ime.

That sturdy and natural virtue was embodied in Benjamin Franklin,--in all
this eighteenth century the best type and herald of the coming
development of man. Franklin inherited the characteristic virtue of the
Englishman and the Puritan; he started in ground which Puritan and Quaker
had fertilized, and when the fire of the early zeal had cooled; he worked
out the problem of life for himself with great independence and entire
good sense. After a few vagaries and some wholesome buffeting, he
determined that "moral perfection" was the only satisfying aim. But
instead of proclaiming his discovery as a gospel, he quietly utilized it
for his personal guidance. He had a keen eye for all utility; he carved
out his own fortune; he early identified his own happiness with that of
the people around him, and served the community with disinterested
faithfulness through a long life. That unselfish beneficence, of which
Goethe thought a single instance was enough to save his hero from the
fiend to whom he had fairly forfeited his selfish soul, was the habit of
Franklin's lifetime. He found the ample sanctions and rewards of virtue
in the present world, though he held a cheerful hope of something beyond.
In the study of this world's laws, he saw, lay the best road to human
success. He recognized the homely virtues of industry and thrift, on
which the young American society had worked out its real strength, and
assigned to them the fundamental place, instead of that mystic and
introspective piety which the Calvinist made his corner-stone. He took
the lead in penetrating the secrets of nature, and not less in moulding
and guiding the infant nation. If his virtue was prudential rather than
heroic, his prudence was close to that large wisdom which is a right
apprehension of all the facts of life. Only the realm of the poet, the
mystic, the ardent lover, lay beyond his ken. He stands side by side
with the grand and magnanimous figure of Washington,--the twin founders
of the American republic.

The complexity and onrush of the nineteenth century may be in some degree
made clear if we fix our eyes on certain typical groups of men whom we
may classify under the aspects of Knowledge, Philosophy, Literature,
Protestantism, Catholicism, Social Ideals, Personal Ideals.

Regarding under Knowledge what may fairly be considered as solid and
irreversible acquisition,--the general movement of humanity has received
conspicuous interpr