Ok, so as we reach the equator of the course, we're going to start walking
outside of the realms of puritanism and we're going to enter the depth of
fiction. Before getting to fiction, we're going to have this passage which
is very significant and very relevant for the historical moment that we are
living. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was published towards the
end of his life. I think the year is 1791 and that means that we've
traversed around 180 years of history in only six units. What does that
mean? That we've covered a lot of ground from a historical perspective, but
we've been revolving around the same idea. We've been revolving around
ideas that are highly connected to religion. These first 100 years of
religion, we could say that it was a slight diminishing, great awakening
and then a tremendous fall towards oblivion or puritanism. This means that
from the year that we start to read works that are connected to puritanism
until we reach this moment, that is a point of no return. More adequately,
we could talk about 1777 as a moment when America stops being a colony and
starts being a country. We can see that there is a rise of something
different. There's going to be a rise of other types of writing. We would
say that the importance of non-religious forms of expression, are going to
be much more relevant. Does that mean that religion disappears as such in
America? No, it doesn't mean that religion disappears as such, but religion
stops being dominant in terms of literature. We'll see a couple of
instances where we see that there are authors that have faith in God and
they speak with a religious tone or from a point of religiousness, the
personal religiousness. But we're going to see how the separation is
enormous. In the case of Benjamin Franklin, we're going to see a
substitution of religion or morals and pragmatism. So in the case of
Benjamin Franklin, we're going to see an example of what type of
literature, what type of writing is proposed as a substitution of religious
writing. In the case of Benjamin Franklin, he believes in a more spiritual
individual way of observing the world, following moral rules and moral
conduct, which was more in his writing than in his acts. And abiding to
that sentiment that has to do more with being practical, being pragmatic
and having a growing sense of nationalism. What we're starting to see here
undoubtedly is the growth of an American feeling, of American identity.
We'll see how that American identity is built over certain pillars that
conform the American dream. And we're going to see how this age of reason,
that we can also call—oh, I ran out of board. Age of reason is imbued
by—there's a transference of values. So basically what we're seeing is
that some of the values that belong to Puritanism—in the case of Benjamin
Franklin, you can see a very distinct didactic purpose that could seem as
if it were replicated from the Puritans. But that doesn't have to be the
only driving force. In some cases it's going to be the ideals of community,
the ideals of being chosen people, the ideals of being in a special place
in the world, the chosen land. All of those seeds are going to be part not
of Puritanism anymore, but of something bigger, something underlying,
something that is growing in the underground—the American dream. So the
underlying element is that of the American dream. Let me read from the
beginning of Section 2 of Chapter 2, From Puritanism to Postmodernism. It
talks about Benjamin Franklin and his early life and how he was an example
of this new kind of Western culture citizen. In America, there is a new
land that for the first time has removed the bonds of one person that
represents everyone. There is no longer one identity, one individual, one
idea that everybody has to worship or follow their command. In the case of
men, it would be a king, the royalty. There are normally people that
according to tradition are set by divine providence to rule over the
masses. In this case, America is the first part of a civilized world that
is free of a king, of a single ruler and is independent enough to allow
religious freedom without conditioning religious freedom to the entire
society, without imposing religion. America is a place where religion is
not imposed. Religion is accepted. So that gives something that men don't
have in other parts of the world—liberty. There are other countries in
the world where religion is not an option. It's a must. Places like Spain,
places like England, where other forms of religion are persecuted, expelled
from the country, taken to trial, burnt—all types of things in America.
When I'm saying all of this, I don't want you to think that I'm being
naive. Of course, this is the official message and the reality is a
different one. But in this new territory that is being born, the tone is
absolutely different. The tone and the attitude is an attitude of liberty.
It's an attitude of freedom. And it's an attitude of a new tomorrow, a
new—excuse me, what are you talking about? About Edwards or Franklin?
We're talking about Benjamin Franklin this week. You do know that, don't
you? In the chat. Last week, we talked about Jonathan Edwards. You can
watch that recording. Today, we're going to be talking about Benjamin
Franklin. So, past this period—and let's state where Jonathan Edwards'
point is. Jonathan Edwards' peak is here during the Great Awakening. What
is going to be an emerging influence is going to be the coming of the
revolution. The American Revolution represents the end of a tyrannic
domination of a king, in theory, and the substitution of one single person
that decides, that taxes, that governs, that provides justice for a
substitution of a collective governance. If you read the American
Constitution, one of the oldest constitutions in the world, you will see
that the beginning of the constitution is we the people, which is a
substitute to I the king. So, the I leaves place to the we. That's a
theory. That's the nice theory, that it's going to be a land of liberty, a
land of freedom. Next week and the week afterwards, we're going to see that
it's also going to be the land of slavery and the land of social injustice.
It's going to have a very nice facade that is going to be incredibly
inspiring for the entire world, but at the same time, it's going to have
some dead skeletons in the closet that it doesn't want to show, some things
to feel ashamed about. We're going to study that in other units. In this
unit, we're going to study America and this initial sentiment of American
liberty as a moment of opportunity. And that's what the American dream
turns out to become. It turns out to become the land of opportunity instead
of the land of the chosen, a very distinct group of people instead of the
chosen people. It's going to be like a transformation of all the ideas. The
manifest destiny is going to be an eternal thirst of expansion towards the
West now that they've become liberated of the governance of the English. We
could talk for an entire course just about the American Revolution. You
have Mundos Anglófonos to talk about history, so I'm not going to focus on
history because that's not my job. I could focus on history for an entire
year, but I'm not going to do that. I could focus on Benjamin Franklin for
an entire year. I'm not going to do that. I have to condense everything in
an hour and a half. Declaration of War, Declaration of Independence, the
Declaration of Peace, the U.S. Constitution. He is the only founding father
whose signature is present in all the important U.S. documents in history.
He is not only that. He's a publisher, an incredible inventor. He is a
philosopher, a thinker, an author, an editor. The amount of things that he
provides to the world is so incredible that many of the inventions that he
discovered are still in use nowadays. On top of this building, there's
probably a lightning rod to prevent lightning from falling on the ground
and attracting it to one single point on buildings. That's an invention of
Benjamin Franklin. He was so interested in that invention that he didn't
pursue the patent and he gave that invention to the world. He's the
inventor of the libraries, inventor of street lighting, inventor of the
postal service in America, inventor of the Pony Express. He discovered the
best way to navigate from Europe to America by sea, just observing the
temperature of the waters on his trips back and forth. Ambassador of
America to London, Ambassador of America to France. What I want to explain
is that his figure is incredibly big and here we're going to condense only
a very, very small fraction of the life and the works of Benjamin Franklin.
But if you are to pursue studying American history in the future, I would
say that one of the areas where you should focus is Benjamin Franklin
precisely. I'm going to sit down and try to catch my breath because it's
really hard to talk all the time behind a face mask. I'm going to read from
Puritanism to Postmodernism. Oh, my God, this is so hard with a face mask.
So, what we're seeing is that Boston is going to become one of the
important points of reference in this early American scenario. He, like
Edwards, heard of the sermons of the Puritans. But after meager schooling,
he went to school for only one year. He spent two years in London learning
about liberty and necessity and writing pamphlets. So, from a very early
period you're going to see that Benjamin Franklin is going to embrace the
idea of Puritanism for him. Puritanism for Franklin is an inspiration
rather than a religion to follow. So, he heard sermons but he wasn't very
attracted to religion. He believed in a personal point of view of religion
that linked him more to deism. Deism is the sworn enemy of Puritanism. But
since he was in this middle ground, he really didn't care. If we can talk
about his biography, I think I mentioned his different roles in life. He
was a tenth son of a soap maker and his father could only send one child to
school every year. And you can imagine that studying one year out of every
ten was not the most profitable way of learning and receiving a proper
education. So, he was self-taught. How did this happen? He was living in an
impoverished family. His brothers were publishers. Two of his brothers were
publishers and he began an apprenticeship with one of his brothers which
did not treat him very well. His brother sometimes abused of him and was
very violent with him. At the age of twelve, he could... I don't know if
you're familiar with the age. This is the age when Gutenberg's printing
press is becoming available worldwide. The printing press is one of the big
elements that changes the history of mankind. After the printing press is
fully available, men are able to express their ideas. First of all,
everybody has access to the Bible. The Bible is translated, the King James
Bible. The King James Bible is the most sold book in the world. Why?
Because you didn't have to go every Sunday to church to hear the sermon
that was pre-selected by the preacher to be told to you. You had access to
the book. So, for the time, that was like discovering fire. To be able to
have a Bible of your own. Owning a book was extremely exclusive. Literacy
was very, very rare in America. In America it was even more rare than in
Europe. Just think how hard it was to survive in America. to receive a
proper education. So, the normal thing was when you were born into the
family of a soap maker to be illiterate. But not only was he literate, he
was self-taught. He taught himself everything he knew and he knew a lot.
Just referring to the printing press, at the age of twelve, he was able to
produce an entire newspaper. He was able to set type, print and sell
pamphlets. Pamphlets are the antecedents of newspapers. He worked for
Boston's first newspaper, the New England Currents. His family was
confronted with one of the most important religious families of
Massachusetts, the Mathers. So, that made Benjamin Franklin's family be in
an uncomfortable position in terms of the society. The concept of self-made
man has always been a matter of pride for Americans. Americans are very
proud of this concept that if you work hard enough, you can achieve
anything in life. But in the case of Benjamin Franklin, it's even more
important because it means a cultural independence from the English. It
means that the American no longer have to depend on the English not for
governance, not even for inspiration. But Benjamin Franklin and the people
that followed Benjamin Franklin, the aim to achieve was a cultural
independence. So, cultural independence becomes a priority. We're going to
see how, within the framework of a Puritan upbringing, of a country that's
been very, very Puritan for almost 150 years, the importance of the style,
the importance of the way that the Puritans transferred information is not
going to disappear. It's going to be used by the writers that come
afterwards, sometimes as a way of producing a different type of writing.
Like for example, the pragmatic moral style of Benjamin Franklin. If you
have to label Benjamin Franklin's style, pragmatic and moral is a great way
of using two adjectives to define it. Later authors are going to come from
Puritan families but they're not going to be Puritan. What are they going
to do? They're going to use the style of Puritanism to subvert it. They're
going to use it against Puritanism. So, it's going to be intentionally
harmful for the principles of Puritanism. It's going to be sometimes a
mockery of Puritanism. Sometimes it's going to be an abuse of structures
that belong to Puritanism as a way of having some type of revenge or
another way of seeing the world for a part of society that was as
narrow-minded as the Puritans. We're going to see that at the beginning of
the second semester. The romantic authors are going to write sometimes in
Puritan fashion but against the Puritanism. So, it's very common in writing
to say that for an author to become independent, to have a style of their
own, they have to kill their literary father. Well, in that sense, that is
going to happen but for the moment we're not going to see that. We're going
to see a period which is very normal right after the decline of a movement.
At the beginning of this decline, we're going to see how some of the things
from Puritanism are reused, reshaped, repurposed. I think I'm not going to
read from here because it's going to make me—the text is really long.
Well, from the elements of his biography, I think that one of the things
that we have to take into consideration is that Benjamin Franklin always
aspired for America, for the territory that he lived in and that he loved,
to be a space for greatness. At the beginning, he was not independentist.
He was not even in favor of a war, not in favor of fighting against the
English and becoming independent. So, in the case of Benjamin Franklin
throughout his lifetime you can see a transition from being very
pro-British to becoming pro-independence or pro-revolution. At the
beginning of the revolution, people weren't very sure that America could
pull off a win and it was very common for people that were participating in
the war to think that the war would end in some type of truce and America
would go back to being a colony or a set of colonies, a collection of
colonies because every colony declared war on England independently just
that they combined forces. That's very important to take into
consideration. There was no sentiment of Americanism. There was only a
sentiment of Americanism provoked by a war that made them join or die.
There's a very famous pamphlet that says, Join or Die to the Thirteen
Colonies. You've probably seen it in Mundos Anglófonos that the only
chance that they stood of defeating a superpower, a military superpower,
was joining all their forces under the command of one person, George
Washington, and receiving a lot of underground help from Spain and France.
That's the part that nobody talks about. But going back to Benjamin
Franklin, what was his role in the revolution? He was sent to France as an
ambassador. What was his job? His job was to convince the French to send
military aid. He was also one of the people that was in direct contact with
the King of England, with George III. So Benjamin Franklin's role was the
role of a diplomat superstar. Benjamin Franklin is the first American
celebrity, the first person that is known worldwide. First of all because
of his role in the highest spheres, talking to kings, talking to the King
of France, talking to the King of England. Taking on really important
missions in Europe and also for his achievements in his own territory for
his invention. We all know that he was very interested in electricity. He's
famous for a famous experiment with a kite and a key, and how he was
electrocuted by the key and he discovered the conductivity of electricity,
which is an incredible achievement. But it's only one of the many hundreds
of achievements that are all across his biography. So what role does
Benjamin Franklin have exactly in a literature course in a year that has so
many authors, 24 authors? His role is very important. He's the first figure
that is going to start to shape what is American and what is not. What is
American as a way of distinguishing it from the old Europe? This old versus
new that we started to see as one of the tenets of the Age of Enlightenment
is what is going to be so important about Benjamin Franklin. He's going to
start to shape this new era. In this new era, it's not the time for the big
empires of the past. The sun is setting for the big empires of the past
little by little over the course of the 19th century. Countries, some of
them will still rise and gain importance in the international arena. But
it's going to be a new period. It's going to be a modern period. And the
American example is going to be an instigator of social revolution. Because
of the American revolution, curiously enough, one of America's biggest
allies, France, suffers a French Revolution. And there is a set of
revolutions that hit throughout the world that make the empires notice that
the time of the big empires, the big expansionist empires, is coming to an
end very little by little. In this new era, new superpowers have to emerge.
And one of these superpowers, first from a military point of view and then
from a cultural point of view, is going to be the American people. America
is going to stop looking at England for everything. For permission, for
authority, for inspiration. America's going to turn into a source of
inspiration, not a place of imitation. America achieves cultural
independence. Americans and British speak the same language, but they're no
longer speaking the same type of reality. They're no longer describing the
same type of reality. And that is because of the work of all the authors
that we're going to talk about. We're going to spend two units talking
about slavery and its grave importance in the founding of America, and why
slavery persisted despite the effort of independence. How can we match
those ideas of enslaving somebody and championing freedom? How can we do
that with a lot of hypocrisy in the first place, but in the second place,
was it possible to think of an America without slavery in the opinion of
most of the founding fathers and most of the people in early American
history? It was just not possible. So the practicality that we see in
Benjamin Franklin is also applied in a negative aspect, and we're going to
see how slavery is just very practical. It's a very practical way of rising
to power, of developing economic freedom. So it's a shortcut, and the
shortcut has certainly grave consequences. Let's talk about the American
Enlightenment for a moment. What does that American Enlightenment stand
for? The period of American Enlightenment spans over a period of one
century between 1714 and 1818. This is the American Enlightenment, and it
has in the middle the moments of the Declaration of Independence. It is
distinctly something that happens throughout the 13 American colonies,
which is very funny because at the same time as these three ideas are
pushed as priorities for the American people, they're put in front of
slavery. That is something that is happening especially in the southern
colonies. I can say that for the southern colonies, they came to the
conclusion that there was no way that they could be productive and
competitive in a modern world without leaving all of the workforce to the
slaves. In the north, however, they had a different sentiment, and it was a
more urban territory. Of course there were slaves in the north. Let's not
misunderstand it, but when there was a final union, slavery was forbidden
in the north and it was permitted in the south, and that created a division
that we're going to see how later on in the middle of the 19th century is
going to provoke a civil war, and we're going to see how that has a
consequence in terms of literature. It also has a consequence. Of course it
does. Benjamin Franklin is the center, the epitome of American
enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin embodies American enlightenment. It
started as an idea that was more philosophical and moral than practical in
colleges, and it covers all the grounds of knowledge. If we think about
religious leaders, we can say that American enlightenment is also Jonathan
Edwards. Of course it is. If we think about political thinkers, we can say
that many of the founding fathers, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, they're examples of political thinkers that believed in American
enlightenment, that let's make this different. Let's make this better. In
the case of polymaths, we can think of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas
Jefferson, also a very important figure in every arena, in Europe, in
America. He was the third president of the United States. You could see how
America had stopped becoming a territory of repetition and replication of
whatever was going on in Europe and in England, and it became a territory
of leaders, leading scientists. Benjamin Franklin's work on electricity is
studied and understood and seen as revolutionary all around the world.
Astrologers like William Smith discover the transit of Venus. Jared Elliott
makes breakthroughs in terms of agriculture and metallurgy. We're taking
Benjamin Franklin as an example of everything because he's a very
convenient example. Let's talk about his literary work. Benjamin Franklin
started his autobiography 20 years before publishing it in 1771, and it was
only published after his death. One of Benjamin Franklin's last acts in
life was signing the U.S. Constitution, and afterwards he passed away. His
autobiography had been in the works forever. He read the autobiography as a
way of serving the public. He uses in his works two pseudonyms. One of his
pseudonyms is Richard Saunders, and the other one reminds us to the
self-made men. The other one is Silence Do Good. So this reminds us to...
Yes. But not sufficient readers wrote quality letters, so he started to
make them up. And he would write them with pseudonyms, sometimes signing as
a woman, sometimes signing as a man, just to make it interesting. Many of
his initial works was writing as an old widow when he was a very young kid,
and it became one of the most read articles of the newspaper. His brother
discovered that he was doing that because he did it behind his brother's
back, and he saw that it was working so good that he told him to continue
doing it. His brother was very strict, but at the same time he told him to
continue doing that. He went from the printing business that he initially
had to the journalism business, and from there he started writing a work
that would become the work of his lifetime. And I think that the
autobiography in that sense is very, very similar to this work, The
Almanac. The Almanac is probably Benjamin Franklin's most important work.
It's called Poor Richard's Almanac, and it was famous for one reason, for
the aphorism, los dichos. He is the inventor of an incredible amount of
aphorisms that he invented as a way of this utilitarian pragmatism that we
talked about. I think that's a key word that you have to walk away with,
utilitarian pragmatism. There is a question here. ¿Dónde se puede ver
luego la clase grabada? I'll leave a link in the forum. That's Álvaro, I
think. Yeah, I'll leave a link in the forum. You can see the previous
classes, the recordings are there. There's a class forum for Madrid and you
can watch it there. I don't remember the number of the classes. Class 45 is
here? I don't remember, because it changes every year. Since owning a book
was so expensive for everyone, since owning books was so expensive, he
thought of a method that would be very convenient for a group of people,
and he convinced his friends and the people that he knew to take their
books to a dedicated space where each of them would donate their books to
that space, and each of them would take them out. So he invented the
library from a practical point of view as a selfish way of having access to
all those works that he simply could not afford when he was younger. So as
you can see, he's very practical, very open-minded, thinking about the
benefit for himself but at the same time the benefit for society. Oh yes,
and not only that. He's the inventor of a style of writing. Your classmate
was asking whether the objective was first to benefit himself and then
benefit the society. I would say that they went hand-in-hand. And the older
he became, probably the more he shifted towards a collective convenience,
more than his own personal convenience. I'm not saying it's negative. And
of course what you're saying is right, that he proved the method for
himself and then he made the method public for everybody to benefit. A
scientific mind, yes. Well the way he killed himself. Jonathan Edwards,
last week we talked about the way he died and just trying to prove how
useful science was to everybody. It is the age of experimentation. It is
really when experimentation becomes important. So experimenting on oneself,
and it can be a method, it can be something practical. What we're going to
read today is exactly what your classmate is saying. This is my proven
method of reaching virtue and now I'm going to help you be as virtuous as I
am. And that's a way that he would go around things. But it is true that
during the initial period of his life, he was maybe more interested in his
own self-interest but there was always a second component of looking for
the truth. As time went by, he was a more experimented man. He had less
personal aspirations and he focused more on the collective good. So of
course it's not a derogatory thing to say that he looked for his own
benefit. In American culture, looking for one's own benefit is very well
seen. It's seen as a sign of a successful person. A trait of a successful
person is someone who tries to be successful in life. Who strives for that
success. So that's why Benjamin Franklin is a perfect example of the
self-made man. Because he always aspired to doing something different, to
doing something better and to do it for himself and for the rest. So if we
talk about these last classes we've been saying, Captain John Smith, first
book in English published in America. William Bradford, first
providentialist book published in America. Anne Bradstreet, first female
poetry, probably poetry published in America. Mary Rollinson, the first
distinctly American genre, captivity narrative. If we skip Jonathan
Edwards, well his sermons are quite a thing and they're quite original. I
don't know if I could say first of something. But if we talk about Benjamin
Franklin, we would probably say he's probably the inventor of self-help
books because the way he wrote was this is what works for me, why don't you
try it out? And for example, in 1758 he wrote a book about how to become
rich which is one of the biggest sub-genres of self-help books. Within the
genre of self-help books, how to become rich is always a best seller. His
work from 1758, The Way to Wealth is probably the first self-help book that
is written exclusively for the purpose of helping people become rich. So
his almanac, his entire almanac which is a yearly installment,
unfortunately people at UNED are maybe not in their majority.
Unfortunately, I really don't know if that's fortunate or unfortunately.
Not super young people that maybe lack some knowledge or some
understanding. I don't know if you remember when you were young, really
young, there used to be almanacs that came out every year that exactly they
had information about the moon cycles, interesting articles. It was like a
general compendium of things you had to know in the world to carry on a
happy life. That was Benjamin Franklin's individual biggest source of
income during a huge period of his life, his poor Richard's almanac. It was
so, so famous that it was a best seller every single year. From that work
we have many of the aphorisms that have reached our age and that's... It's
a bit less comfortable to read like that. That's the purpose of his quotes,
of his aphorisms. Let me give you some and you'll say, hey I've heard that
a million times in my life. I've heard it in Spanish. They're so important
that they're universal. They're in every single language. Tell me and I
forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn. That's an
aphorism by Benjamin Franklin. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to
fail. That's another aphorism by Benjamin Franklin. There never was a good
war or a bad peace. Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to
see us happy. As you can see, that combines that twist of humor and at the
same time something knowledgeable. Wine is good for the world. We are all
born ignorant but one must work hard to remain stupid. Another one, genius
without education is like silver in the mine. A penny saved is a penny
earned. So this idea of saving for the future that was so uncharacteristic
of the 18th century is what makes him one in a kind. He's super advanced in
terms of his chain of thoughts. So, so advanced to his time. Never leave
that till tomorrow which you can do today. I think it's probably the saying
that I've heard the most in my life. Nunca dejes para hoy lo que vas a
hacer hoy. I was going to say it the other way around. Benjamin Franklin.
He that can have patience can have what he will. So, patience as being one
of the keys to that point of virtue. He that lives upon hope will die
fasting. So, hope doesn't feed you. You have to put hope but then you have
to put hard work. Okay, so that idea of all of these aphorisms work in line
of reinforcing this utilitarian purpose of things, the practicality. The
book calls it pragmatism. And it's all towards searching virtue. It's a
search for virtue. It's trying to perfect through repetition, not
perfecting out of the blue, perfecting through repetition. The 13 virtues
that we're going to read in the autobiography, we're going to read a
section from the autobiography. Let me find it for you. Alright, on page
97. And we're going to read the autobiography's second section which is the
most famous. There are 13 virtues in the autobiography that he thinks what
he's giving us, this is a self-help book, in essence it's follow this and
you're going to be a good person. And you're going to be happy. You're
going to find real happiness through this, not instant satisfaction but
true profound happiness. So distinguishing between real happiness and just
the mere satisfaction. So the 13 virtues that we've established in this
ultra-Puritan, highly religious world suddenly is going to be okay to talk
about just about anything within a framework of an 18th century America.
But just about everything. We're going to talk about chastity today. Now
we're going to read the second and most famous section in which the
78-year-old autobiographer looks back at his youthful years and describes
his plan for self-improvement through the practice of virtue. Franklin had
internalized a Puritan habit of introspection or moral self-scrutiny, but
he aimed at making good citizens rather than good Presbyterians. He was not
interested in making good churchgoers, he was interested in making good
people. That's very important. Churches were not telling their parishioners
to be good people. They were telling them to be worthy of God, not pious,
not loving, not caring for the rest of the world. They said, worry about
your church. Follow these strict rules of the church. But he went beyond.
He said, why don't you focus more on being good people, a good person,
rather than a good Presbyterian? And that's a main shift in the idea. In
order to test his scheme of self-improvement, he put his ideas into
practice using himself as an experimental subject, something that we
already saw with Jonathan Edwards. This is very typical of the Age of
Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. In the following passages, we will
learn about how young Franklin attempted to modify his behavior with an
eminently practical scheme which did not pertain to Christian salvation but
to earthly success. We're modifying—we don't want salvation anymore.
Salvation gives way to success. So what Benjamin Franklin is showing us is
the key to success, no longer the key to salvation. Because he believes
that everybody can achieve success. The caliber of the genius of Benjamin
Franklin was that he was not vain. He did not have—he was not separated
from the reality of the world. He wanted whatever was good for him to be
able to be reusable for the rest. He wanted to rethink everything that he
had been able to figure out and to decipher all those problems to the rest.
So in the end, if you think about it, he does have the same type of
attitude that a preacher would have saying, I've read the Bible. I've
understood the Word of God. I'm going to tell you the Word of God so you
can understand it too. So as we were saying—sorry Julio, I didn't see
your message exactly. Page 97. We're going to read page 97 through page
100. That's what we're going to read in this final part of the class. Page
97. From putting God at the center of everything, very, very in the line of
enlightenment to putting the human being in the center of everything. By
empowering the human being, he's empowering his community, his city, his
country. Okay. So the box continues to say, in our selection we have
retained the author's apostrophes for the missing examples. He says
conceived, wished, in order to preserve some of the 18th century flavor of
the text but we have modernized his spelling and his use of capital
letters. In the 18th century there was an abuse, a tremendous abuse of
capital letters. But I think that you can see at the same time how language
was in a constant process of rethinking and re-elaborating. It can still be
heard. There are certain territories that are isolated islands, very close
to Canada or very close to America where the inhabitants still speak with
this 18th century style. If you're interested in that there are fantastic
videos on YouTube where you can listen to this 18th century
American—well, 18th century English. This is actually true English. So,
he says from the autobiography. I did not see why I might not always do the
one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more
difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding
against one's fault, I was surprised by another. Habit took the advantage
of inattention. Inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I
concluded at length that the mere speculative conviction that it was our
interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our
slipping, and that the contrary habits must be broken and good ones
acquired and established before we can have any dependence on a steady,
uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose, I therefore contrive the
following method. Before I continue reading, I want to call your attention
on the idea that he says prevents our slipping, which reminds us very much
to Jonathan Edwards' sermon where he says that we're on the verge of
slipping into the abyss of hell. Right now, we have this enormous contrast
between Jonathan Edwards that was warning us as if it were the last warning
we would ever receive to escape from the pits of hell by changing
everything in our life immediately and with enormous fear of God. Benjamin
Franklin, however, was taking a much friendlier approach to the matter
saying that if we ever wanted to be virtuous, not that he was virtuous
himself but if we ever wanted to be virtuous, he had tried himself to
perfect everything at the same time and he had found it impossible.
Therefore, he had had to look for a plan B and that's what we're going to
read. Now his plan A which was to become virtuous all of a sudden which he
found impossible because he said he would slip into old attitudes but that
he had to develop a more elaborate method of perfecting himself little by
little. And that way of breaking a big task into small things, probably the
forefather of programming, breaking a big problem into smaller chunks,
smaller problems, 13 problems in particular was his method to success and
it's what follows. Line 15. In the various enumerations of moral virtues I
had met in my reading, I found the catalog more or less numerous as
different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name.
Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking while
by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure,
appetite, inclination or passion, bodily or mental. Even to our avarice or
an ambition, I proposed to myself for the sake of clearness to use rather
more names with fewer ideas annexed to each than a few names with more
ideas. I included after 13 names of virtues all that at that time occurred
to me as necessary or desirable and annexed to each a short precept which
fully expressed the extent to give to its meaning. These names of virtues
with their precepts were, and take into consideration that he's putting
everything from a positive perspective. Foro de la Asignatura. You can also
go to INTECA and you search for the name of the author. I always name the
recording with the name of the author. You can also find it through INTECA
because they're under my name so you can find them both ways. You can also
search for my name and search for any recordings that I have. All of the
classes are going to appear there. Without further ado, what I was saying,
what's the difference in focus between Benjamin Franklin and religion in
general? Religion was focused on everything that people did wrong. It was
focused on sin and more particularly on mortal sin. Some of the sins were
deadly. If you committed any of the seven deadly sins, you were going
straight to hell. No way you were getting out of there. But in Benjamin
Franklin's view, everything is focused from the positive point of view.
Conquer the day. Aspire to this small change in your life. Very American.
It's a very American attitude of trying a small conquest and then go for
the next and then go for the next. Don't try to solve your life overnight.
Try to little by little perfect yourself. So the 13 names of the virtues
with their precepts are temperance, eat not to dullness, drink not to
elevation. Silence, speak not but what may benefit others or yourself.
Avoid trifling conversation. Three, order. Let all your things have their
place. Let each part of your business have its time. Resolution, resolve to
perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve. Five,
frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste
nothing. That IE means this means, this is. It's from Latin. I don't
remember exactly what IE means. I remember that EG remains example, gratia.
That means for example but in this case IE means this is. It's like a
further explanation. Waste nothing. Industry, lose no time. Be always
employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. Sincerity,
use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly and if you speak, speak
accordingly. Justice, wrong none by doing injuries or emitting the benefits
that are your duty. Moderation, avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries
so much as you think they deserve. Cleanliness, tolerate no uncleanness in
the body, clothes or habitation. Tranquility, be not disturbed at trifles
or accidents common or unavoidable. Chastity, rarely use venery that's a
sexual intercourse but for health or offspring. For health, it's really
interesting that not only for offspring but to remain healthy. Benjamin
Franklin's darker side of his biography is that he was an incredible
womanizer and he had a heck of a life here in Europe and he was really
really someone very well known in the days and in the nights of Paris and
Versailles. That's probably what he's referring to when he says, he talks
about health. He was separated from his wife. His wife is still living in,
I don't remember if it was Boston or Philadelphia for an incredible period
of time like 20 or 30 years and because he was on duty here in Europe and
he went back only to see her die. It was like he went back when she was at
the end of her life so it's a very sad thing. He loved his wife very much
but from the point of view of how he loved the wife at the distance over so
many years, they had very frequent messaging back and forth in terms of
letters but he was not the most exemplary of husbands. By the way, one of
the things that are dark parts, dark tints of his biography is that his son
took sides with the British and he became estranged with his son for the
rest of his life. So it is a contradiction in itself that he was probably
the most successful man of his time. He was the inventor of self-help books
of how to be happy, something which he was probably unable to apply to
himself because estranging oneself from one's older son is probably one of
the biggest tragedies one can have during their lifetime. He became
estranged for the rest of his life of his older son which is a sad thing in
any context. Going back to ecstasy. Rarely use venery but for health or
offspring, never to dullness, that means to the extreme, weakness or the
injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. Humility. This is
probably the best. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. My intention being to
acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to
distract my attention by attempting the whole at once but to fix it on one
of them at a time and when I should be master of that then to proceed to
another. And so on till I should have gone through the thirteen. And as the
previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain
others, I arranged them with that view as they stand above. Temperance
first as it tends to procure the coldness and clearness of head which is
necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept and guard maintained
against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits and the force of
perpetual temptations. This being acquired and established, silence would
be more easy and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I
improved in virtue and considering that in conversation it was obtained
rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue and therefore wishing to
break a habit I was getting into of prattling, cunning and joking which
only made me acceptable to trifling company. I gave silence a second place.
So as you can see his system is set a weekly objective, try to conquer that
one and without tampering the first one try with the second. If you conquer
the second go to the third. If you conquer the third go to the fourth. All
the time trying to maintain all of those above. This and the next order I
expected would allow me more time for attending to my project and my
studies. Resolution once become habitual would keep me firm in my endeavors
to obtain all the subsequent virtues. Frugality and industry freeing me
from my remaining debts and producing affluence and independence would make
more easy the practice of sincerity and justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then
that agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his golden verses daily
examination would be necessary I contrive the following method for
concluding that examination. As you can see he's making specific and very
intentional references to classics. And this is very typical of the period
in the age of enlightenment there is an attempt to recover the initial
sources of knowledge of humanity. So that's why there's a reference to
Pythagoras, Greek mathematician, Socrates, Greek philosopher, Jesus one of
the most important if not the most important religious figure of Western
society. Well of Western society for sure but of human kind. So take into
consideration how very intentionally he uses direct references to
philosophers, worshipped individuals and mathematicians. I made a little
book in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page
with red ink so as to have seven columns one for each day of the week
marking each column with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with
13 red lines marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of
one of the virtues on which line and in its proper column I might mark by a
little black spot every fault I found upon examination to have been
committed respecting that virtue upon that day. So at the end of every day
he reviewed his process. I determined to give a week's strict attention to
each of the virtues successively. Thus in the first week my great guard was
to avoid even the least offense against temperance leaving the other
virtues to their ordinary chance only marking every evening the faults of
the day. Thus if in the first week I could keep my first line marked T
clear of spots I suppose a habit of that virtue so much strengthened and
its opposite weakened that I might venture extending my attention to
include the next. And for the following week keep both lines clear of spots
proceeding thus to the last. I could go through a course complete in 13
weeks and four courses in a year and like him who having a garden to weed
does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once which would exceed
his reach and his strength but works on one of the beds at a time and
having accomplished the first proceeds to a second. So I should have I
hoped the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in
virtue by clearing successively my lines of their spots till in the end by
a number of courses I should be happy in viewing a clean book after a 13
weeks daily examination. So I think that this work is self-explanatory
enough to understand the important shift in the style that we're going to
be seeing moving forward we're going to see a radical shift in what type of
things are interesting for the writers and we're going to see how religion
is going to lose its predominance. I have to go because they've already
signaled the time. Thank you very much. Have a fantastic week. I'll see you
next week here, okay? Have a great weekend. Keep working on your PECs and
if you have any questions regarding the PECs or anything else let me know,
write me an email.