Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin's life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and...
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin's life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the spunky runaway apprentice who became, during his 84-year life, America's best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard's Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation's alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution. Above all, Isaacson shows how Franklin's unwavering faith in the wisdom of the common citizen and his instinctive appreciation for the possibilities of democracy helped to forge an American national identity based on the virtues and values of its middle class.
作者简介
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沃尔特·艾萨克森：阿斯彭研究所（Aspen Ititute）执行总裁，曾任有线新闻电视网（CNN）主席和《时代》（Time）周刊总编。他的著作有《史蒂夫·乔布斯传》《富兰克林传》（Benjamin Franklin：An American Life）和《基辛格传》（Kissinger：A Biography）等。
I couldn't finish it. It is not a smooth read.. I don't know if it is because the author did not write well, or just because I cannot relate to this great American figure.
[有声书] Isaacson的这本Franklin传记乍听之下有点“乱”，似乎读者最好对Franklin的生平了解不少了才比较好。听到最后，意识到Franklin不仅有自传，后人给他立的传记也不计其数，所以任何一个作者下笔，不有点自己的特色估计不行。Franklin的一生确实充满了丰富的境遇，出版业、外交、政治、更别说科学上，都有独特的涉猎和贡献，成了美国实用主义的代表。他与家人和友人的关系错综复...[有声书] Isaacson的这本Franklin传记乍听之下有点“乱”，似乎读者最好对Franklin的生平了解不少了才比较好。听到最后，意识到Franklin不仅有自传，后人给他立的传记也不计其数，所以任何一个作者下笔，不有点自己的特色估计不行。Franklin的一生确实充满了丰富的境遇，出版业、外交、政治、更别说科学上，都有独特的涉猎和贡献，成了美国实用主义的代表。他与家人和友人的关系错综复杂，这些片段因为八卦浓浓，格外有趣。Isaacson结尾讲到后人对Franklin的评价，有着非常明显的时代烙印，即不同年代对他有着相当不同的解读，足以见得他人生的精彩程度，也于是乎，有了书的副标题an American life。听罢这本他传，觉得Franklin的自传应该会很值得一读！(展开)
得知这本书是2012年在微博上看春彬转的C-SPAN对布雷耶（STEPHEN G. BREYER）大法官的采访视频。采访中大法官推荐了几本美国国父的传记，这是其中之一。既然要去费城念书，不妨从富兰克林的传记读起。从费城暴雨夜在Smith餐厅点开第一页到今天断断续续读完，一年有余。按惯例，...
(展开)
In most of the endeavors of his soul and mind, his greatness sprang more from his practicality than from profundity or poetry. In science he was more an Edison than a Newton, in literature more a Twain than a Shakespeare, in philosophy more a Dr. Johnson than a Bishop Berkeley, and in politics more a Burke than a Locke. All of which has led some critics to dismiss even Franklin’s civic accompl...
2020-06-06 08:45:06
In most of the endeavors of his soul and mind, his greatness sprang more from his practicality than from profundity or poetry. In science he was more an Edison than a Newton, in literature more a Twain than a Shakespeare, in philosophy more a Dr. Johnson than a Bishop Berkeley, and in politics more a Burke than a Locke.
All of which has led some critics to dismiss even Franklin’s civic accomplishments as the mundane aspirations of a shallow soul. The apotheosis of such criticism is in Vernon Parrington’s famous Main Currents in American Thought:
A man who is less concerned with the golden pavements of the City of God than that the cobblestones on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia should be well and evenly laid, who troubles less to save his soul from burning hereafter than to protect his neighbors’ houses by organizing an efficient fire-company, who is less regardful of the light that never was on sea or land than of a new-model street lamp to light the steps of a belated wayfarer—such a man, obviously, does not reveal the full nature of human aspiration.
这段话难道不是反讽？作者理解有误？
In both his life and his writings, Franklin became a preeminent proponent of this creed of tolerance. He developed it with great humor in his tales and with an earnest depth in his life and letters. In a world that was then (as, alas, it still is now) bloodied by those who seek to impose theocracies, he helped to create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism. As Garry Wills argued in his book Under God, this “more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth.”Franklin also made a more subtle religious contribution: he detached the Puritan spirit of industriousness from the sect’s rigid dogma. Weber, with his contempt for middle-class values, disdained the Protestant ethic, and Lawrence felt that Franklin’s demystified version of it could not sate the dark soul. This ethic was, however, instrumental in instilling the virtue and character that built a nation. “He remade the Puritan in him into a zealous bourgeois,” writes John Updike, whose novels explore these very themes, “and certainly this is his main meaning for the American psyche: a release into the Enlightenment of the energies cramped under Puritanism.” As Henry Steele Commager declared in The American Mind, “In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.”In addition, by relating morality to everyday human consequences, Franklin laid the foundation for the most influential of America’s homegrown philosophies, pragmatism. His moral and religious thinking, when judged in the context of his actions, writes James Campbell, “becomes a rich philosophical defense of service to advance the common good.” What it lacked in spiritual profundity, it made up for in practicality and potency.He believed in having the humility to be open to different opinions. For him that was not merely a practical virtue, but a moral one as well. It was based on the tenet, so fundamental to most moral systems, that every individual deserves respect....principle. Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make democracies.
Franklin’s belief that he could best serve God by serving his fellow man may strike some as mundane, but it was in truth a worthy creed that he deeply believed and faithfully followed. He was remarkably versatile in this service. He devised legislatures and lightning rods, lotteries and lending libraries. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation’s federal compromise. As his friend the French statesman Turgot said in his famous epigram, Eripuit cœlo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis, he snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.
Indeed, the roots of much of what distinguishes the nation can be found in Franklin: its cracker-barrel humor and wisdom; its technological ingenuity; its pluralistic tolerance; its ability to weave together individualism and community cooperation; its philosophical pragmatism; its celebration of meritocratic mobility; the idealistic streak ingrained in its foreign policy; and the Main Street (or Market Street) virtues that serve as the foundation for its civic values. He was egalitarian in what became the American sense: he approved of individuals making their way to wealth through diligence and talent, but opposed giving special privileges to people based on their birth.
His focus tended to be on how ordinary issues affect everyday lives, and on how ordinary people could build a better society. But that did not make him an ordinary man. Nor did it reflect a shallowness. On the contrary, his vision of how to build a new type of nation was both revolutionary and profound. Although he did not embody each and every transcendent or poetic ideal, he did embody the most practical and useful ones. That was his goal, and a worthy one it was.
Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow leather-aprons more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a “dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.” Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.
From the age of 21, when he first gathered his Junto, he held true to a fundamental ideal with unwavering and at times heroic fortitude: a faith in the wisdom of the common citizen that was manifest in an appreciation for democracy and an opposition to all forms of tyranny. It was a noble ideal, one that was transcendent and poetic in its own way.
And it turned out to be, as history proved, a practical and useful one as well.
However, he brought to the convention floor three unique and crucial strengths that made him central to the historic compromise that saved the nation. First, he was far more comfortable with democracy than most of the delegates, who tended to regard the word and concept as dangerous rather than desirable. ...Franklin was at the other end of the spectrum. Though averse to rabble rule, he favored...
2020-06-05 17:01:40
However, he brought to the convention floor three unique and crucial strengths that made him central to the historic compromise that saved the nation. First, he was far more comfortable with democracy than most of the delegates, who tended to regard the word and concept as dangerous rather than desirable. ...Franklin was at the other end of the spectrum. Though averse to rabble rule, he favored direct elections, trusted the average citizen, and resisted anything resembling elitism.
Second, he was, by far, the most traveled of the delegates, and he knew not only the nations of Europe but the thirteen states, appreciating both what they had in common and how they differed.
Third, and what would prove most important of all, he embodied a spirit of Enlightenment tolerance and pragmatic compromise.
These three attributes proved invaluable in resolving the core issues facing the convention. The greatest of these was whether America would remain thirteen separate states or become one nation, or—if the demigods could prove so ingenious—some magical combination of both, as Franklin had first suggested in his Albany Plan of Union back in 1754. This issue was manifest in various specific ways: Would Congress be directly elected by the people or chosen by the statelegislatures? Would representation be based on population or be equal for each state? Would the national government or the state governments be sovereign?
“Until this point [about] the proportion of representation came before us,” he began, “our debates were carried on with great coolness and temper.” After making his plea that members consult rather than contend, he expressed a sentiment that he had preached for much of his life, starting with the rules he had written for his Junto sixty years earlier, about the dangers of being too assertive in debate. “Declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us,” he said.“Positiveness and warmth on one side, naturally beget their like on the other.” He had personally been willing, he said, to revise many of his opinions, including the desirability of a unicameral legislature. Now it was time for all members to compromise.
In a speech on June 28, he suggested that they open each session with a prayer. With the convention “groping as it were in the dark to find political truth,” he said, “how has it happened that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” Then he added, in a passage destined to become famous, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”
Franklin’s final triumph was to express these sentiments with a wry but powerful charm in a remarkable closing address to the convention. The speech was a testament to the virtue of intellectual tolerance and to the evil of presumed infallibility, and it proclaimed for the ages the enlightened creed that became central to America’s freedom. They were the most eloquent words Franklin ever wrote—and perhaps the best ever written by anyone about the magic of the American system and the spirit of compromise that created it:
I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present; but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”
In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us…I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.
He concluded by pleading that, “for the sake of our posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously.” To that end, he made a motion that the convention adopt the device of declaring that the document had been accepted by all of the states, which would allow even the minority of delegates who dissented to sign it. “I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
And so it was that when Franklin finished, most of the delegates, even some with doubts, heeded his urgings and lined up by state delegation for the historic signing. As they did so, Franklin turned their attention to the sun carved on the back of Washington’s chair and observed that painters often found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting one. “I have,” he said, “often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being ableto tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
Throughout his life, Franklin had, by his thoughts and activities, helped to lay the foundation for the democratic republic that this Constitution enshrined. He had begun as a young man by teaching his fellow tradesmen ways to become virtuous, diligent, and responsible citizens. Then he sought to enlist them in associations—Juntos, libraries, fire departments, neighborhood patrols, and militias—for their mutual benefit and the good of the common community. Later, he created networks, from the postal service to the American Philosophical Society, designed to foster the connections that would integrate an emerging nation. Finally, in the 1750s, he began pushing the colonies to gain strength through unity, to stand together for common purposes in a way that helped shape a national identity.
Since that time, he had been instrumental in shaping every major document that led to the creation of the new republic. He was the only person to sign all four of its founding papers:the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the peace accord with Britain, and the Constitution. In addition, he devised the first federal scheme for America, the unfulfilled Albany Plan of 1754, under which the separate states and a national government would have shared power. And the Articles of Confederation he proposed in 1775 were a closer approximation of the final Constitution than were the weak and ill-fated alternative Articles adopted in 1781.
“nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”
“Hitherto this long life has been tolerably happy,” he wrote to Caty Ray Greene, the girl who had captured his mind and heart thirty-five years earlier. “If I were allowed to live it over again, I should make no objection, only wishing for leave to do what authors do in a second edition of their works, correct some of my errata.”
His final summation of his religious thinking came the month before he died, in response to questions from the Rev. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale. Franklin began by restating his basic creed: “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.” These beliefs were fundamental to all religions; anything else was mere embellishment. Then he addressed Stiles’s question about whether he believed in Jesus, which was, he said, the first time he had ever been asked directly. The system of morals that Jesus provided, Franklin replied, was “the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.” But on the issue of whether Jesus was divine, he provided a surprisingly candid and wry response. “I have,” he declared, “some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.”Back in 1728, when he was a fledgling printer imbued with the pride that he believed an honest man should have in his trade, Franklin had composed for himself, or at least for his amusement, a cheeky epitaph that reflected his wry perspective on his pilgrim’s progress through this world:
The body of B. Franklin, Printer; (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents worn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost: For it will, (as he believed) appear once more, In a new and more elegant edition, Revised and corrected By the Author.
More famous was his pithier expression of the same sentiment, made in response to a spectator who asked what use this new balloon thing could be. “What is the use,” he replied, “of a newborn baby?” He also, in the letter, ridiculed the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about...
2020-06-05 12:02:16
More famous was his pithier expression of the same sentiment, made in response to a spectator who asked what use this new balloon thing could be. “What is the use,” he replied, “of a newborn baby?”He also, in the letter, ridiculed the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about America’s values and the question of a national bird:I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character, he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, near the river where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labors of the fishing-hawk…The turkey is, in comparison, a much more respectable bird, and a true original native of America…He is (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards.Franklin had reached an age when he no longer fretted about squandering his time. For hours on end, he would play cribbage or cards with friends, which caused him, he wrote Polly, to have brief twinges of guilt. “But another reflection comes to relieve me, whispering: ‘You know the soul is immortal; why then should you be such a niggard of a little time, when you have a whole eternity before you?’ So being easily convinced and, like other reasonable creatures, satisfied with a small reason when it is in favor of doing what I have a mind to, I shuffle the cards again, and begin another game.”
By early 1778, Voltaire was 84 and ailing, and there had even been stories that he had died. (His retort, even better than Mark Twain’s similar one, was that the reports were true, only premature.) In February, Franklin paid a ceremonial visit to his home and asked him to give his blessing to 7-year-old Benny Bache. As twenty awed disciples watched and shed “tears of tenderness,” Voltaire pu...
2020-06-05 10:19:37
By early 1778, Voltaire was 84 and ailing, and there had even been stories that he had died. (His retort, even better than Mark Twain’s similar one, was that the reports were true, only premature.) In February, Franklin paid a ceremonial visit to his home and asked him to give his blessing to 7-year-old Benny Bache. As twenty awed disciples watched and shed “tears of tenderness,” Voltaire put his hands on the boy’s head and pronounced in English, “God and Liberty.” According to Condorcet, one of the witnesses, he added, “This is the only appropriate benediction for the grandson of Monsieur Franklin.”
In most of the endeavors of his soul and mind, his greatness sprang more from his practicality than from profundity or poetry. In science he was more an Edison than a Newton, in literature more a Twain than a Shakespeare, in philosophy more a Dr. Johnson than a Bishop Berkeley, and in politics more a Burke than a Locke. All of which has led some critics to dismiss even Franklin’s civic accompl...
2020-06-06 08:45:06
In most of the endeavors of his soul and mind, his greatness sprang more from his practicality than from profundity or poetry. In science he was more an Edison than a Newton, in literature more a Twain than a Shakespeare, in philosophy more a Dr. Johnson than a Bishop Berkeley, and in politics more a Burke than a Locke.
All of which has led some critics to dismiss even Franklin’s civic accomplishments as the mundane aspirations of a shallow soul. The apotheosis of such criticism is in Vernon Parrington’s famous Main Currents in American Thought:
A man who is less concerned with the golden pavements of the City of God than that the cobblestones on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia should be well and evenly laid, who troubles less to save his soul from burning hereafter than to protect his neighbors’ houses by organizing an efficient fire-company, who is less regardful of the light that never was on sea or land than of a new-model street lamp to light the steps of a belated wayfarer—such a man, obviously, does not reveal the full nature of human aspiration.
这段话难道不是反讽？作者理解有误？
In both his life and his writings, Franklin became a preeminent proponent of this creed of tolerance. He developed it with great humor in his tales and with an earnest depth in his life and letters. In a world that was then (as, alas, it still is now) bloodied by those who seek to impose theocracies, he helped to create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism. As Garry Wills argued in his book Under God, this “more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth.”Franklin also made a more subtle religious contribution: he detached the Puritan spirit of industriousness from the sect’s rigid dogma. Weber, with his contempt for middle-class values, disdained the Protestant ethic, and Lawrence felt that Franklin’s demystified version of it could not sate the dark soul. This ethic was, however, instrumental in instilling the virtue and character that built a nation. “He remade the Puritan in him into a zealous bourgeois,” writes John Updike, whose novels explore these very themes, “and certainly this is his main meaning for the American psyche: a release into the Enlightenment of the energies cramped under Puritanism.” As Henry Steele Commager declared in The American Mind, “In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.”In addition, by relating morality to everyday human consequences, Franklin laid the foundation for the most influential of America’s homegrown philosophies, pragmatism. His moral and religious thinking, when judged in the context of his actions, writes James Campbell, “becomes a rich philosophical defense of service to advance the common good.” What it lacked in spiritual profundity, it made up for in practicality and potency.He believed in having the humility to be open to different opinions. For him that was not merely a practical virtue, but a moral one as well. It was based on the tenet, so fundamental to most moral systems, that every individual deserves respect....principle. Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make democracies.
Franklin’s belief that he could best serve God by serving his fellow man may strike some as mundane, but it was in truth a worthy creed that he deeply believed and faithfully followed. He was remarkably versatile in this service. He devised legislatures and lightning rods, lotteries and lending libraries. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation’s federal compromise. As his friend the French statesman Turgot said in his famous epigram, Eripuit cœlo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis, he snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.
Indeed, the roots of much of what distinguishes the nation can be found in Franklin: its cracker-barrel humor and wisdom; its technological ingenuity; its pluralistic tolerance; its ability to weave together individualism and community cooperation; its philosophical pragmatism; its celebration of meritocratic mobility; the idealistic streak ingrained in its foreign policy; and the Main Street (or Market Street) virtues that serve as the foundation for its civic values. He was egalitarian in what became the American sense: he approved of individuals making their way to wealth through diligence and talent, but opposed giving special privileges to people based on their birth.
His focus tended to be on how ordinary issues affect everyday lives, and on how ordinary people could build a better society. But that did not make him an ordinary man. Nor did it reflect a shallowness. On the contrary, his vision of how to build a new type of nation was both revolutionary and profound. Although he did not embody each and every transcendent or poetic ideal, he did embody the most practical and useful ones. That was his goal, and a worthy one it was.
Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow leather-aprons more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a “dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.” Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.
From the age of 21, when he first gathered his Junto, he held true to a fundamental ideal with unwavering and at times heroic fortitude: a faith in the wisdom of the common citizen that was manifest in an appreciation for democracy and an opposition to all forms of tyranny. It was a noble ideal, one that was transcendent and poetic in its own way.
And it turned out to be, as history proved, a practical and useful one as well.
However, he brought to the convention floor three unique and crucial strengths that made him central to the historic compromise that saved the nation. First, he was far more comfortable with democracy than most of the delegates, who tended to regard the word and concept as dangerous rather than desirable. ...Franklin was at the other end of the spectrum. Though averse to rabble rule, he favored...
2020-06-05 17:01:40
However, he brought to the convention floor three unique and crucial strengths that made him central to the historic compromise that saved the nation. First, he was far more comfortable with democracy than most of the delegates, who tended to regard the word and concept as dangerous rather than desirable. ...Franklin was at the other end of the spectrum. Though averse to rabble rule, he favored direct elections, trusted the average citizen, and resisted anything resembling elitism.
Second, he was, by far, the most traveled of the delegates, and he knew not only the nations of Europe but the thirteen states, appreciating both what they had in common and how they differed.
Third, and what would prove most important of all, he embodied a spirit of Enlightenment tolerance and pragmatic compromise.
These three attributes proved invaluable in resolving the core issues facing the convention. The greatest of these was whether America would remain thirteen separate states or become one nation, or—if the demigods could prove so ingenious—some magical combination of both, as Franklin had first suggested in his Albany Plan of Union back in 1754. This issue was manifest in various specific ways: Would Congress be directly elected by the people or chosen by the statelegislatures? Would representation be based on population or be equal for each state? Would the national government or the state governments be sovereign?
“Until this point [about] the proportion of representation came before us,” he began, “our debates were carried on with great coolness and temper.” After making his plea that members consult rather than contend, he expressed a sentiment that he had preached for much of his life, starting with the rules he had written for his Junto sixty years earlier, about the dangers of being too assertive in debate. “Declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us,” he said.“Positiveness and warmth on one side, naturally beget their like on the other.” He had personally been willing, he said, to revise many of his opinions, including the desirability of a unicameral legislature. Now it was time for all members to compromise.
In a speech on June 28, he suggested that they open each session with a prayer. With the convention “groping as it were in the dark to find political truth,” he said, “how has it happened that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” Then he added, in a passage destined to become famous, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”
Franklin’s final triumph was to express these sentiments with a wry but powerful charm in a remarkable closing address to the convention. The speech was a testament to the virtue of intellectual tolerance and to the evil of presumed infallibility, and it proclaimed for the ages the enlightened creed that became central to America’s freedom. They were the most eloquent words Franklin ever wrote—and perhaps the best ever written by anyone about the magic of the American system and the spirit of compromise that created it:
I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present; but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”
In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us…I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.
He concluded by pleading that, “for the sake of our posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously.” To that end, he made a motion that the convention adopt the device of declaring that the document had been accepted by all of the states, which would allow even the minority of delegates who dissented to sign it. “I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
And so it was that when Franklin finished, most of the delegates, even some with doubts, heeded his urgings and lined up by state delegation for the historic signing. As they did so, Franklin turned their attention to the sun carved on the back of Washington’s chair and observed that painters often found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting one. “I have,” he said, “often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being ableto tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
Throughout his life, Franklin had, by his thoughts and activities, helped to lay the foundation for the democratic republic that this Constitution enshrined. He had begun as a young man by teaching his fellow tradesmen ways to become virtuous, diligent, and responsible citizens. Then he sought to enlist them in associations—Juntos, libraries, fire departments, neighborhood patrols, and militias—for their mutual benefit and the good of the common community. Later, he created networks, from the postal service to the American Philosophical Society, designed to foster the connections that would integrate an emerging nation. Finally, in the 1750s, he began pushing the colonies to gain strength through unity, to stand together for common purposes in a way that helped shape a national identity.
Since that time, he had been instrumental in shaping every major document that led to the creation of the new republic. He was the only person to sign all four of its founding papers:the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the peace accord with Britain, and the Constitution. In addition, he devised the first federal scheme for America, the unfulfilled Albany Plan of 1754, under which the separate states and a national government would have shared power. And the Articles of Confederation he proposed in 1775 were a closer approximation of the final Constitution than were the weak and ill-fated alternative Articles adopted in 1781.
“nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”
“Hitherto this long life has been tolerably happy,” he wrote to Caty Ray Greene, the girl who had captured his mind and heart thirty-five years earlier. “If I were allowed to live it over again, I should make no objection, only wishing for leave to do what authors do in a second edition of their works, correct some of my errata.”
His final summation of his religious thinking came the month before he died, in response to questions from the Rev. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale. Franklin began by restating his basic creed: “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.” These beliefs were fundamental to all religions; anything else was mere embellishment. Then he addressed Stiles’s question about whether he believed in Jesus, which was, he said, the first time he had ever been asked directly. The system of morals that Jesus provided, Franklin replied, was “the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.” But on the issue of whether Jesus was divine, he provided a surprisingly candid and wry response. “I have,” he declared, “some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.”Back in 1728, when he was a fledgling printer imbued with the pride that he believed an honest man should have in his trade, Franklin had composed for himself, or at least for his amusement, a cheeky epitaph that reflected his wry perspective on his pilgrim’s progress through this world:
The body of B. Franklin, Printer; (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents worn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost: For it will, (as he believed) appear once more, In a new and more elegant edition, Revised and corrected By the Author.
More famous was his pithier expression of the same sentiment, made in response to a spectator who asked what use this new balloon thing could be. “What is the use,” he replied, “of a newborn baby?” He also, in the letter, ridiculed the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about...
2020-06-05 12:02:16
More famous was his pithier expression of the same sentiment, made in response to a spectator who asked what use this new balloon thing could be. “What is the use,” he replied, “of a newborn baby?”He also, in the letter, ridiculed the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about America’s values and the question of a national bird:I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character, he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, near the river where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labors of the fishing-hawk…The turkey is, in comparison, a much more respectable bird, and a true original native of America…He is (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards.Franklin had reached an age when he no longer fretted about squandering his time. For hours on end, he would play cribbage or cards with friends, which caused him, he wrote Polly, to have brief twinges of guilt. “But another reflection comes to relieve me, whispering: ‘You know the soul is immortal; why then should you be such a niggard of a little time, when you have a whole eternity before you?’ So being easily convinced and, like other reasonable creatures, satisfied with a small reason when it is in favor of doing what I have a mind to, I shuffle the cards again, and begin another game.”
By early 1778, Voltaire was 84 and ailing, and there had even been stories that he had died. (His retort, even better than Mark Twain’s similar one, was that the reports were true, only premature.) In February, Franklin paid a ceremonial visit to his home and asked him to give his blessing to 7-year-old Benny Bache. As twenty awed disciples watched and shed “tears of tenderness,” Voltaire pu...
2020-06-05 10:19:37
By early 1778, Voltaire was 84 and ailing, and there had even been stories that he had died. (His retort, even better than Mark Twain’s similar one, was that the reports were true, only premature.) In February, Franklin paid a ceremonial visit to his home and asked him to give his blessing to 7-year-old Benny Bache. As twenty awed disciples watched and shed “tears of tenderness,” Voltaire put his hands on the boy’s head and pronounced in English, “God and Liberty.” According to Condorcet, one of the witnesses, he added, “This is the only appropriate benediction for the grandson of Monsieur Franklin.”
阿懒
中国社会出版社2008版
淡眼僧
中国社会出版社2008版
般若
中国社会出版社2008版
the Aegean
中国社会出版社2008版
木子
中国社会出版社2008版
0 有用 Le 2010-10-29 06:51:32
I couldn't finish it. It is not a smooth read.. I don't know if it is because the author did not write well, or just because I cannot relate to this great American figure.
0 有用 金权 2012-09-13 18:13:39
Silence Dogood 智慧，柔和的性格。
0 有用 Chung-Wan 2015-03-11 15:51:23
好多关于Ben调情的八卦，还有太啰嗦，没有很突出的线条。
0 有用 三角小皮 2016-11-13 01:11:53
「Industry, thrift and frugality.」A great man.47-5
0 有用 不青山 2017-07-30 12:50:04
太琐碎，平铺直叙，读得发困
0 有用 WakeMeUpTilSep 2021-06-13 12:44:46
- Walter Isaacson - Steve Jobs - Benjamin Franklin - Leonardo da Vinci
0 有用 Pink Martini 2020-11-16 03:16:56
Walter isaacson is the best biography author I know of. This is probably not his best work, but still impressive!
0 有用 多喜子 2020-08-04 08:27:02
[有声书] Isaacson的这本Franklin传记乍听之下有点“乱”，似乎读者最好对Franklin的生平了解不少了才比较好。听到最后，意识到Franklin不仅有自传，后人给他立的传记也不计其数，所以任何一个作者下笔，不有点自己的特色估计不行。Franklin的一生确实充满了丰富的境遇，出版业、外交、政治、更别说科学上，都有独特的涉猎和贡献，成了美国实用主义的代表。他与家人和友人的关系错综复... [有声书] Isaacson的这本Franklin传记乍听之下有点“乱”，似乎读者最好对Franklin的生平了解不少了才比较好。听到最后，意识到Franklin不仅有自传，后人给他立的传记也不计其数，所以任何一个作者下笔，不有点自己的特色估计不行。Franklin的一生确实充满了丰富的境遇，出版业、外交、政治、更别说科学上，都有独特的涉猎和贡献，成了美国实用主义的代表。他与家人和友人的关系错综复杂，这些片段因为八卦浓浓，格外有趣。Isaacson结尾讲到后人对Franklin的评价，有着非常明显的时代烙印，即不同年代对他有着相当不同的解读，足以见得他人生的精彩程度，也于是乎，有了书的副标题an American life。听罢这本他传，觉得Franklin的自传应该会很值得一读！ (展开)
0 有用 照叶 2020-06-06 09:38:43
如果减少些“风流韵事”的篇幅，本书长度大概能压缩掉五分之一。但那基本不影响叙事的精彩，就如同传主本人即使有些人格上的缺陷，他仍然是一位伟大的平民英雄，度过了精彩的“有用”的一生，而作者将最闪光的地方都捕捉到了：“他从天空夺下了闪电，从暴君手中夺下了权杖”。Audible上对有声书“怨声载道”，其实朗读者的声音有老派味道，非常柔和动听，对Franklin和Adams这两位的形象塑造简直绝妙（后者可能... 如果减少些“风流韵事”的篇幅，本书长度大概能压缩掉五分之一。但那基本不影响叙事的精彩，就如同传主本人即使有些人格上的缺陷，他仍然是一位伟大的平民英雄，度过了精彩的“有用”的一生，而作者将最闪光的地方都捕捉到了：“他从天空夺下了闪电，从暴君手中夺下了权杖”。Audible上对有声书“怨声载道”，其实朗读者的声音有老派味道，非常柔和动听，对Franklin和Adams这两位的形象塑造简直绝妙（后者可能太卡通了一点，哈），而且语速缓慢，对非母语听众很友好😘但是后期制作确实有问题，偶尔能听到明显的呼吸声、吞咽声，似乎还有嚼口香糖的声音😓 (展开)
0 有用 lavie 2020-01-01 15:14:39
2019.07 用时一年