Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Berkeley, if he had mingled with the leaders of thought in London
instead of remaining isolated in Massachusetts, he must have made a
name for himself not unworthy to be matched with that of the great
bishop whom he so much resembled. The intellectual powers were his,
but the inspiration was lacking; like Cotton Mather before him, he was
the unconscious victim of a decadent ideal and a petty environment.
Cut off from fruitful intercourse with other thinkers, drawn away from
the stimulating field of philosophy into the arid realm of theology,
it was his fate to devote his noble gifts to the thankless task of
re-imprisoning the mind of New England within a system from which his
nature and his powers summoned him to unshackle it. He was called to be
a transcendental emancipator, but he remained a Calvinist.
Footnotes
[161] Quoted in Walker, _History of the Congregational Churches in the
United States_, p. 216.
[162] _Ecclesiasticall Politie_, sixth edition, Book III, p. 10.
[163] See Wendell, _Literary History of America_, p. 89.
[164] _Jonathan Edwards_, p. 25.
[165] _Ibid._, p. 13.
[166] For an examination of the philosophy of Edwards, see Adam
Leroy Jones, “Early American Philosophers,” in _Columbia University
Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology and Education_, Vol. II, No. 4,
Chapter 4.
[167] For a statement of the doctrine, see Sermon XXXIV, “God’s
Sovereignty,” in _Works_, New York, 1847, Vol. IV, p. 548.
Edwards unconsciously admits that the doctrine of sovereignty was
reactionary. “From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections
against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to
eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased, leaving them eternally to
perish and be everlastingly tormented in hell.” Later he came to regard
such repugnance as the sinful expression of the natural man. As he saw
further, his mind “apprehended the justice and reasonableness of ...
God’s absolute sovereignty and justice with respect to salvation ...
as much as of anything that I see with my eyes; at least it is so at
times. But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another
sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I have often hid not only
a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often
appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet.... But my first
conviction was not so.” Quoted in Allen, _Jonathan Edwards_, pp. 37-38.
[168] Sermon XXVII, in _Works_, Vol. IV, p. 438.
[169] See Sermon IX, in _Works_, Vol. IV, p. 226. The argument is
unfolded in the following propositions: “Every crime or fault deserves
a greater or less punishment, according as the crime is greater or
less.” “A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under
greater or less obligations to the contrary.” “Our obligations to
love, honor, and obey any being, is in proportion to its loveliness,
honorableness, and authority.” “But God is a being infinitely lovely,
because he hath infinite excellence and beauty.” “So that sin against
God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime
infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.”
[170] See in particular Sermon XI. “The Eternity of Hell Torments”;
Sermon XII, “When the Wicked shall have filled up the measure of their
Sin, wrath will come upon them to the uttermost”; Sermon XIII, “The End
of the Wicked contemplated by the Righteous; or, The Torments of the
Wicked in Hell, no occasion of grief to the Saints in Heaven”; Sermon
XV, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in _Works_, Vol. IV.
[171] According to Edwards there were four regular stages: (1) the
first stirrings, when the sinner is brought under conviction that he is
lost; (2) the realization of God’s justice, that he merits damnation;
(3) the breaking in of the light, the first “gracious discoveries”
of God’s mercies; (4) peace after the storm, the joy of assurance of
salvation. For a fuller statement, see Allen, _Jonathan Edwards_, pp.
133-160.
Chapter III • Benjamin Franklin • Our First Ambassador
There was a singularly dramatic fitness in the life and career of
Benjamin Franklin. America has never been more worthily represented
at old-world capitals than by this unpretentious commoner, drawn from
the stock of the plain people. A plebeian in an aristocratic age, he
was nevertheless, by common consent, first among colonial Americans in
qualities of mind and heart. A wit and philosopher, rich in learning,
charming in manners, ripe in the wisdom of this world, resourceful
in dealing with men and events, he was one of the most delightful as
he was one of the greatest men produced by the English race in the
eighteenth century.
“Figure to yourself,” he wrote in his seventy-second year, “an old man,
with gray hair appearing under a marten fur cap, among the powdered
heads of Paris. It is this odd figure that salutes you, with handfuls
of blessings.” An odd figure indeed in such a setting, but a figure
that captured the imagination of Paris, as it has since captured the
imagination of America; so novel as to seem romantic--a charming rustic
philosopher who might have stepped out of the pages of Rousseau. And
so the French aristocracy patronized _le bon homme_, and laughed with
him at the affectations of this preposterous world, and made much of
him for the zest that it discovered in a novel sensation. It was the
same odd figure that had stood at the bar of the House of Commons and
matched his intelligence against that of celebrated English lawyers;
the same figure that had been called in council by the great Pitt--who
thought himself too great to learn anything even from Franklin; that
had been lashed by the scurrilous tongue of Wedderburn; that had seen a
thousand bribes dangled before him by Lord Howe and other gentlemen--a
figure that seems strangely out of place in that old-fashioned Tory
world, with its narrow sympathies and narrower intelligence. And yet
considered in the light of social revolutions, what other figure in
eighteenth-century Europe or America is so dramatically significant?
The figure of the self-made democrat, with some three millions of his
fellows at his back, and countless other millions to come, who was
entering on a world-wide struggle for political mastery, the end of
which no one can yet foresee? His presence in the councils of gentlemen
was a tacit denial of their hitherto unquestioned right of supremacy.
It was a rare personal triumph; but it was far more significant than
that, it was the triumph of a rising class and a new social ideal.
Although Franklin’s origins, whether Boston or Philadelphia, were
narrowly provincial, his mind from early youth to extreme old age was
curiously open and free, and to such a mind the intellectual wealth
of the world lies open and free. From that wealth he helped himself
generously, to such good effect that he early became an intellectual
cosmopolitan, at ease with the best intellects and at home among the
diverse speculative interests of the eighteenth century: the sane and
witty embodiment of its rationalism, its emancipation from authority,
its growing concern for social justice, its hopeful pursuit of new
political and economic philosophies, its tempered optimism that trusted
intelligence to set the world right. No other man in America and few in
Europe had so completely freed themselves from the prejudice of custom.
The Calvinism in which he was bred left not the slightest trace upon
him; and the middle-class world from which he emerged did not narrow
his mind to its petty horizons. He was a free man who went his own
way with imperturbable good will and unbiased intelligence; our first
social philosopher, the first ambassador of American democracy to the
courts of Europe.
Fortune was kind to Franklin in many ways: kind in that it did not
visit upon him the fate that befell his elder brother Ebenezer, of whom
Sewall noted, “Ebenezer Franklin of the South Church, a male-infant
of 16 months old, was drowned in a Tub of Suds, Febr. 5, 1702/3”;
kind also in that it set him in a land where opportunity waited upon
enterprise, and where thousands of kindred spirits were erecting a
society that honored such qualities as he possessed. In England he must
have remained middle-class, shut in by a wall of prejudice; but in
colonial America he found a congenial environment. Like Samuel Sewall,
he swam easily in the main current of colonial life, won increasing
honors, until--as he naïvely remarked--he came more than once to stand
before kings. How fortunate he was is revealed by contrast with the
career of his great English counterpart and fellow spirit, Daniel
Defoe, whose _Essay on Projects_--a classic document of the rising
middle class--might well have been Franklin’s first textbook.
The earliest literary representative of the English middle class, Defoe
preached the same gospel of social betterment. With his head full of
projects for the advancement of trade and the material well-being of
his fellows, he preached the new gospel of practical efficiency to a
generation of wits, going so far as to assert that the ideal statesman
should be sought, not among gentlemen but among merchants, whose
training in business affairs had made them shrewd judges of men and
capable in dealing with practical matters. But the London of Queen
Anne was not a place in which to rise by preaching efficiency. Defoe’s
day had not yet come in England, and in spite of great abilities and
arduous labors he remained a Grub Street hack, the servant and not
the counselor of aristocratic politicians. Instead of coming to stand
before kings--like the more fortunate Franklin--he stood often before
constables; instead of cracking his joke and his bottle at Will’s
Coffee House, he was forced to study the ways of the unprosperous at
Bridewell. But if he failed in his ambition to get on, he found a
certain solace in the vicarious realization of his ideal. Robinson
Crusoe, the practically efficient man making himself master of his
environment, was the dream of Daniel Defoe; Franklin was the visible,
new-world embodiment of that dream.
It was Franklin’s supreme capacity for doing well the things which
his fellow Americans held in esteem, that enabled him to rise out of
obscurity to a position of leadership. Before he should be intrusted
with the confidence of his fellow citizens, he must prove himself
worthy of such confidence, and even in colonial America the task was
far from easy. In the wealthier communities society was exclusive and
select--nowhere more so than in Philadelphia--and it could not be
expected to view with approval the advancement of a printer-tradesman,
especially if he were a member of the plebeian anti-Proprietary
party. It was an evidence of Franklin’s discretion that he removed
from Boston, where neither his father’s chandlery shop, nor his
brother’s baiting of the ruling gentry, would serve his purpose. In
Philadelphia, free from family entanglements, he bent himself to the
task of securing a competence, understanding how easily the wheel
turns on a well-greased axle; and by the time he had come to his
early forties he had kept his shop so well that henceforth it would
keep him. He was ready to do his real work in the world; and in the
choice of that work he revealed the curious _flair_ for the timely that
was so characteristic. His extraordinary successes in the field of
civic betterments gained him the good will of the commonalty, and his
experiments in natural philosophy won the approbation of the gentry.
Interest in scientific inquiry, particularly in physics, had spread
widely in England since the founding of the Royal Society, and to be an
authority on magnetism was as evident a mark of breeding in Georgian