Benjamin Franklin

Last time we left off with some statements about how the American Indian image had been slowly circulating from the 1490s 15 early 1500s until the Pokanoket War of 1675 when Metacom who was known as Prince or King Philip to the colonists suddenly staged a rebellion that lasted several years and the American image of the Indian became twisted and frozen into the specter that behind every bush or every tree in the infinite spreading wilderness beyond the coast beyond the walls of the towns were constant danger and threat to life and that the effect of this tremendous oblique lightning bolt of terror imagery changed the nature of the European experience with the American Indian. Until our own day but that it was only a few years after that event that William Penn concluded his very very famous treaty with the American Indians which was a model for the interpenetration of civilizations and cultures and people. And in fact Penn. Several visits to the New World left Pennsylvania after having founded laid out the plans for Philadelphia left in 1701 and it was only five years after that that Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston. So Franklin comes on the scene very very early in the development of the form of the United States of America. He is there almost at seed time. In fact a very famous American historian Clinton Rossiter wrote a book called Seedtime of the Republic. And really the notion of the idea of the United States begins in the mind of Benjamin Franklin.

His is the thundercloud spirit within which the thunder and lightning fructifying these concepts of Union and Destiny first began to have a manifest shape and he is born in Boston. 1706 early in the year January. He's a Capricorn and by the time Franklin was 16. By 1722 he was already chomping at the bit to get going. He had as a matter of fact taken over ostensibly the printing concern of an older brother of his who through some indiscretions had ended up in jail and for printing certain positions which were not tobe allowed so Franklin within less than 50 years of the 1675 debacle was already afoot in the world and moving. And it's interesting to note these kinds of time junctures because the United States is a very charmed phenomenon. It has unbelievable symmetry and geometry in its unfolding manifestation. And as we go on in the series more and more this exquisite geometry in terms of time and circumstance will come out. If you recall just to look ahead it was 50 years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence until the death of Thomas Jefferson and of John Adams on the very same day. It was near the summer solstice when the Declaration of Independence was signed and it was right on the winter solstice of the same year that Franklin arrived in London as the first real power ambassador representing the United States.

So all of these time coordinates almost 50 years to the day when Franklin realized that he was on his way. He could not stay in Boston and took himself south to New York. But finding New York rather a difficult proposition and having heard that Philadelphia was promising for young printers he moved on down to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia he landed a job at a print shop by a tinhorn named Keimer. This individual simply didn't know his way around. Was really in Franklin's words a compositor rather than a printer. But it was quite interesting because the day that he landed in Philadelphia before he had this job as he was walking down the street there's a famous illustration of him with loaves of bread under each arm and one in his hand. That's all. He had the money for three loaves of bread and he was hoping that his destiny would come rather quickly. We've been in those situations I'm sure most of us. In fact he must have presented quite a spectacle because a young girl leaned out of a window and seeing this happy go lucky young man laughed at him and she was years later to become Franklin's wife. So all kinds of incredible destiny surrounded this young boy. And one can't blame us for imagining him cold broke with three loaves of bread bread whistling under his breath and looking for a career. He drew the attention of William Keith who was governor of the colony of Pennsylvania.

Keith was one of these brainstorming type politicians who loved over a couple of glasses of wine and good food to get everyone excited about the next project to be undertaken. And then within a week forget just what was involved and within two weeks sorry that he had said all these things. And then within three weeks looking for the next dinner party and the next project. This type of a man. He became enthusiastic about young Ben Franklin and said look why don't you get a printing business for your own. I will see to the financing if you can raise some of the financing from your parents I'll put up the rest. And in fact we'll send you off to London and buy the latest type fonts make the connections for the best paper and so forth. And so young Franklin of course thinking that Columbia prematurely had come to his side and with the radiance of her stars was going to lead the way. Of course Franklin's father thought that at 17 or 18 this is rather extravagant and refused to put up any money. But Franklin was not to be put off. He was on his way. He found himself on board ship destined for London and when he arrived he realized that Governor Keith was the type of man that I have described before. There was nothing there for him nothing waiting except Franklin himself and that was all he needed.

He quickly got himself a job in a printing outfit and very quickly Franklin began to explore London. Now he'd been to Boston. He'd been to New York. He'd been to Philadelphia London. When he arrived there in 1724 was quite an experience and he began to find himself alive and alert in this great metropolitan city. And he did what most talented young people would do at that time. He began to walk a great deal. Visit the bookstores. In fact he found a willing bookseller named Wilcox who would let him take stacks and stacks of books and for a nominal sum keep on exchanging those stacks for new stacks. And so he read Voraciously all the time that he was in London. He finally made his way back to Philadelphia. It took about two years and when he arrived there he worked for just a little while for Keimer. Keimer had had a contract to print money and it was a big contract and required a lot of fine engraving real quality printing and Franklin was always a craftsman. He was always the man who could conceive in his mind the fine details how everything must work together in order for a certain manifestation to come into being properly. And so Franklin was hired on again by Keimer. It was at this time that he began to associate with a group of young men like himself who were interested in bettering themselves and they formed what was called the junto or the junta. And it was a series of 10 or 12 individuals and they would meet for a meal or a glass of wine and discuss ideas but particularly they were interested in very much the same sort of thing which we covered in the lecture on Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's great willingness to experiment with his actual life to see what would happen. What if you change your dietWhat will happen. What if you change your regimen of livingWhat actually will come out of that. So this group began experiments in much the same way. And it was at this time that Franklin in fact drew up the following 24 hour regimen for himself. Typical of Franklin 24 hours. Everything accounted for. He would rise at 5:00 in the morning. Rise wash. And he wrote address powerful goodness. And later on in his life Franklin would love to get up very very early in the morning and not put any clothes on and absolutely nude sit in the cold air for about a half an hour collecting himself and only then would he go and put his clothes on and begin the day. And he said that this was the most wonderful way to begin the mind to circulate in consciousness and in life that sitting naked in the cold air gave him a universal focus of feeling. And he said sometimes he would go back to sleep and have the most astounding dreams after this introduction into the day but usually he would go on from there.

So on this scheme written very very early in his life. He wasn't quite 30 years old. Rise at five. Wash. Address. Powerful goodness. Contrive the day's business. Think through what one was going to do on that particular day. Then take a resolution of the day. There must be a guiding rational light to hang on to during the day. Then he would have breakfast and from eight through 11 until noon he would work for that four hour stretch. Then there would be a break for reading or eating looking over his accounts. Franklin was a penny pincher from the age of 12 until he was able to retire at age 42. He watched every single cent. In fact he once wrote a letter to someone and said you know you have to figure that time is money. And every day you could work so much and say you could get ten shillings for a day's work for every half day you don't work. You have spent five shillings regardless of whether you think you haven't spent a cent you've already spent five shillings. He was this kind of a penny pincher for 30 years. There's a wonderful map. I brought a volume of the volume two of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin published by Yale. And in the back of this volume of his collected works they have a wonderful map of downtown Philadelphia and he owned a great deal of downtown Philadelphia in his day.

If you own this property today you could call the shots. I think someone mentioned that the garden of one of his residences went right down to the Delaware River. So this was the type of situation that he was involved in. So from 12 until one he would have this meal or this time out this time for reading. Then he would work from two through five and at six after the second work period of the day he would put everything back into their places and arrange everything and then he would have a meal music diversion conversation and then a retrospection a looking back almost as the old Pythagorean maxim look back over the day order its notion so that it begins to form a unity and that that unity then can connect and link linked together so that one sense of duration through episodic time space becomes a golden chain of events having its continuity and linking all the back all the way back through. Then he would go to bed at 10:00 and sleep until he would wake again at five. He was constantly making lists at this time like this clocking of the day. He made a list of virtues and the first one was temperance and he had made a list of 12 virtues. And someone drew it to his attention and said you know the basic problem that you have I can see is that you need to have some way to get rid of all this arrogance that you seem to be promoting in yourself.

And so Franklin being a rational man being an excellent mediator said thank you very much for that suggestion. And he included humility as the 13th item on the list. He had. Temperance. Silence. Order. Resolution. Frugality. Industry. Sincerity. Justice. Moderation. Cleanliness. Tranquillity. Chastity. There's a note here. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. And then humility. Well he was constantly making lists. And in fact whenever he would be later on involved in representing someone and there would be a lot of boring debates going on Franklin could not help himself but to draw magic squares these boxes and boxes and boxes of grids of numbers that all the numbers this way add up say to 260 and all this way add up to 260. And he would churn them out by the hundreds. This is a very interesting state of mind. This is a highly integrated mind one in fact that has already tapped onto a transcendental level. And even though he was poor in mathematics he very often said that he was just unable to describe his experiments except in the plainest of prose. But in making these magic squares Franklin was absolutely a whiz. Now his devotion at this time to this sort of thing drew the kind of pleasant stares that I guess people today would have for it. This was an unusual thing.

This is a man in the wilderness of the New World trying to produce the kind of exquisite rational clockwork like being that one would find in Germany or France or something like this. His great biography was written by James Parton. It wasn't written until 1864. Parton has an interesting phrase in here about all these activities of a young man of 30 doing this at this time. And Parton says right after the 24 hour schedule was listed the reader may be inclined to smile at some of these details. It nevertheless remains true that no one has ever acquired uncommon virtue without having made the acquirement of virtue an object of specific and systematic exertion. And of course for those who attended the previous series on Asian Spiritual Classics we recognized right away that Franklin was using a kind of a yoga that he was in fact bringing himself in line with the classical sage way of manifesting in a human life. Parton goes on to say whatever else comes to us by nature self-control does not. It has to be acquired. Franklin's method was the method suited to him in his time circumstances and sphere. And then he goes on to talk about the list of the virtues and so forth. The basic insight is that by the age of 30 and Franklin had been set up in business with another man named Meredith who very very quickly proved to be inadequate and left for the West Indies.

And the grass was greener down there. So Franklin found himself in business in the city of Philadelphia at the center of a growing group of self-improving young individuals in control of a methodology by which he had seen himself shoot. And just a decade from being a youngster just arriving to being a man who had already traveled across the Atlantic and made contact with the greatest city of its day and was back and in position. This kind of activity gave Franklin really the beginnings of insight into trying to extend his control he has self control.based on an equilibrium of outlook a sort of a yoga of equanimity almost like in the Bhagavad Gita. The phrase is that evenness of mind is yoga that no matter what method one uses that equanimity of mind is the key to it all. And we find Franklin actually practicing this in his daily life. Well he also at this time being somewhat of a real American and that is to say to have a little wedge of the con man hidden in him already found a way to get a newspaper away from a competitor and he became the proprietor of the Pennsylvania Gazette also by the age of 30 he contrived to write a series of articles as he had done when he was a teenager in Boston and he made up all kinds of interesting stories and everybody kept buying this other newspaper because these stories were just too good to pass up.

And pretty soon everyone was reading this other newspaper and the one owned by his competitor began to founder. And for a very low price Franklin acquired it and the other articles dried up and the Pennsylvania Gazette suddenly began to be extraordinarily interesting. And I believe one of the more successful newspapers of its day. Encouraged by this Franklin and all of his outlooks began to take the methodology that he had engendered for himself and began to experiment in terms of the life of Philadelphia of his day to see whether it could be done again and what were the limitations. His next great project was an idea that sends his little quips in the Pennsylvania Gazette were so interesting to people and since he noticed that there were increasing numbers of individuals who were needing organized information he got the idea of putting it together. And he published late in 1732 the first Poor Richard’s Almanack. And these almanacs of course were extraordinary at their time. I have a preface that Franklin wrote for the Poor Richard's Almanack for 1735. And this is the informal penetrating exquisite way in which Franklin through print addressed his public and remember this public for the most part were only one generation away from the primordial wilderness that had never been explored and there wasn't a city containing more than a thousand people in the whole of the United States already. October 30th 1734. He addresses it to the courteous reader.

This is the third time of my appearing in print hitherto very much to my own satisfaction and I have reason to hope to the satisfaction of the public also for the public is generous and it has been very charitable and good to me. I should be ungrateful then if I did not take every opportunity of expressing my gratitude. I therefore return the public with my most humble and hearty thanks whatever may be the music of the spheres. How great soever the harmony of the stars. Tis certain there is no harmony among the stargazers but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange curs like some men at their wives. He's talking about astrologers. Stargazers. I have resolved to keep the peace on my own part and affront none of them. And I shall persist in that resolution. But having received much abuse from various persons.

And he goes on then to predict the death of his closest competitor on such and such a day in the future that this was a bona fide prophecy. Well of course this was again Franklin taking off a little bit tongue in cheek drumming up interest in his Almanack. All of the opportunities at this time seem to open up for Franklin. He was in fact exploring all avenues of life. He was in 1734 just a year after Poor Richard's Almanack first was issued was elected as the Grand Master Mason for Pennsylvania so that Franklin at this time began to become known as the organizer the organized individual who could do almost anything.

He began to be the deputy postmaster for Pennsylvania Colony and arranged various ways in which this service could be undertaken. In 17 the 1740s he began to move away from printing in his mind and to devote himself increasingly to what was known as science at that time the manipulation of apparatus the designing of apparatus the making up of experiments and then designing the apparatus to investigate various phenomena. And at this time he began a series of inventions. I will take one just as an example which were the science of trying to improve human life on the basic day to day level in one invention at that time was an improved stove. The Franklin stove and the Franklin stove of course is a masterpiece of design. I think someplace in here I have yeah I think I have his his original advertisement for the Franklin stove. And the first couple of sentences here set the tone for it. Advertisement. These fireplaces are made in the best manner and are sold. And he had a friend in Philadelphia who sold them. He had a friend in New York who sold them. And one of his relatives a J. Franklin in Boston also sold them and within. Described as the middle and most common size there are others to be had both larger and smaller.

Then in large block letters an account of the new invented fireplaces and he writes how in these northern colonies the inhabitants keep fires to sit by generally seven months in the year that is from the beginning of October to the end of April and in some letters nearly eight months by taking in part of September and May. And would our common fuel which within 100 years ago might have been had at everyone's door now must be fetched 100 miles to some towns and make a very considerable article in the expense of families. And he goes on in this way so that he has come up with a useful item that should be at the core of every home. Meaning of course that no one can do without it and that because of all of the aspects especially the expense of previous designs of stoves he has designed this one to utilize the maximum out of your wood. And of course the Franklin stove became the basic stove at that time. I think they are still manufactured and still sold today. Several hundred years later. Franklin refused to patent these. He refused because he thought that all of these inventions were not the property of himself as an individual but that they were the flash manifestation from his tapping a universal level of insight and that his methodology of approach was one that anyone could take and also find these wonderful inventions.

So he set the example that these were not his property. It was not in the realm of propriety for him to be creating all these inventions and then hoping to get on the economic reward. He was also interested in showing every man any man how to better himself by writing accounts of how he did it by writing specific designs of actually what went on into it and encouraging everyone by newspapers by almanacs by other sorts of writing by all his civic activities to go and do likewise. By this time a roving Scotsman named Spence was traveling and he was sort of one of these medicine show forerunners. Forerunner of both the Medicine Show and the Chautauqua educational cycles I guess. One of the aspects in this show was that he would suspend a boy from silken cords and through a special apparatus that he had the boy would become charged with a mysterious phenomenon so that Doctor Spence could go over and with his hands pull down sparks and gobs of brilliant white electricity. And of course this was a marvelous thing. And Franklin when he saw this show couldn't contain himself. This was just the ultimate toy the ultimate invention because what one had here was obviously as he said later on a universal fluid. And somehow his whole methodology his whole outlook was becoming focused on this manifestation that somehow electricity was the basic model which would yield a way for man to investigate the very very inner structures of nature.

So some he invited Spence to dinner of course and the Franklin home was always a gregarious home many people coming and going all the time. His wife Deborah was a very amiable as a housekeeper and as a wife. She didn't mind the crowds and entertaining Spence there. Franklin made an offer to him and since he was doing rather well at that time it was probably a substantial offer. And after traveling with his show for a little longer Spence actually contacted Franklin and sold him all of his apparatus so that in around 1745 46 Franklin began to experiment with electricity and not only experiment with electricity but he kept his methodology intact. That is he began to record meticulously everything that he did to do it in concert with a group of individuals so that they could talk about what was happening and get each other's viewpoints on this. And then they would write letters to the Royal Society in London to experimenters on the continent. In other words they were keeping in contact with a very wide audience. And all this time Franklin of course not only interested in the phenomenon of electricity but observing with keener and keener interest the way in which his methodology for self-improvement kept growing and that the manifestations not only grew in application in time space but seemed to be penetrating deeper and deeper into the actual mysteries of nature. Now Franklin I have to digress for just one minute here.

Franklin rarely in his writings put in what we would call metaphysical speculations. It was not in his temperament to do so. It was in fact his fondest hope that what we would consider to be transcendent and metaphysical in our time in our minds was in fact the most apparent of all naturalism and that if one could only see this it was the rule the rational aspect of the universe and not something hidden or esoteric. There are in his early writings occasional glimpses. For instance when he was still I think about 19 20 years old he was coming back from London to Philadelphia the first time he was keeping a journal of this voyage. And right in the center of the voyage in the center of the Atlantic Ocean he observed the full moon rising and it had a triple rainbow around it in the middle of the night. And Franklin said he couldn't go to sleep all night at this incredible image. Natural image kept drawing him out and so he was pacing the deck of the ship all night wondering what this meant what this could be. And he says this was an incredible phenomenon. It's only in hints and clues like that that one gets an idea that Franklin was very very alert from early life. His basic concern with electricity was to try and find some way of showing then that electricity was not a hidden phenomenon some esoteric parlor phenomenon that could only be conjured up by magicians or magic or special apparatus but that electricity was in fact the norm energy of nature itself that it was writ large in nature and appeared all the time and in fact was the commonest thing itself.

Lightning that came down from every storm cloud that ever passed over any land on the earth. How to do this How to do this Franklin of course was in correspondence with the Royal Society Peter Collinson especially and Collinson was one of these individuals who just had to write to everybody in the world who he thought should know. So every time Franklin would write to him about his experiments. Collinson would write to everybody on the continent that he knew. So there was this tremendous population of people following Franklin from afar and experimenting themselves and especially in France. And Franklin finally decided that he would have to rig up some experiment on the highest tower in Philadelphia. And there was a 40 foot lightning rod on top of this tower in the next storm he would hook something up to this and then he realized from the constant grinding of his perspective and the talking with other individuals that one could actually do this with something mobile. One didn't have to have a tower. In fact a child's toy a kite could fly higher than any tower. And so taking his son William 22 years of age at that time he went out on a stormy night into a field and the two of them rigged up the kite and with the little key on it.

And of course we've got some slides later on to show you some idealized paintings of this. And it was with the greatest of pleasure that Franklin was able to with his own hand reach up with the knuckles and close proximity to the key. And it was like to him that triple rainbow round the moon. As a young man that flash of light. There was the confirmation that nature's most profound and esoteric secrets are the very stuff that every day is made up of and that it's only the closed irrationality of man's mind that convolutes it and makes natural structures so hidden that man is the only creature who is surprised when he finds out and thinks that he's found a secret. And in fact Franklin again showed that the moving powers of nature are constantly there. There would be nothing without them. His account of these experiments was quite extraordinary as a matter of fact. And he did not realize that the experiment had been done a month before in Germany but it still was quite a surprise when Franklin realized that his experiments were drawing this kind of rave review all over Europe. He also recounted in his writings. I think I have it in this box here. There were two times when he should have died from electric shock and did not die.

And I rather I rather think that this Uh. Well I'll just tell you about them. One was he was experimenting with electrocuting turkeys. He was trying to find a humane way to kill turkeys. And he had rigged this experiment up and they had found that you could kill hens but you couldn't kill toms. The toms would conk out and then a little later they would get up you know and this is very embarrassing. And you're trying to be humane. And the toms were not cooperating. So they upped the juice. And the generators at that time were like Leyden jars you know glass rotating and the friction building up and the water inside them holding the electrical charge. So they had rigged up quite a hefty charge. And Franklin of course trying to get this turkey and his hand his back of his hand brushed the electrode and there was a crack and a blast of light. And Franklin says in his own words that he wasn't sure what had happened and everyone around was absolutely surprised because they said that this report from the explosion was just tremendous. And Franklin said the only thing that he felt was a profound slap both in and outside of his body from the page of his head to his toes. And that later on of course some minutes later as the shock wore off his metabolism this tremendous quaking came upon him and lasted for quite some time.

A second time. He had a contact on the top of his head and he had a huge welt on his cranium for some time. Both of these were incidents that would lead one to think that there was indeed a guardian spirit over Franklin. Franklin was getting into these situations of course from time to time. And I think it's probably time to read something humorous as a young man when he was sailing from London to Philadelphia. Just to give you the carefree tenor of Franklin he and several of his companions had gone out to away from the ship. The ship was sailing around the coast of England and they were making little excursions inland from time to time. Every time they would put into port they would sail a little ways and then they would put in. And at one time in his own words he says

having taken a view of the church town and fort and seeing them all on which there are seven large guns mounted three of us took a walk further into the island and having gone about two miles we headed a creek that runs up one end of the town and then went to Freshwater Church about a mile nearer the town but on the other side of the creek. So they crossed the creek. Having stayed here some time it grew dark and my companions were desirous to be gone lest those whom we left drinking where we dined in the town should go on board and leave us.We were told that it was our best way to go straight down to the mouth of the creek and that there was a ferry boy who would carry us over to the town. But when we came to the house the lazy whelp was in bed and refused to rise and put us over upon which we went down to the water side with a design to take his boat and go over by ourselves. We found it very difficult to get the boat it being fastened to a stake and the tide risen nearly 50 yards beyond.

It is a pleasant way to recount a theft.

I stripped all to to my shirt to wade up to it but missing the causeway which was under water I got up to my middle in mud. At last I came to the stake. But to my great disappointment I found she was locked and chained. I endeavoured to draw the staple with one of the thole pins but in vain I tried to pull up the stake but to no purpose so that after an hour's fatigue and trouble in the wet and mud I was forced to return without the boat.

This is an insight into Franklin's wonderful personality.

We had no money in our pockets and therefore we began to conclude to pass the night in some haystack. Though the wind blew very cold and very hard.In the midst of these troubles one of us recollected that he had a horseshoe in his pocket which he found in his walk and asked me if I could not wrench the staple out with that. I took it went tried and succeeded and brought the boat ashore to them. Now we rejoiced in all got in. And when I had dressed myself we put off. But the worst of our troubles was to too calm for it being high water and the tide over all the banks. Though it was moonlight we could not discern the channel of the creek but rowing heedlessly straight forward. When we got about half way over we found ourselves aground on a mud bank and striving to row her off by putting our oars in the mud we broke one and there stuck fast not having four inches of water. This is founder of our country people. We were now in the utmost perplexity not knowing what in the world to do. In his own words we could not tell whether the tide was rising or falling but at length we plainly perceived it was ebb and we could feel no deeper water within the reach of our oar. It was hard to lie in an open boat all night exposed to the wind and weather but it was worse to think how foolish we would look in the morning. After we had strove and struggled for half an hour and more we gave all over and sat down with our hands before us despairing to get off.

For if the tide had left us we would never be the nearer. We must have sat in the boat as the mud was too deep for us to walk ashore through it. It would have come up to our necks. At last we bethought ourselves of some means of escaping and two of us stripped and got out and thereby lighting the boat. We drew her upon our knees near 50 yards into deeper water and then with much ado having but one oar we got safely ashore at the fort and they left a message and some money later on the boat.

This kind of a free for all attitude coupled with his tremendous rationality and his methodology finally led Franklin to the idea that he must close out his business life and retire and devote himself exclusively to science and reading because he was convinced by now that he was a destined figure and that he needed all the leisure time he could to devote himself to applying this method and so he sold a number of his properties to relatives and other people assured himself of an income. I think his income at the time was 2000 English pounds a year. That was a considerable sum. So Franklin at the age of 42 in 1748 retired from the world as an individual who has to work and raise a family and so forth.

And with this kind of devil may care boyishness to explore the universe launched out on his own. He became the deputy postmaster for the Pennsylvania colony about in the middle of the 1750s and as he became more and more involved with Pennsylvania and the colonial aspects of colonial size aspects of life they realized that the situation had reached the point where somebody had to go to the Penn family in England representing the Colony of Pennsylvania to try and renegotiate the situation that obviously the city of Philadelphia was already too large to be owned by a family. The Colony of Pennsylvania was far too large an entity to be owned. And so Benjamin Franklin was appointed to be that emissary. And he returned to London and in 1757 arrived in England. Now he lived very close to what is today Charing Cross station. number seven Craven Street which is close to Trafalgar Square that area. He on arrival was ill for about eight weeks. He was taken care of by his landlady a Mrs. Stevenson whose daughter later on became a real aficionado as everyone did of Benjamin Franklin. And while he was in London of course he was lionized by individuals there. He journeyed to all the best clubs he was taken to scientific societies and some meetings and by 1762 when he returned to Philadelphia momentarily he found that he was beginning to engage in another one of these large patterns of experimentation in his life.

And sure enough very quickly he was sent back to London within a couple of years and by 1764 for a third time he was back and the pattern was established and he could see it in his own life. And this time he came back seeking a royal charter for Pennsylvania. These were momentous years. From the early 1760s the French and Indian Wars were transpiring and Franklin in fact was in London at the time the Stamp Act was passed in 1765 and at that time his equanimity to try and smooth the situation out was mistaken by the lot of persons in Philadelphia as vacillation and he received a letter from his wife saying that there had been a threat of a mob to come and burn their house down for his being perhaps a little bit too sympathetic. But this of course did not happen. And slowly through the 1760s colony after colony began approaching Franklin in London to represent them Georgia New Jersey Massachusetts until finally by 1770 Benjamin Franklin found himself increasingly the spokesman for the New World in the old. He had paid attention to this unfolding pattern and had watched events from his vantage point. In fact as early as 1754 he had announced at a meeting the Congress of Albany that the colony should have some kind of a representation where all of them could take care of their own common defense and make certain arrangements which they should do as a unity.

So by 1770 Franklin began to understand that some large universal pattern was unfolding and that he was the experimenter who was in the focus point. And from his perspective a plumb came his way. Some letters from a certain Thomas Hutchinson who was a governor at that time in Massachusetts and his letters were not to be made public. They were criticizing the growing unrest in the colonial situation. Franklin of course made those letters public and was very very quickly persona non grata among all of the Empire builders and was sent back and arrived in Philadelphia in March of 1775. Right on time right on schedule. And within a year the Declaration of Independence was being written. And he and Jefferson we’ll get to Jefferson next week. Jefferson and Franklin understood each other perfectly well. Adams never cared for him and I'll go into that in a little bit. But he found himself the very next year on his way back to London. And this time instead of representing the Colony of Pennsylvania he was representing the United States of America.

Let's take a break. I guess we've got some cake and then we'll continue with this extraordinary man.

When Franklin was sent to Paris as the representative of the Continental Congressafter he arrived he situated himself in the center of Paris at apartments. Passy which is on the Seine probably a half mile from Notre Dame. And arriving there in the winter solstice of 1776 Franklin with his fur hat. His skin hat. He was about 5’10” weight about 210 or so. Wonderfully rounded shapes limpid direct eyes easygoing manner imperturbable alert wonderfully intelligent. He created a tremendous stir. Here was the famous experimenter with electricity. He was the famous printer and writer. Here was the extraordinary nobleman of the New World in his fur hat. But at the same time the circumstances of course vis a vis the colonies kept getting worse and worse. And Franklin and his correspondents all the way through from his arrival until late in 1777 began to despair of there ever being any chance for the new nation to be born. The power of England seemed almost omnipotent. The ability of England to outfit fleets of ships well-trained men and convey them across the Atlantic staggering. Washington's troops until the tone of Franklin's letters begins to show the beginning dismal origin of the idea that defeat. And Franklin wrote that he felt that if the colonies could not break free now they never would. That they would be entrapped and enslaved increasingly. And it was in that atmosphere of queasiness him wondering personally whether the universal pattern that he had seen and felt himself the writing point of its manifestation had been mistaken. Then in this description is from the Cambridge Modern History volume on the United States. This is this modern history not the one that's for sale now through Cambridge but the one planned by Lord Acton the great Regius Professor of Modern history.

This is the description of the events that made this republic brought a smile to Franklin and changed the course of history. On September 13th and 14th 1777 John Burgoyne General Burgoyne crossed the Hudson near Saratoga and advanced along the right bank. There on September 19th he was attacked losing about 600 men and inflicting equal loss on the enemy meaning colonial troops. In the meantime the Americans had thrown a force across Burgoyne's rear which intercepted his supplies at the foot of Lake George while at the same time they made an unsuccessful attack on Ticonderoga. Burgoyne's position was now becoming deplorable. His Indian allies began deserting. His horses were dying for lack of forage. There were no tidings of any British force advancing from the east. Yet the bare possibility that Clinton General Clinton might be on his way forbade him to retreat while every day's delay made retreat more hopeless. All that he could do was to entrench himself and hold out as long as supplies lasted in the faint hope that the advance of Clinton or some unlooked for turn of events might bring relief. On October 6th Burgoyne decided he had to retreat and with a view to clearing the way for his main army advanced with a detachment of 1500 men against the enemy's lines against Washington's Valley Forge army. The Americans however acted on the offensive. Burgoyne was driven back within the lines in a fierce attack was made in which part of the entrenchments were stormed and many of the British among them some of Burgoyne's best officers fell. Two days later Burgoyne succeeded in moving a few miles to the rear but every step that he took was attended with loss of equipage supplies and what was most valuable to the captors ammunition. Burgoyne's force now had shrunk to about 3500 men hardly a fourth of the American army which was daily increasing only about eight days. Provisions remained and the total destruction of Burgoyne's communications made it impossible to obtain further supplies. That on October 13th 1777 he opened negotiations for a surrender. These were completed on the 16th and in the words of British history important as was the surrender of Saratoga. From a military view its political effects were still greater and the fact was that for the first time the Americans had defeated a sizeable trained English army. On the move had shown especially the French that they were capable perhaps not yet of winning a victory in this Revolutionary War but that England was not going to just quash them in a few months or in one year's time that in fact this was going to be a long protracted war. And the fact that the way in which Washington's troops were able to amass themselves dedicate themselves at Saratoga. It was the courage of the American army in the face of the withering firepower. The long lines of British troops.

I'm sure that all of you are familiar with this meat grinder technique which they had adopted at Saratoga. The victory of the American army made it possible for Franklin to go through the Comte de Vergennes to the King of France and say we have a chance. If we have your help we have victory. And the French understood this. And then of course the word began to spread throughout Europe. Spain wanted to get in on the act. Holland wanted to get in on the act from a distance. Russia wanted to get in on the act and Franklin a master at pulling together a wide matrix of odds and ends and forming a pattern out of it and getting a direct action in real life out of it began to go to work and it was with the news of Saratoga that Franklin finally began to shine in French society. He began to realize that this war and whatever treaties would come out of it would take many years that they were not going to happen all at once. There was never going to be any point or line at which the development would finally yield an answer. And so when an individual like John Adams was also sent over and several other individuals John Jay Henry Laurens from South Carolina. These individuals were sent over. They had no idea of the scope of Franklin's finesse of his sense of historical pattern and movement and Adams frequently would write home and say this guy Franklin is almost as much French as the French.

It's offensive to see a fellow colonist from Pennsylvania charming the people at court. And he would say again and again in his letters you can't trust anyone like this. This guy is checking the chins of the ladies and talking to the royalty. There's no telling what he's doing in his spare time. And of course Franklin imperturbable. He had many times in his life endured scathing rebukes in public. In fact once in London they had brought in the best barristers with the sharpest tongues to berate Franklin in front of a whole crowd of peers there and he imperturbable took it all. He was after something else. He was after bringing into manifestation waves of the universal pattern and not of making an event happen for egotistical purposes. And so Franklin sensing that others were not understanding his methodology his pace began keeping a notebook and day by day he kept track of the negotiations for peace. And in fact one of the greatest documents Song ever written and you rarely see it almost never reprinted by itself. Occasionally included in his writings. Buried. It's about 70 pages long. The Journal for the Negotiation of Peace with Great Britain is a wonderful document to see the unfolding of Franklin's grand mature mind and he kept this from. The earliest dates are May 9th 1782 all the way through June.

Actually he went back and filled in from March so that from March through June up until July 1782 day by day person by person event and character by event and character Franklin gives us the notion in which history manifests itself through the power of man's mind to conceive of the right pattern and his courage to take that pattern into life itself and put it into motion. And the tremendous vitality of his spiritual courage to hold to. That course no matter what. And with this of course just to give you an idea of how incredible his imagination was he designed a great seal for the United States which they never used. On the back of the seal it showed Moses on one side of the Red Sea and Pharaoh's troops drowning and the pillar of fire up in the heavens. And this was only the back of the seal. Fantastic individual.

I've picked out here several passages of this wonderful journal of his because this is right at the core of how Franklin's mind worked. And I thought this would be interesting to you. Just a few things. There were many countries involved and one of the oddest countries that was involved was Russia. And you have to realize that Russia was already exploring along what they called the back side of North America. I believe they were as far south as Fort Bragg California in this area. It's odd. Very very very strange.

Anyway this journal Franklin writes in here one of the big concerns was the status of Canada. By 1782 it was becoming questionable. Should Canada still belong to Britain or should it also be free. And Britain kept delaying because they were having operations in the West Indies. And they began to think that well maybe we can get back into this game. Maybe it isn't all over. And so everything was up in the air. The ministers from England were Mr. Oswald and Mr. Grenville. Franklin writing. This is May 8th 1782 in Paris.

In our return Mr. Oswald repeated to me his opinion that the affair of Canada would be settled to our satisfaction and his wish that it might not be mentioned till towards the end of the treaty. He intimated too that it was apprehended the greatest obstruction in the treaty that the greatest obstruction might come on the part of Spain but said if she was unreasonable there were means of bringing her to reason that Russia was a friend to England and had lately made great discoveries on the back of North America and had made establishments there and might easily transport an army from Kamchatka the peninsula to the coast of Mexico and conquer all those countries. Franklin says this appeared to me a little visionary at present but I did not dispute it.

So they were working with grand conceptions huge ideas huge flows of people and events. And of course this was characteristic of the age will and Ariel Durant called it the age of Voltaire and there are volumes covering that period.

But actually when you look at what they were doing the main section of this a better title is called The advancement of learning. And as one looks down what is the advancement of learning it is the organizing of individual episodic bits of information into encyclopedic patterns. And this was the great age of encyclopedias. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was being born and its various editions from three volumes in its first edition to ten just a few years later Diderot and d'Alembert working on their encyclopedia in France. So that this enormous idea really the revolutionary idea of the age was that man was taking a quantum step forward because he was no longer bound by the compass of what one individual or what one group of individuals could know but the entirety of human learning was being organized and focused so that any man in any group could be the recipient of all of it. And of course this began to be one of those ideas infusing energy and insight into those individuals in the vanguard who were being able to pick up on this drift. And Franklin was the master of them all. There wasn't anybody in Europe at this time anywhere in the world at this time more than Franklin who understood the importance of this and the fact that one did not have to have the regalia of royalty to be in center stage on history anymore.

You could wear a fur hat and be equanimity with a glass of wine and the ladies in the court and you were still at the focus of the concentrated organized knowledge of man. A revolutionary idea not just for the American Revolution. Remember it was only a few years after Franklin left that the French also had their revolution because the whole country had been seeded and nourished by the prodding presence of this genius for a long time. It was contagious. The man incidentally who replaced Franklin Thomas Jefferson so that France got the brunt of American genius at its heyday. When this idea of using an encyclopedia to irradiate an individual of capability to the point by which they could literally generate workable patterns by which history could move. We see it again and again in individuals after that and some individuals became electrocuted by the idea like Napoleon but nevertheless Franklin was the first to really embody this. So during the negotiations for peace as Franklin was taking care he said well this is very visionary to conceive of Russia sending troops to invade Mexico and so forth. But let's leave that in the air. Let's not make too much out of this. So later on of course I can see by time I'm going to have to skip over this. I had outlined everything in here that the upshot for Spain was this John Jay was the representative of the United States who went to Spain to negotiate.

And when he came back this is what happened. Saturday June 29th 1782.

We went together to the Spanish ambassadors who received us with great civility and in politeness. He spoke with Mr. Jay on the subject of the treaty they were to make together and mentioned in general as a principle that the two powers should consider each other's conveniency and accommodate and compensate each other as well as they could.

Now this was a great advance because all the way through the negotiations England had refused to name the United States as a specific particular party. They made the claim that they were negotiating with France and her allies that it was to be a general peace. No one was specifically named. And again and again Franklin would bring up the point that what was needed here was a recognition that they were dealing with an independent entity one that had its own shapes and purposes. And it was actually Spain in its negotiations with Jay That first began to conceive of the United States as an independent entity one which they would have to deal with each other's convenience. There was of course the issue that the King of Sweden who admired the United States very very very much sent a personal letter to Franklin saying that he wanted to be sure that Sweden was the first to sign certain agreements with the United States and that Franklin's signature must be on those agreements.

He was sure that this was important and he wanted to see that done. I have always thought it a quite astounding that one of the major subscribers for Manly Hall's great encyclopedia encyclopedic work was the King of Sweden. I believe it was. Yeah. Very very interesting that the grand encyclopedia in our time should also have this reverberation of the King of Sweden as those negotiations drew to a formative position it wasn't really settled to everyone's satisfaction but treaties were finally brought up. Franklin who at that time was approaching his 80th year asked to be relieved. He had been away from the United States a total of nearly 30 years in his life but it was several years before he was actually allowed to come home. And only upon Thomas Jefferson arriving in Paris to replace him in 1786 while he was there for the two years in between the time of the treaties being signed. Franklin became somewhat of a cause celebre to the Nth degree in Parisian society. He was involved in nearly everything that went on with importance and social flair. He was one of his accounts is of the first hot air balloon. The balloon is going up these wonderful gaudy fabric covered balloons with the gondolas. And Franklin was there. And in fact his description a letter of December 1st 1783. He says he writes

I decline going into the garden of the Tuileries where the balloon was placed not knowing how long I might be obliged to wait there before it was ready to depart and chose to stay in my carriage near the statue of Louis XV from whence I could see it rise and have an extensive view of the region of air through which as the wind sat it was likely to pass. The morning was foggy but about 1:00 the air became tolerably clear to the great satisfaction of the spectators who were infinite notice having been given of the intended experiment several days before in the papers so that all Paris was out either about the Tuileries on the quays and bridges in the fields the streets at the windows or on the tops of houses. Besides the inhabitants of all the towns and villages of the environs. Never before was a philosophic experiment so magnificently attended. Some guns were fired to give notice that the departure of the Great Balloon was near and a small one was discharged which went to an amazing height there being but little wind to make it deviate from its perpendicular course and at length the sight of it was lost. Means were used I am told to prevent the great balloons rising so high as it might endanger itself by bursting.

And with great fanfare the balloon was launched and they went about seven leagues on this particular voyage and journey.And of course the crowds were infinite as he said but it was the presence of Franklin the Grand Franklin who really was the focus of it all who really brought the thing to light.

And in fact the King of France really loving Franklin loving his tremendous capacity had Franklin head a committee one time to investigate this wild man Antoine Mesmer who had arrived. He'd been thrown out of his own country and he arrived in Paris with a great entourage of people. And they were producing all kinds of experiments with animal magnetism and making lots of money and more money and more money. In fact Franklin wrote in one of his letters he said why a disciple of Mesmer has cleared over 2 million by himself what this man must have. So the King of France had a investigating committee. Who was the head of it Benjamin Franklin to investigate. Mesmer and Franklin has many accounts of this. Letters to people and this wonderful report that was presented to the King. He also at this time was writing incredible tracts of speculation. This one just a paragraph from Theory of Conservation of Energy foreshadowed. This is just entitled Loose Thoughts on a Universal Fluid. And he writes

1784 June 25th Universal space as far as we know it seems to be filled with a subtle fluid whose notion or vibration is called light.

So you can see this incredible clarity of mind of Franklin. And of course he was just he was the toast of the entire continent at that time. But all was not over. He left France. He said it was going to be very difficult and problematical because of his illnesses. Some trouble with gallstones. He thought that the travel might be very bad for him. Marie Antoinette donated a special litter to carry Franklin to the coast and the voyage across was charmed and smooth. And he arrived back home just in time for the Constitutional Convention. Right on schedule. And of course Franklin's own building Carpenters Hall was the place in which this was being held. And it was like the Grand Host of the Republic providing the building providing the tremendous liaison with the spirit of the age. Providing himself and all of his cordiality. And of course people like John Adams who were really interesting plotters would describe Franklin as the man who was asleep through all of these deliberations. But of course we've all seen the great geniuses who can sit there with their eyes closed and recount you specifically what everyone said and further what they meant. So Franklin again during the Constitutional Convention was just absolutely spectacular. His great punning love of Washington and was a highlight of in that relationship. Washington really the polarity to Franklin the great aristocrat and the man whose temper had to be corralled. One time Franklin was talking to Jefferson and the way they were paring things down getting the statements down from great complex statements to narrow and narrow ones Franklin said. you know once we were trying to make a printing advertisement for a man and there was a hat and the advertisement said over here John so-and-so Hatter who makes these hats to sell for ready money. And by the time we got through taking out what was superfluous we had the image of the hat and the man's name and that was it. And he said it looks like we're doing the same thing here. And of course there's the record of this time would be incomplete without some images to visualize these great events. I know I was amazed one time when I was looking at a reproduction of Trumbull's great painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and there in the center of the pane the tall red haired hawk the eagle of the Republic Jefferson handing over the Declaration of Independence and right next to him almost like a movement of his elbow. Franklin standing there and then as one looked up and got the geometry right above their heads was both the American flag and the Red cross flag brought together. And one is reminded of course of Spenser's Red Cross Knight in The Faerie Queene the great Elizabethan metaphysical protagonist. And for those of you who follow the esoteric founding of the United States this will be significant. Well I've called some of these images out and I think we ought to look at what do we have. We have about 12 of them.

Let's look at about 12 slides and then we'll color it. There we go. This is his daughter. He had a son and a daughter. This is Sarah. His. He had a son Francis who died when he was four. And Franklin many many years later. 30 or 40 years later said that he still missed his little Frankie that he would have really been a spectacular human being. He was given as a parting gift by the King of France a portrait of the King of France that had 408 diamonds in it and after Franklin passed on his daughter used the diamonds to sponsor a grand tour of Europe. This is the wild man. It's interesting too. I think I should bring out that this is a there is a little bit of occult significance to the posture when one looks through the side at this angle is about 45 degrees. One thing engenders the capacity to see three dimensionally on a two dimensional surface. You can try it sometime by holding a book or a plate or something at about 45 degrees so you're not looking directly at it but about 45 degrees. It gives the appearance of three dimensionality. So here's Franklin looking at the three dimensional world with this wonderful penetration. This is Franklin as a young man. Very young. And this is younger still baby Ben. And I guess we're to take it that the forward look here in that child's face that's present in this was.

That many cartoons and designs. Franklin cannot die. And of course he's being held here by various mythological images. I think we have a couple others here. Yeah. This one is set free by Franklin. There's Liberty and Columbia. And Franklin is sort of like the Dante of the entire journey. And this one Franklin is shielded by Hermes up above. That isn't quite in focus here. Hermes is up above him and has his shield. And his caduceus is pointing down. And the lightning from the sky and the yeah from the Titans. All these were fabulous images at the time. And you can see that the caricatures of Franklin are quite loving. Admirable. In fact there was a whole Franklin mania. I think the only thing we can think of in our time is sort of the Elvis Presley mania. The Franklin's arrival in Paris. Everything had pictures of Franklin chamber pots whatever it was. Finally Franklin said you know I can't go anywhere. Even the dogs recognize me. This is the earliest generator. Electrical generator. Franklin designed it and made it. He had a way of having sophisticated ideas and primitive elements and somehow it got together a little wood a little glass some wax some chamois skin and electrical generator. It's very amazing. This is that detail in Trumbull. There's the Red cross flag and the American flag. And there's Adams of course and Roger Sherman and Livingston and Jefferson and Franklin.

Really the focus as they were. I can't think of a one-two punch like that in history very often. Extraordinary. Here is Diogenes reputed to be the philosopher who searched the world for an honest man. Here he is declaiming. Listen. Yeah. Well do you mind. And of course Franklin beautifully with the open collar. He's almost Californian. Yeah. Who drew those pictures there. I forget who this was. Somebody in France. Just to show the wonderful appeal. This one is interesting. All the ladies in the court are trying to get his attention. And of course he's standing like a very good boy not letting anyone really get more than their share. This is a painting made in the 20th century of the Continental Constitution meeting. Franklin is on the left and Washington on the right. You can see Franklin on the far left standing stalwart. This Columbian genius Franklin of fame is carved I believe on the kiosk up above that temple. And there's Franklin being led and the banner reads something like wherever liberty is that is my country or there I live. And so he's being led to universally fame. Here he is with the kite and the key highly stylized. The wind blowing the revolutionary man black and white of the Diogenes. This is his wife. Deborah Read was her maiden name Debbie called her my dear Debbie or sometimes in their correspondence she addressed him as my dear child.

I think his description of her was that she was handsome regular everyday woman who is a blessing to him. And they were married for 45 years. She died in 1774. We have. Is this the American Philosophical Society. It's interesting to note that Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society and we're here tonight in the Masonic Research Society. On the other end of the continent some 200 years later. The library I believe in Philadelphia he began all these things all these societies and libraries and organizations began and he set them up so the funding was right so they could go on so that they would staff them. Everything was handled so that they were together. The Franklin Arms. Portraits. After Greece portray. philosopher. The philosopher. The organizer of mine and its penetration into life. And then finished. Group portrait. Franklin. John Jay is the standing figure on the left. Laurens. Henry Laurens is the one on the right. He was captured and put in the Tower of London for some time and later traded for I think for Gentleman John Burgoyne. Life and career of Alice Adams is on the left and I think that's Franklin's son William Temple Franklin an illegitimate son who Franklin recognized all his life. They never knew the mother of William Temple. He became the governor of New Jersey and was a Tory and refused to cross over and was jailed after the American Revolution. The cover of the Almanack is that the first Almanack. No it's 48 1748. 15 15. So. That's it. Next week Thomas Jefferson.