Moderation and complex in Franklin’s character
After reading this biography of Franklin, to me, the most impressive part of Franklin is his moderation and the balance in his character, for he is really good at combining two relative opposites in himself. It is really hard to tell whether he is a puritan or an enlightener, either a man of humility or arrogance, even it’s hard to define him an introvert or an extrovert. A perfect personality as Franklin is famous for, the words “mixed” and “complex” are fine to describe him and he just can find his position right between two extremes.
Raised in the contradictory of the puritanism and enlightenment of that time, Franklin epitomized the main characteristic of that time. When he talked about his attitude towards religion, he was surely a sincere believer when it came to essential religious principles such as the existence of Deity, that our souls are immortal, that all the crimes will be punished and so on. And he even composed a Little Liturgy for private use; however, unlike most puritan followers, he saw the religion from a critical view, that he despised some of those unintelligible dogmas as well as time-wasting public worship. Actually from this we can see that Franklin developed the thinking mode of selecting the good and the truth, without much scruples of established rules and regulations. And the contradictions of enlightenment and puritanism both exist and influence each other in Franklin’s way of treating the religion, also his way of life.
Franklin was also a man standing in the middle of arrogance and humility. Throughout the book, he tried to present his modesty, for which purpose he showed his understanding of vanity, and explained the uselessness of the fame. But we still can feel the proud and joy from this man’s innate superiority especially when difficulties came to him, those difficulties seemed so friendly to him and his acquaintance was always willing to offer a helping hand. These facts...