Free Sample Essays > United States History
Benjamin Franklin
libraries.The 1st part, in 1733, has 3 editions to cover the demand.This “guide” was full of thoughts and ideas that were usefull to triumph in life.Its pages show clearly the American popular knowledge.
In the edition of 1758, Franklin wrote a preface that was printed apart form the book with the titlte of The Way to the Richness.This Preface is dated 7th July 1757, and Franklin signed it with the pseudonym of “Richard Saunders”.
Franklin was an individualist that defended during his whole life the private enterprise and the rights of the person, but always related to the needings of the society.He knew by his own experience, that men that fight together in the defence of their interests, or in the promotion of a politic, cultural or social reason, are able to get more that if they work independiently.By the other hand, he had very clear ideas about how to organize the life in the colonies according to his own moral ideas.
The 1st organization that he founded, that had a big influence in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, was the club “Joined”, that had as a goal the interest in the problems of the community.
The members joined together once a week to talk about philosophical, scientific and practical problems.They also talked about the books they had read.
To maintain alive the cultural interchanges, Franklin wrote 24 questions that should be answered in each reunion.These questions keep on being a model of dialectic stimulus.
During 30 years Benjamin went on with this club, and he saw how that club was being a model for other clubs along the country.
Franklin, as his master Socrates, developed the system of questions-answers to solve the doubts that he had.Some of that questions were as curious as this:
“It is possible that man, as some people think, could get the perfecction in life, or it is impossible as others think?”
Few people have has such an interest for his community, his city,and have tried to provide it of the essential services for the confortability and happiness of his inhabitants.
The man who wrote “The way to get to the human happiness is not by luck, because rarely happens, but by using the advantages offered to us daily” fought to recreate in each moment his idealism with the only resource of the trust in himself and in the others.
A GLANCE AT FRANKLIN’S LIFE.-
1706- Franklin’s born 17TH January
1714- Starts the Elementary school
1715- Goes to a Grammar and Arithmetic school
1716- Begin to work with his father
1717- Begin to work with his brother James
1722- Franklin wrote his 1st article with a pseudonym
1723- He left Boston and goes to Philadelphia
1728- He get to London 24th December.He published “Disertation about freedom and necessity, about pleasure and pain”
1727- He founded the club “Joined”
1729- He rules the Pennsylvania Gazette
1730- He married Deborah Read
1731-