviction and the drive
toward acquisitiveness among other things, would likely always betray a
serious uneasiness between the private and the public good.11 It was this
tension that Franklin hoped to channel in the Autobiography. He hoped to

Franklin of the eighteenth century, he does not seem to fit the image we have created of
him.” Pace Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott
Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2005), 18, who speaks of “the really unusual candid-
ness of his autobiography.”

9I do not attempt in this article to assess the veracity of Franklin’s claims about
himself or others. Instead, I focus on the message Franklin is trying to convey in the
Autobiography, since this message is more important, and perhaps even truer, than
the facts.

10P. M. Zall, “The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin’s ‘Autobiography,’”
Huntington Library Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1976): 378.

11Many thinkers have identified the tension between self-interest and selflessness as
an important strand in the American character. In particular, many note the tension
between the commercial and religious character of America. This is more fully articu-
lated by authors such as Weber, who in Protestant Ethic points out the complex relation-
ship between capitalism and Protestantism, and Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000), 500ff., who describes the paradoxical nature of self-interest well under-
stood and the contrast between the seventh day of each week, when “the commercial
and industrial life of the nation seems suspended” and “a deep repose, or rather a
solemn meditation follows” as Americans contemplate their duties, and the other
days of the week (517).

72 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



educate Americans by instilling something like what came to be known as
self-interest rightly understood. The deeper message of the errata, however,
was that there is no tension between the enlightened self-interest of those
like Franklin, who had a very sophisticated understanding of this, and the
good of others (even if those others were not so enlightened). So Franklin
hoped to teach most Americans to adhere as closely as possible to a standard
whose full elaboration lies hidden in the text, and which could only be fol-
lowed by those few who were as disciplined as Franklin.12

This article will begin with a discussion of two errata and two great errata,
and will proceed to examine the most important and complex erratum, the
Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. I will then explain the
rhetorical strategy behind the errata, and why Franklin set out his teaching
in an autobiography rather than in his never-written Art of Virtue.

Bad Mistakes and Good Mistakes

Franklin mentions five errata in the first part of the Autobiography. Three
of these he calls “errata” simply, and two, “great errata” (22, 44, 46, 35,
and 44, respectively). The two great errata, from which Franklin gained
nothing, and could potentially have lost a great deal, are, first, spending so
much of the money his brother’s friend Vernon had entrusted to him that
he was not able to repay it for several years, and, second, not bothering to
write to his fiancée Deborah while he was in England except to let her
know that he was not coming back to Philadelphia any time soon. The
three errata from which Franklin did gain something are, first, running
away from his brother in Boston and going to Philadelphia, second,
making advances on his friend’s mistress, and, third, writing his
Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity. This list of errata can be further subdi-
vided into three groups. One pair of errors, one great and one not great,
involve some kind of property: Vernon’s money and Franklin himself as an
indentured laborer. Another pair, also of one great and one simple error,
involve Franklin’s relations with women: the neglect of his fiancée and his
attempted familiarity with his friend’s mistress. In this section we will
examine these two pairs in this order. The final and most important
erratum for our purposes, the dissertation, is in a class of its own and so
will be treated in the following section.
In what Franklin calls “one of the first great Errata of my Life,” he enabled

his impecunious friend Collins’s constant drinking by dipping into the money
Franklin’s brother’s friend Vernon had entrusted to him (Autobiography, 35).
Despite repeated promises to repay what he owed to Franklin, Collins left
for a job in Barbados and never contacted Franklin again. Franklin’s inability
to repay this debt weighed greatly upon him, and although he never specifies

12I elaborate on this in the next section, below.

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 73



why this is so, we may suppose that if Vernon had recalled the debt sooner,
not only would Franklin’s reputation have been damaged, but he might also
have found himself in debtor’s prison. Franklin gained nothing from this
error, and lived in constant fear of having this debt recalled (Autobiography,
34, 36, 55).
In another act of misappropriation which Franklin calls “one of the first

Errata of my Life,” but not one of the great errata, Franklin fled from his
brother to whom he had indentured himself and went to live in
Philadelphia (Autobiography, 21–22). The indentures binding Franklin to his
brother had to be kept secret because they were part of a scheme whereby
Franklin appeared to be the printer of his brother’s newspaper, his brother
having been forbidden from the position. Because of these circumstances,
Franklin was confident that his brother would not pursue him on the basis
of the secret indentures, and was able to flee with impunity. Unlike the
debt he owed to Vernon, the “Unfairness” of this action “weigh’d little
with” him because Franklin resented the way his brother had behaved
towards him (Autobiography, 22).
Also, whereas Franklin gained nothing by spending money that belonged

to Vernon, he gained a great deal by stealing himself, so to speak, from his
brother and establishing himself in Philadelphia. One of the themes of the
early part of the Autobiography is Franklin’s need to be independent in
order to succeed, and so we see him escaping the influence of bad friends
such as Collins and Ralph, bad characters such as Keith and Keimer, and
his indolent business partner Meredith. Franklin’s escape from his brother
is the first step on this road to independence, and it is fair to wonder
whether he would have attained the heights he did if he had stayed on
with his brother for several more years in Boston. He had made himself
“a little obnoxious to the governing Party” there, and his “indiscrete
Disputations about Religion began to make [him] pointed at with Horror
by good People, as an Infidel or Atheist” (Autobiography, 22).13 It is clear
from the narrative that Franklin believed he needed a change of venue if he
was going to pursue his already great ambition.
The second great error Franklin committed was to forget his engagement to

Deborah Read, his future wife, and to write her only one letter, which said
that he would not be returning to Philadelphia in the near future
(Autobiography, 44). Franklin, looking back on this event, regarded this as a
great erratum because he gained nothing by it, and risked a great deal.
Rather than remaining faithful to his fiancée, Franklin allowed “that
hard-to-be-goveren’d Passion of Youth” free rein, and constantly risked his
health in the arms of “low Women” (Autobiography, 70). These “intrigues,”
as he calls them, were also expensive, and it was because of his expenses
(not only with low women, but also at the theatre and in the pubs, etc.)

13See Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 57–63.

74 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



that he “was constantly kept unable to pay [his] Passage” (Autobiography, 70,
44). He also jeopardized his eventual marriage to Deborah, who married
another while Franklin was in England.
The non-great erratum that parallels Franklin’s neglect of Deborah is his

attempting “Familiarities” with his unsavory friend Ralph’s mistress,
Mrs. T. (Autobiography, 46). This error, also motivated by the passions of
youth, did not subject him to any danger, but in fact, he says, “I found my
self reliev’d from a Burthen” (Autobiography, 46). Specifically, Franklin no
longer had to read the long and poor sections of the epic poem Ralph was
writing. He also lost any hope of being repaid what Ralph owed him, but
this was irrelevant, since, as Franklin notes, “he was totally unable”
(Autobiography, 46). In addition, he was also no longer obliged to lend any-
thing more to Ralph, or to Mrs. T., as he had been doing (Autobiography,
46). In wronging Ralph and Mrs. T., Franklin clearly gained something,
even if not by design, and lost little or nothing.
From the two libidinal errata, then, Franklin did not learn the lesson

that one should never give in to one’s sexual impulses, or that one
should always remain faithful. It may turn out that most of the time it
will be best to remain faithful and to avoid acting on such impulses,
but these are not, from Franklin’s account, absolute moral imperatives.
What he learns is that there is usually nothing to be gained from such
activity, and a lot to lose, but, given the right circumstances, attempting
familiarities with a friend’s girlfriend may prove a boon. Similarly, he
does not learn from the two errors involving a breach of contract that
one should never take what belongs to someone else. What he learns is
that spending money that belongs to someone else without being able
to repay it causes one a great deal of distress, but that breaking a con-
tract in some circumstances may be a great benefit. Again, what he
learns from these errors are not unbreakable rules by which the virtuous
must always live, but the need for flexibility and reflection regarding
one’s actions.
As for whether it is wrong to harm others, Franklin demonstrates a certain

ambivalence in these four errata. As we have seen, Franklin has no qualms
about leaving his brother because he had been treated badly by him in the
past. Similarly, he gives no indication that he was particularly sorry to have
broken Ralph’s trust, and the idea that he might have harmed Mrs. T. in
some way with his advances does not seem to have entered his mind.
Given these considerations, it is clear that Franklin regards these as errata
because they are transgressions by conventional standards, but not because
he has any feelings of guilt about them. Indeed, he never makes any
attempt to redress the supposed wrong done to Ralph or Mrs. T., and,
although he does say that he “made [his] Brother ample Amends for the
Service [he] had depriv’d him of by leaving him so early,” by taking care of
his brother’s son after he died, he does not say, as he does with his corrections
of the two great errors, that he had corrected an erratum. Indeed, Franklin

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 75



might not have been able to make such amends as he did unless he had com-
mitted the erratum against his brother and set himself up in Philadelphia.
The reader might suppose, because of his presentation of the two great

errata, that Franklin at least felt guilty toward Vernon and Deborah. We
might assume that he was in constant fear because of his debt to Vernon
through a sense of obligation to repay one’s debts, and that he supposed
this an error because he had done Vernon a great harm. Also, when he tells
us that he forgot his engagement to Deborah and wrote her only one letter,
we expect him to say that this was an error because he had broken her
trust and felt guilty about harming her so. Franklin no doubt wants to
leave this thought in the reader’s mind, since these would be the conventional
reactions to such behavior. There is, however, no evidence in the text that he
regards the great errata as errors because of a sense of guilt or obligation. We
can only conjecture why he regarded these as errors, and what Franklin does
tell us is that he feared the consequences that would redound to him from
these actions, not that he felt aggrieved at having injured Vernon and
Deborah. This is early evidence of a theme that will be developed below:
Franklin does not do good to others unless there is also a benefit to him.
Before the end of part 1 of the Autobiography Franklin makes a point of

telling the reader that he corrected the two great errata as best he could.
When called on to repay Vernon, he begged for a little more time and even-
tually did pay back his debt with interest (Autobiography, 64–65). He also
did marry Deborah Read, despite the uncertainty about whether her previous
husband was alive or dead (Autobiography, 70–71). He thus avoided getting
into trouble with the law for his debts, maintained his credit, and was able
to marry a woman he had affection for, and who turned out to be a “good
& faithful Helpmate,” not to mention finding a remedy for the “violent
natural Inclinations” of youth, for which, he says elsewhere, “Marriage is
the proper Remedy” (Autobiography, 71; “Old Mistresses Apologue,” 243).
Just as he was able to take full advantage of the transgressions of the
regular errata, he was able to avoid the dangers posed by the great errata.

Franklin’s Dissertation and His Discovery
of the Truth about Morality

The fifth erratum Franklin records, the writing of his Dissertation on Liberty
and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, was so serious that the editor of the ten-
volume collection of Franklin’s writings would not include it.14 “The work
has no value,” he claims, “and it would be an injury and an offence to the
memory of Franklin to republish it,” since, the editor notes, Franklin

14Franklin wrote the Dissertation as a response to William Wollaston’s The Religion of
Nature Delineated (London: James and John Knapton, 1731), for which he set the type in
London.

76 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



indeed does number it among his errata and in fact burned all but one copy of
it.15 The editor’s decision appears imprudent given that the dissertation was,
according to Franklin, an accurate synopsis of his thoughts on morality and
deism at the time, and therefore, in some sense, an explanation of why he
committed the errata.
The most immediate reason why writing the dissertation was an error is

that it gave him a bad reputation, or at least threatened to; his boss
Palmer thought more highly of Franklin after having read the dissertation,
but thought the principles “abominable” (Autobiography, 44). In a letter to
Vaughan in 1779, Franklin says that he came to dislike the dissertation “as
conceiving it might have an ill tendency,” and he burnt all but one copy
(quotes in Autobiography, 301). This of course reminds the reader of the
trouble Franklin had gotten into earlier in Boston with his Socratic disputa-
tions, which, as noted above, were giving him a bad reputation for
atheism. There were Londoners at the time Franklin wrote his dissertation,
though, who were not so easily shocked. As with the other non-great
errata, Franklin gained something from writing the Dissertation. The work
brought Franklin to the attention of intellectual circles in London and this
occasioned his meeting Bernard Mandeville (Autobiography, 44–45).
These, though, are only the most proximate consequences Franklin experi-

enced from writing the Dissertation. We know that Franklin carefully revised
the Autobiography, and yet the discussion of the dissertation was left as a
grammatical jumble that conflates its doctrine with his actions in such a
way as to make it clear that Franklin regarded his deism as the motivating
force behind his youthful errata.16 In fact, the dissertation is best understood
as the most visible symptom of the root cause of his errata: his early beliefs
and the justification those beliefs provided him. The theory that Franklin
expounds in the dissertation explains why he thought it would be acceptable
to behave in ways that he knew were considered wrong by conventional stan-
dards. In the dissertation, Franklin claims that there is no real distinction
between virtue and vice, and in his own life this predictably translated into
an excuse to commit whatever immoral actions he was inclined to. In this
way the relation between Franklin’s deism and his errata follow the same
paradigm as his failed attempt at vegetarianism.
After reading a work about the benefits of a vegetable diet, Franklin decided

that eating meat was “a kind of unprovok’d Murder” (Autobiography, 36). Later,
while on a ship where the sailors were frying freshly caught cod on the deck,
Franklin “balanc’d some time between Principle & Inclination” and decided

15Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. A. H. Smyth (New York:
Macmillan, 1905), 2:vi. For those brave enough to read it, the dissertation can still be
found in Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. L. W. Labaree (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1959), 57–71.

16See Zall, “The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin’s ‘Autobiography.’”

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 77



that since big fish eat small fish, there was no good reason that he should not in
turn eat them (Autobiography 36). “So convenient a thing it is,” Franklin con-
cludes, “to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a
Reason for every thing one has a mind to do” (Autobiography 36). While
Forde sees this as an example of Franklin’s virtue of reasonableness, it is in
fact an example, humorous because familiar to everyone, of inventing
reasons for indulging inclinations one knows should not be indulged.17

The act of writing and making copies of the Dissertation for distribution was
itself an indulgence of Franklin’s vanity; vanity at his superior intellect, and
ability to challenge the dominant moral framework of his time (he was first
convinced of the truth of deism by reading works that were attempting to
refute it: Autobiography, 58).
Each of the four errata Franklin mentions in the previous section was simi-

larly an indulgence and a transgression against convention that he justified by
the deistic principles he would set out in the dissertation. Franklin tells us that
he “became a thorough Deist” when he was fifteen (Autobiography, 58). The
first erratum, running away from his brother, occurred when Franklin was
seventeen. Though he was legally bound to remain with his brother, and
knew that he should have felt morally obliged to do so as well, he had no
compunction about leaving and as we have seen, he did not feel any guilt
about acting on his impulse to be free of these constraints. His intrigues
with low women and Mrs. T. and his forgetting of Deborah were clearly
indulgences of passion which Franklin would have known were not in
accord with the “religious Impressions” he had learned from his parents
(Autobiography, 58). It is not entirely clear why Franklin was willing to lend
so much of Vernon’s money to Collins, but whether it was simply to be an
amiable fellow, or a simple lack of judgment or prudence, Franklin would
also have known that spending another’s money was wrong.
Despite the errors Franklin committed while an adherent of deism, the

experience of committing them, and writing the dissertation, were necessary
steps on the path to understanding the truth about morality. In this sense,
writing the dissertation is the most important erratum since it caused the
greatest harm, or potential harm, but also led to the greatest benefit. In the
midst of discussing the trouble his deism gave him, he says,

I began to suspect that this Doctrine tho’ it might be true, was not very
useful. My London Pamphlet, which had for its Motto those Lines of

17Forde, “Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and the Education of America,” 360,
although I agree when he speaks of “the moderating role of reason in moral delibera-
tion that is central to the outlook of the Autobiography.” Cf. J. A. Leo Lemay, “Franklin’s
Autobiography and the American Dream,” in The Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth
Century (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1978), quoted in
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 349, who sees this episode as
an example of Franklin’s “profound skepticism concerning reason.”

78 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



Dryden … and from the Attributes of God, his infinite Wisdom, Goodness
& Power concluded that nothing could possibly be wrong with the World,
& that Vice & Virtue were empty Distinctions, no such things existing:
appear’d now not so clever a Performance as I once thought it.
(Autobiography, 58–59)

More specifically, Franklin observed that his friends Ralph and Collins both
did him wrong, “without the least Compunction,” after he had “perverted”
them to deism, and that he himself had wronged Vernon and Deborah
Read (Autobiography, 58). It is quite possible from the narration that Ralph’s
abandoning his wife and child when he went with Franklin to London was
less burdensome to him because of his deism (Autobiography, 41). Franklin
also suspects that Keith’s mistreatment of him had something to do with
the governor’s freethinking ways (Autobiography, 58). Just as Franklin could
do as he pleased regardless of the consequences to others while under the
spell of deism, so those he had converted to the doctrine had no qualms
about acting on their own impulses even when that meant doing wrong to
Franklin.
As with the other errata, Franklin’s main regret was not that he harmed

others, but the consequences that bore directly on him. The friends
he had “perverted,” he says, “wrong’d me greatly,” and his harming
Vernon and Deborah was not in itself a problem, but, he says, this
harm “at times gave me great Trouble” (Autobiography, 58; my italics).
Both espousing this doctrine to others and acting according to its princi-
ples were only causing Franklin grief. So, when Franklin tells us of his
discovery that deism, “tho’ it might be true, was not very useful,”
and of his discovery of morality, we should not be surprised that this
reformation is not a conversion from selfishness to altruism, but a
move to a more complete and efficient understanding of self-interest
(Autobiography, 59).
When Franklin speculates that the doctrine of his dissertation might be

true, but not useful, he means that there was likely no metaphysical ground-
ing for conventional notions of virtue and vice, or right and wrong, but this
did not mean one could live as if these notions did not exist with impunity.
Franklin discovered that despite his supposed proofs that nothing could be
wrong with the world, he could understand readily enough when he had
been wronged by others, and he could also tell that being wronged did not
make him happy. This was Franklin’s discovery of the true ground of moral-
ity, that “certain Actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by
[revelation], or good because it commanded them; yet probably those
Actions might be might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or com-
manded because they were beneficial to us, in their own Natures, all the
Circumstances of things considered” (Autobiography, 59). Franklin thus
became “convinc’d that Truth, Sincerity & Integrity in Dealings between
Man & Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life”

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 79



(Autobiography, 59).18 This discovery was the most important thing Franklin
gained from his deistic beliefs, and writing the dissertation was a necessary
step on the road to that discovery.
It is for this reason that Franklin claims that there was “something of

Necessity” in the errors of his youth. He uses the term “necessity” in the
same loose sense in which he describes the error that had crept into his meta-
physical reasoning. When Franklin claims that the immoral and unjust
actions he had committed were not entirely willful, “because the Instances I
mentioned, had something of Necessity in them, from my Youth
Inexperience, & the Knavery of others,” this claim may at first appear as a
tongue-in-cheek attempt to exculpate himself from any wrongdoing, and
thus as evidence that Franklin had not in fact learned very much about
right and wrong (Autobiography, 59). In fact, though, by speaking of necessity
in this context, Franklin makes it clear that he remains uninterested in assign-
ing moral blame, and is not about to feel guilty for what he has done. His
understanding of right and wrong, “in their own Natures,” goes hand in
hand with his deepening understanding of human nature and the path to
happiness, and has nothing to do with moral dessert (Autobiography, 59).
Without his doubts about religion, and his attempt to give a coherent
account of the nature of virtue and vice, liberty and necessity, pleasure and
pain, Franklin would not have gained what became this central insight
about morality. It was because of this gain that Franklin numbers the
Dissertation among his errata, but not among the great errata.
What Franklin learned was not a set of rules of morality, however, but the

reasons behind conventional virtue. With this understanding of the foun-
dations of morality he was able to act according to these precepts with a flexi-
bility which sometimes made him appear something of a scoundrel to those
who were perceptive enough to see through Franklin’s upright façade, but not
astute enough to perceive his more complex understanding of morality.19

18Many scholars see in this development a new focus on pragmatism. See, for
example, James Campbell, “The Pragmatist in Franklin,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. Carla Mulford (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 106.

19Weinberger (Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 159, 174, 55) claims that Franklin’s
Dissertation was a “slapstick parody of Deism” and one of a number of “metaphysical
burlesques,” and that the moral conversion Franklin describes “never happened at all.”
This is because, Weinberger argues, “Franklin concluded that our commonsensical
concepts of morality—justice, free will, deserving (merit and demerit), devotion,
virtue and vice, the noble, evil, and reward and punishment—make no internal
logical sense, despite the fact that they seem so obvious” (203). I am in partial disagree-
ment with these points. I do not think that the Dissertation was a burlesque, although I
agree that the account Franklin offers is not as straightforward as it at first appears.
Also, it may be true that Franklin did not take many of the terms listed above seriously,
but he clearly did undergo a moral reformation of some sort. Kerry Walters,

80 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



Teaching Men as If You Taught Them Not: The Rhetorical
Strategy of the Autobiography

In this section I will explain why Franklin’s list of virtues is not what he meant
for all of his readers to imitate dogmatically, and why he did not write the Art
of Virtue or pursue some of his other projects. I will also explain how Franklin
applies the lessons he learned from his errata in the anecdotes he recounts in
the later sections of the work.
Franklin opens the Autobiography by telling his son that he wrote it so that

his posterity could learn the means he made use of to go through life “with a
considerable Share of Felicity” and imitate these means (Autobiography, 3).20

What these means are, though, he does not make entirely clear. He does set
out a set of rules, or virtues, in the second part of the Autobiography, and
many, if not most, have taken this as a list of the general principles he
meant for his readers to imitate. This list, though, as I will argue in this
section, is not the whole story. Franklin thought that a majority of readers,
and especially young readers, could benefit only from the story of moral
and religious redemption he tells and from the list of specific virtues he
sets out. This is in keeping with his reluctance to challenge the religious
beliefs of those he does not think capable of living well without them. In
the Autobiography he tells of a man he met who “undertook … to travesty
the Bible in doggrel Verse as Cotton had done to Virgil. By this means he
set many of the Facts in a very ridiculous Light & might have hurt weak
minds if his Work had been published” (Autobiography, 24).21 He also
thought, though, that a sizable minority, which would only increase with

Revolutionary Deists (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011), 60–61, wonders how
seriously Franklin wanted readers to take the Dissertation, but concludes that “there
is more reason to think that Franklin was deadly earnest in his defense of the bleak
cosmic machine portrayed in the Dissertation,” and that “in his references to it in
later life, he never gives any indication that his purpose in writing it was anything
more than to push the Newtonian worldview to its logical conclusions.”

20Notice here that Franklin refers to the intended beneficiaries of the work in the
plural, indicating that it was never meant solely for his son, as some have argued.
Pace Wood (Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 139) who claims that “it is more
likely that Franklin actually did intend the first part of his memoir for his son,
perhaps partly as an admonishment to William to cut his expenses and do as his
father had done.”

21Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature’s God, 127–28, also recounts a letter from
Franklin to a deist acquaintance in which Franklin says, “You yourself may find it
easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion. … But
think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and
Women, and of inexperienc’d, and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have
need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice.”

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 81



the growing influence of the Enlightenment, would find it more and more dif-
ficult to believe not only in divinely revealed rules for living, but in any kind
of dogmatism.22

One of the main audiences for the Autobiography, though, is the youth of
America. Franklin initially intended the work as a model for his posterity
to imitate, and the letters of both Abel James and Benjamin Vaughan empha-
size the potential value of the work as a means of influencing the minds and
character of young people (Autobiography, 73–75). The placement of these
letters at the head of the second part of the work is significant in this
respect. The focus of this short second part is Franklin’s list of virtues, and
this list provides the clearest set of lessons the young person would be able
to grasp.23

He also, of course, meant for the actions he recounts to be imitated.
Franklin, though, included only those details about his life and his actions
he thought would be beneficial to his readers, and this includes both the
stories of his errata, and his less than upright behavior, as he seems to
suggests in a letter to Benjamin Vaughan: “To shorten the work, as well as
for other reasons, I omit all facts and transactions, that may not have a tendency
to benefit the young reader, by showing him from my example, and my
success in emerging from poverty, and acquiring some degree of wealth,
power, and reputation, the advantages of certain modes of conduct which I
observed, and of avoiding the errors which were prejudicial to me.”24 This last
clause leaves open the possibility that Franklin committed errors which
were not prejudicial to him, and that Franklin wanted at least some of his
readers to benefit from that lesson as well.25 As noted above, all of the

22As Franklin (Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, 224) says in a letter to Lord Kames
about his proposed Art of Virtue, “all Men cannot have Faith in Christ; and many have
it in so weak a Degree, that it does not produce the effect [of making men virtuous].
Our Art of Virtue may therefore be of great Service to those who have not Faith.”
See also Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 40, who is correct to note that “it
is not unreasonable, I think, to see the Autobiography as a Franklinian warning about
a danger of the dawning modern age: the possible death of God.”

23Mark Twain, “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” in The Galaxy 10 (July 1870): 138–40,
quoted in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 272, recounts how
both Franklin’s actions and his aphorisms were used to inspire young boys to good be-
havior. Franklin, he says, “was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his
talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering
upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were con-
trived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys forever—boys
who might otherwise have been happy.”

24Franklin, letter to B. Vaughan, October 24, 1788, in Benjamin Franklin’s
Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 206; my italics.

25There is a similar potential ambiguity in a letter to the Duke de La Rochefoucauld
(in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, 205), in which Franklin states that “what is done
[viz., the Autobiography down to his fiftieth year] will be of more general Use to young

82 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



errata were inserted into part 1 after the first draft was complete, and Franklin
must have intended for thoughtful young people and more observant readers
to draw the appropriate lessons from these upon deeper reflection.
It is for this type of reader that Franklin sets out the more complex story of

the errata, his discovery of the foundation of morality, and his flexible use of
conventional virtue in the service of his own happiness.26 Uncovering this
story requires more interpretive work on the reader’s part, and a comparison
between the story of the errata and the more obvious story of Franklin’s moral
redemption and what he says about his list of virtues.
Franklin is not explicit about the lesson of the errata because of his fear that

proclaiming self-interest to be the real motive of virtuous action would lead
most individuals to use this as an excuse to act without reflection on whatever
inclinations happened to move them, as Franklin had when committing his
errata under the spell of deism. Few would be able to learn the lesson
Franklin did from these errata, and really understand when moral transgres-
sion would contribute to one’s true happiness and when it would lead only to
an apparent benefit that would in fact do more harm than good. Franklin
offers his list of virtues, lax as it is, in part because he thought that many
would not be able to fully understand this insight or to act on it, and
would therefore continue to think about virtuous action in terms of sacrifice
and altruism and adherence to a set of injunctions.
Roughly three years after writing the Dissertation, Franklin tells us, he “con-

ceiv’d the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection,” and sets
out a list of thirteen virtues he plans to adhere to (Autobiography, 84). As men-
tioned, many have taken this list of virtues very seriously. Other scholars have
noted the looseness of many of these rules, as well as the humor in them.27 To

Readers; as exemplifying strongly the Effect of prudent and imprudent Conduct in the
Commencement of a Life of Business” (my italics).

26Implicit in this argument is the notion that Franklin had a plan in mind for the
design of the Autobiography, which he was able to follow through despite the difficul-
ties he faces in writing the different parts of the work. I therefore agree with Hugh J.
Dawson, “Franklin’s ‘Memoirs’ in 1784: The Design of the ‘Autobiography,’ Parts I
and II,” Early American Literature 12, no. 3 (Winter 1977/1978): 287–91, who argues
that the moralism of part 2 depends on the narrative of part 1, but disagrees that
there was a fundamental change of design between the two parts. I also disagree
with Aldridge, “Form and Substance in Franklin’s Autobiography,” in Essays on
American Literature in Honor of Jay B. Hubbell, ed. Clarence Gohdes (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1967), 48, who claims that the plan of the Autobiography was
a “virtual disaster.”

27Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked; Ralph Lerner, Playing the Fool: Subversive
Laugher in Troubled Times (Chciago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 89–108; Ralph
Lerner “Franklin, Spectator,” in The Thinking Revolutionary (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1987); Paul E. Kelly “Franklin’s Satiric Vein,” in Cambridge Companion to Benjamin
Franklin. There remain those too who see this list of virtues as emblematic of Franklin’s

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 83



cite the most obvious examples of this laxity and humor, Franklin defines tem-
perance not as a prohibition against alcohol and gluttony, but as “Eat not to
Dulness, Drink not to Elevation,” sincerity not as never telling a lie, but as
“Use no hurtful Deceit,” and chastity not as being chaste, but as an injunction
to “Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness,
or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation” (Autobiography, 84–
85). This definition of chastity was in fact so shocking that many editions of the
Autobiography did not include it.28 Not only does Franklin avoid absolute pro-
hibitions for the most part in these virtues, he also leaves far more room for per-
sonal interpretation than one finds in, for example, the Ten Commandments.
Despite the leeway he gives himself in these rules, Franklin found it very

difficult not to transgress them. He made so little progress that he was
“almost ready” to give up. As in the case of his abandonment of vegetarian-
ism in the face of fresh fried cod, “something that pretended to be Reason”
sometimes urged him to give up his plan for moral perfection because attain-
ing that goal would probably make him “envied and hated” (Autobiography,
92). Despite these challenges, he kept working toward this goal throughout
his life, but found that it was too much to expect perfect mastery of even
this loose set of moral virtues. Franklin did not, however, subject himself to
harsh punishment for his transgressions, nor did he see any value in feeling
guilty about them.29 The penalty for his failures to keep to these virtues
was not flagellation, repentance, or wearing a hair shirt, but wiping them
off his book with a “wet Sponge” (Autobiography, 91).
To this imperfect attempt to master this list of virtues Franklin attributes

“the constant Felicity of his Life” until the year he wrote this part of the
Autobiography, and his expected continued happiness for the years that
were left to him (Autobiography, 92).
Franklin then tells us that he had planned to publish his list of virtues along

with comments which would have shown the advantages of possessing each
virtue and the consequences of not having it, along with the “Means & Manner
of obtaining Virtue” (Autobiography, 93). This would have been Franklin’s Art
of Virtue. This book was never written, however, because he claims to have
been too busy to write it.30 This is not an entirely persuasive claim since

piety. I do not share this position. See, for example, William Pencak, “Benjamin
Franklin’s Autobiography, Cotton Mather, and a Puritan God,” Pennsylvania History
53, no. 1 (1986): 1–25.

28Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature’s God, 11.
29Franklin very rarely admits to any feelings of guilt. One significant exception is his

deep regret at not inoculating his son from smallpox, from which his son later died.
This, however, is not a matter of moral guilt, but more of a regret at a scientific
error, or an error in judgment.

30For a discussion of this excuse see Douglas Anderson, “The Art of Virtue,” in
Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, 31–32.

84 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



Franklin was quite prolific and found time to write many pieces that are less
important than the Art of Virtue arguably would have been had it been
completed.31

The main teaching of the Art of Virtue would have been that “vicious
Actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because
they are hurtful, the Nature of Man alone consider’d. That it was therefore
every ones Interest to be virtuous, who wish’d to be happy even in this
World” (Autobiography, 94). This maxim, though, as we have seen, was the
most important lesson Franklin learned from his errata. This epiphany is
brought home to the reader through the narration of the Autobiography in a
way that it never could have been in a list of virtues and corresponding
instructions. For this reason, and others which I will discuss below, I
submit that Franklin’s Autobiography in fact fulfills the same goal as the Art
of Virtue. Franklin tells us that the Art of Virtue was connected to a plan
“that required the whole Man to execute, and which an unforeseen
Succession of Employs prevented [his] attending to” (Autobiography, 93–94).
In other words, the book and the plan would have required that its author
devote his life to it, but Franklin’s own life got in the way. Similarly,
Franklin says that he was planning to publish his list of virtues in this
work, and in fact this list is published, as he knew it would be, in his
Autobiography.
When Franklin tells us that he appeared to be humble without being so,

and that he decided to avoid dogmatic statements and to try a less overbear-
ing method of persuasion, he is in fact revealing his rhetorical strategy in the
Autobiography, and the real reason he wrote it rather than the Art of Virtue. By
repeatedly harking back to his unfinished project, Franklin prompts the
reader to think about the relation between it and the Autobiography. The
latter is not dogmatic, as the former might have been, and in this way
Franklin was able to put into practice the lesson he had learned from Pope,

31Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, xv, claims that Franklin “did not believe
that the deepest and most important questions could be answered by abstract philoso-
phical systems of the kind that became schools of thought,” and “that is why Franklin
wrote no comprehensive formal treatise.” I agree that Franklin did not think he could
teach the deepest lessons he learned through a systematic treatise, but I do think, as I
argue below, that he thought he could impart at least part of his wisdom to some
readers through the experience he shares in the Autobiography. I am in closer agreement
with Weinberger’s statement that “there is something much better [than a didactical
philosophical teaching in Franklins works]: the questions, lines of thought, and con-
clusions to which we are prodded by Franklin’s artful provocations” (5). Pangle,
Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 4, also notes that “Franklin knew … the
great public utility of his own vanity: he knew that in telling stories he was at his
most charming and persuasive, and at some level he realized that his vision of happi-
ness and of democratic citizenship could be advanced in no better way than by telling
his own story.”

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 85



that “Men should be taught as if you taught them not” (Autobiography, 19). In
fact, Franklin had a model on which to base this narrative mode of teaching
in one of his early favorites: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Autobiography,
13).32 Franklin found a copy of this book on the person of a drunken
Dutchman who had fallen overboard during the journey to Philadelphia
(Autobiography, 23). It is here that Franklin notes both the genius of
Bunyan’s writing and the tremendous popularity of the work. Franklin
must have noticed, though, as the reader does, that it was not doing the
Dutchman much good. Franklin, in writing of his own progress through
the world may well have sought to replace Bunyan’s work with an updated
version for Americans with his own Autobiography. Again, Franklin may
have seen this as a more efficacious method of disseminating his teaching,
and one that would flatter his vanity.
It is no coincidence that Franklin waits until after discussing his purport-

edly failed plan to write the Art of Virtue to mention the addition of a thir-
teenth virtue to his original list of twelve. This extra virtue, humility, was
suggested by a Quaker friend of Franklin’s who told him that he was often
“overbearing & rather insolent,” and too eager to point out the errors of
others (Autobiography, 94). Seeing that his friend was correct, Franklin deter-
mined to change his approach, and, he says, “perhaps for these Fifty Years
past no one has ever heard a dogmatical Expression escape me”
(Autobiography, 95). This is not to say that Franklin became less sure of
himself. He was still determined to prove to others that he was right and to
win them to his side, since he was, as he admits, an incorrigibly proud
man, but he adopted a more subtle strategy: “I cannot boast of much
Success in acquiring the Reality of this Virtue; but I had a good deal with
regard to the Appearance of it” (Autobiography, 94). Even Franklin’s occasional
admissions that he could not conquer his vanity and pride are part of this
appearance of humility. When he tells us that if he did overcome his pride
he would be proud of his humility (indeed, marking a box in the space pro-
vided for humility in his book would have disqualified him from doing so), he
is revealing an all-too-human weakness that most can identify with. These
admissions are thus part of Franklin’s charm, and also an ingenious way of
raising our esteem for him, and further flattering his vanity.
The specific definition Franklin provides for the virtue of humility is,

“Imitate Jesus and Socrates” (Autobiography, 86). There may be something
tongue in cheek about the attempt to imitate two such figures, but the imita-
tion of Christ had been a valid goal of many Christians for centuries. The most
obvious way of understanding this injunction is that Jesus and Socrates were
paragons of humility. There is, however, another sense in which Franklin

32For Franklin’s use of Bunyan as a model, see Sanford, “An American Pilgrim’s
Progress,” 310.

86 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



imitates Jesus and Socrates in the Autobiography and evinces more of the
appearance than the reality of humility.
Franklin was a keen observer of Reverend Whitefield, a controversial

preacher who spent time in Philadelphia. He was fascinated by Whitefield’s
ability to persuade his hearers, even against their better judgment, as
Franklin found out for himself, and his ability to be heard by so many.
Franklin paid careful attention to his sermons, came to be able to distinguish
new from old material, and made an experiment of tracing the boundaries of
the extent to which his voice would carry when preaching (Autobiography,
111). Franklin also observed, though, that Whitefield’s “Writing and
Printing from time to time gave great Advantage to his Enemies,” since what-
ever he happened to say during a sermon might be overlooked or forgotten,
but his writings endured, and provided ample material to criticize. According
to Franklin, “if he had never written any thing he would have left behind him
a much more numerous and important Sect. And his Reputation might in that
case have still been growing, even after his Death … his Proselites would be
left at Liberty to feign for him as great a Variety of Excellencies, as their enthu-
siastic Admiration might wish him to have possessed” (Autobiography, 112).
Shortly after relating this observation, Franklin discusses an important

difference between the Quakers and the Dunkers that he must have wanted
the reader to connect with what he had said about Whitefield. The
Quakers, who were pacifists, were forced into various expedients in order
to support the military campaigns of Pennsylvania, while the Dunkers
could be more flexible because they had decided not to set down their articles
of belief in writing, believing that “we are not sure that we are arriv’d at the
End of this Progression, and at the Perfection of Spiritual or Theological
Knowledge” (Autobiography, 119).
By writing the Autobiography rather than the Art of Virtue, Franklin was able

to present his list of virtues as a goal he had a hard time achieving, rather than
as a dogmatic exhortation to others, and he was able to teach the more com-
plicated lessons he learned from his errata, including the need for moral flexi-
bility, that appears beneath the surface of the Autobiography. By putting on the
masks that nearly all readers recognize, and which make it difficult to know
who exactly Franklin is and what he is trying to teach, he was able to avoid
presenting his thoughts in such a way that he could be attacked as
Whitefield was. And the mention of the advantages Whitefield might have
enjoyed by refraining to set out his beliefs in writings, brings to mind the
two historical figures who are famous for having had a major impact on
the world without writing anything down: Jesus and Socrates. Franklin, in
concealing his true thoughts and his most important teaching, came as
close as one could in the age of the printing press to avoiding the dangers
of writing too frankly, and allowing a mythical status to grow around him
after death.
Franklin was thus able to learn from Whitefield, and to beat him at his own

game. Franklin too had contemplated forming his own sect, the “Society of

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 87



the Free and Easy,” but as in the case of the Art of Virtue, he claims that he
was too busy with his affairs to pursue this project. In fact, he was able to
have a larger impact on Americans through his Autobiography than he
would have had with this sect, and a key part of this success was his
ability to appear humble and avoid any dogmatism while attempting to
instill his teaching.
We can now state more clearly what in particular Franklin learned from his

errata, and how he applied this insight throughout his life by examining
another lesson Franklin gleaned from his observation of Whitefield.
Franklin relates that he attended a sermon by Whitefield, whose purpose
was to raise money for an orphanage in Georgia, a project Franklin disap-
proved of. Despite his resolution not to give Whitefield anything for this mis-
guided enterprise, Franklin found himself incapable of keeping his money in
his pocket, and gave everything he had when the plate was passed
(Autobiography, 109). “As he proceeded,” Franklin says, “I began to soften,
and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made
me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the Silver; & he finished so
admirably, that I empty’d my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold
and all” (Autobiography, 109). Another member of the Junto was at the same
sermon and had taken the precaution of emptying his pockets before he
arrived, but he was so taken with the sermon that he tried to borrow some
money from a more resilient neighbor, who answered, “At any other time,
Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now; for thee seems to be
out of thy Right Senses” (Autobiography, 110).
In the next section of the work, which the reader is clearly intended

to compare to the section about Whitefield, Franklin tells us that he
decided to engage in his own public projects. Rather than an orphanage
in Georgia, he proposed to create a college and a militia. He delivered a
harangue from the same pulpit and in the same building Whitefield had
used for his sermon, and convinced his fellow citizens to form a militia.
Not having enough good canons for the purpose of defense, Franklin
went with two others to New York to borrow some from Governor
Clinton. “He at first refus’d us peremptorily,” Franklin says, “but at a
Dinner with his Council where there was great drinking of Madeira
Wine, as the Custom at that Place then was, he soften’d by degrees, and
said he would lend us Six. After a few more Bumpers he advanc’d
to Ten. And at length he very good-naturedly conceded Eighteen”
(Autobiography, 114).
Just as Franklin had been softened by Whitefield’s oratory, Clinton was sof-

tened by Madeira, and, we must suppose, having the agreeable Franklin as a
drinking companion. In both anecdotes, there is the same three-step pro-
gression, from a firm resolution to give nothing to giving in completely.
Franklin had learned that it is possible to persuade the intransigent by
driving them out of their right senses. He also learned that it could sometimes
be useful to be flexible on the virtue of temperance. Alcohol, Franklin

88 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



concluded, has its uses.33 Franklin’s definition of temperance, we recall, is
“Eat not to Dulness, Drink not to Elevation,” but it is reasonable to suspect
that Franklin came quite close to elevation at the dinner he describes with
Clinton (Autobiography, 84).
From the errata Franklin learned that if there is an important benefit to be

had from bending the rules, and even engaging in what some might call
stooping, and no harm to oneself, the rules should be bent. This is the
insight that informs his list of virtues with all its caveats and loopholes,
and the lessons he continued to learn which are not encompassed by this
list. In some sense, this is a Machiavellian lesson, since Franklin learned
that the most important consideration is the practical outcome rather than
adherence to rules for their own sake. Though the goal, in Franklin’s case,
is invariably his own happiness, the esteem of his fellow Philadelphians
played an essential role.34

One further example should suffice to make this point. When it became
clear that General Braddock, who had come to defend the colonies and
found a complete lack of horses and carriages, was going to return to
England, Franklin devised a scheme by which to cajole Pennsylvanians to
hire out their horses and wagons. He reprints the advertisement in its entirety,
because, he says, it was a “Piece of some Curiosity” (Autobiography, 140). The
curious thing about it is that it contains a bald-faced lie: the threat that
“violent Measures will probably be used” and that “it was proposed to
send an armed Force immediately into these Counties, to seize as many of
the best Carriages and Horses as should be wanted, and compel as many
Persons into the Service as would be necessary to drive and take care of
them” (Autobiography, 143, 142).35 There is no evidence that Braddock had
ever considered taking such measures. The citizens of the colony, though,
Franklin must have thought, had shown that they did not, or could not,
understand how important it was to keep this armed force for the purpose
of defense, and so Franklin had recourse to this lie to persuade them to do

33Indeed, when he was leading his own troops in the building of a fort on the fron-
tier, he suggested to a preacher whose sermons were not well attended the expedient
of taking charge of the men’s daily ration of rum, and withholding it until after the
sermon to ensure their attendance (Autobiography, 154). This anecdote is meant to be
compared with another in which Franklin withholds rum from some Indians he is
trying to make a treaty with until after their business is concluded.

34Pangle astutely notes in this regard, “And this benevolence is no small matter.
Friendship and trust are essential to happiness, and hence a heartfelt concern with
the welfare of others is to be encouraged not just in others but in ourselves. Merely
feigning virtue would show that one had missed the great lesson that Franklin
spent his life trying to teach: that doing real good is essential to happiness and,
thus, that virtues like justice and honesty are not ultimately a sacrifice of self-interest
but are integral to the richest happiness” (Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 62).

35See Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 123.

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 89



what was in their real best interest.36 Franklin defines the virtue of sincerity as
“Use no hurtful Deceit,” and this anecdote provides a good example of such a
use of non-hurtful deceit (Autobiography, 85).37

Franklin’s writing of the Autobiography itself conforms to the insight he
learned from his errata. It is, as he suggests in the first paragraph, a flagrant
example of his incorrigible vanity, and therefore a transgression of the virtue
of humility. In order to fit the pattern set out above, this transgression must
have been motivated by Franklin’s enlightened pursuit of his own happiness.
The most important respect in which this is true of the Autobiography becomes
clear from two letters Franklin inserts in the second part of the work.
According to Abel James, the completed Autobiography will “be useful &
entertaining not only to a few, but to millions,” since he knew “of no
Character living nor many of them put together, who has so much in his
Power as [Franklin] to promote a greater Spirit of Industry & early
Attention to Business, Frugality and Temperance with the American Youth
(Autobiography, 72–73). Benjamin Vaughan similarly compares it favorably
to the works of Tacitus, Caesar, and Plutarch, and says that it is likely to
play an important role in “the forming of future great men,” especially
since Franklin’s life is “connected with the detail of the manners and situation
of a rising people” (Autobiography, 72, 74, 77). These two early admirers foresaw
that the Autobiography would be of inestimable worth to Franklin’s posterity.
In setting out his life in writing, he had a chance to play an important role in
forming the character of all future Americans, and thus to achieve a kind of
immortality. This thought must have deeply pleased Franklin.

Conclusion

Franklin’s persona in the Autobiography, as seen through the lens of the
errata, perhaps unlike Franklin himself, had perfectly squared the circle of
combining egoism and altruism, and was thus amoral and essentially
hedonistic. It never seems to have occurred to Franklin, or at least the charac-
ter he portrays in the Autobiography, that he should act on the basis of

36Franklin also incurred great financial risk in this endeavor when he offered to
stand surety for Braddock. While this appears to be a purely altruistic act, one that
exposed Franklin to the risk of financial ruin, it must be noted that Franklin presents
himself here as the linchpin between Braddock and the colonists without which the
colony would have been defenseless. This must have surely flattered his pride.

37Another example of Franklin’s relaxed attitude toward dishonesty used for a good
cause is his exculpation of the Presbyterian preacher Hemphill who was discovered to
be plagiarizing his sermons. After this discovery, Franklin says, “I stuck by him,
however, as I rather approv’d his giving us good Sermons compos’d by others, than
bad ones of his own Manufacture” (Autobiography, 101). Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin
and Nature’s God, 8, notes further that Franklin regularly lied to “strict religionists”
about his beliefs.

90 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS



anything other than his own good, or more specifically, his own happiness.
When we follow the path he sets out in the story of his errata, we see that
his understanding of what would make him truly happy changed because
of these experiences. While a young man he was charmed by the deism
espoused by many of the leading lights of his time. Franklin came to
develop his own form of this theory, in which he proclaimed that there
was no real distinction between right and wrong, or virtue and vice. The
practical effect of adopting deism, though, turned out to be a lack of com-
punction in acting on his youthful passions and impulses. This, we learn
from his discussion of his dissertation and early deism, was the justification
for his behavior toward Vernon and Miss Read, which he came to call his
great errata. He also found that those whom he had converted to
deism had committed great wrongs against him, apparently without any
second thoughts.
These experiences taught him that at least in practice, if not in the realm of

metaphysics, there was indeed a difference between virtue and vice and right
and wrong, and that he should make the pursuit of moral perfection one of
the main goals of his life. In fact, reflection on what Franklin learned from
the errata reveals that his list of virtues is only an approximation of the
most fundamental lesson he derived from them.
Franklin spoke not only of great errata, which caused him, he says, much

trouble, but also of errata which, though wrong by any conventional stan-
dards, were in fact beneficial, and in two out of three cases, necessary to
both his success in life and the moral insight that informed his actions for
the rest of his life.
This insight was that the true, but nearly always misunderstood, reason for

the rules found in the Bible or in the moral systems of different peoples and
philosophers is that they are good for the one who follows them, and are in
fact the surest means to one’s continual happiness. It was this that allowed
Franklin to avoid wrestling with notions of charity, sacrifice, and nobility.
He did not struggle with the supposed conflict between egotism and altruism
because he came to understand that this was a false dichotomy. Doing good to
others, Franklin learned, was the surest way to make oneself happy. Franklin,
then, moves from the self-interest of the Dissertation to an understanding of
self-interest rightly understood.
This lesson, though, was not one Franklin could spell out explicitly with all

its ramifications. Most, Franklin thought, would not be able to fully under-
stand this, and would, as he had when younger, act simply on their unexa-
mined inclinations, thinking that whatever conduces to one’s happiness is
right. Acting on the basis of Franklin’s insight, when fully understood,
rather than on a list of rules derived from it, would often involve transgres-
sing conventional moral standards. As we have seen, though, the transgres-
sions Franklin commits later in life are in fact motivated by his
sophisticated understanding of self-interest and are thus, in one way or
another, in the service of his fellow man.

LEARNING FROM FRANKLIN’S MISTAKES 91



Franklin has been read in many, and often opposing, ways over the years,
and nearly every work about him begins with a statement about the difficulty
of knowing who the real Franklin was. This was an intentional strategy on
Franklin’s part. Many if not most readers will focus on the list of virtues
and see Franklin’s main purpose in the work as trying to instill these.
Franklin, though, also wrote for those more skeptical readers who would
not be inclined to accept this teaching at face value, but who could only be
taught less directly by leading them to make their own discoveries. For
these readers, Franklin hoped to show the worth of virtue to one’s happiness
through the example of his own life offered as an autobiography.38 Franklin
wanted to teach, through the story of the errata, though, that one could
bend the rules of virtue for the sake of happiness only if one had understood
that service to others is the surest means to true happiness.

38Benjamin Franklin, Way to Wealth, or Poor Richard Improved (Philadelphia: Jacob
Johnson, 1808), is in some sense dogmatic, but certainly not metaphysical, and, as
Forde says (“Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and the Education of America”),
Franklin’s exhortations to wealth are meant as a first step on the path to virtue for
the poor.

92 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS


	Learning from Franklin's Mistakes: Self-Interest Rightly Understood in the Autobiography
	Bad Mistakes and Good Mistakes
	Franklin's Dissertation and His Discovery of the Truth about Morality
	Teaching Men as If You Taught Them Not: The Rhetorical Strategy of the Autobiography
	Conclusion