men; he has laid
hold of those prudential maxims which are a security against
destruction, and which fit one for self-guidance.

"The reason why I should take him for a master and a guide in the
education of a human being, is this:--he represents the simple,
healthy, human understanding, the firmly established and the safe; not
the erratic spirit of genius, but those virtues of head and of heart
which steadily and quietly promote man's social happiness and his moral
well-being.

"Luther was the conqueror of the middle ages; Franklin is the first in
modern times to make himself. The modern man is no longer a martyr;
Luther was none, and Franklin still less. No martyrdom.

"Franklin has introduced into the world no new maxim, but he has
expressed with simplicity those which an honest man can find in
himself.

"In what Franklin is, and in what he imparts, there is nothing
peculiar, nothing exciting, nothing surprising, nothing mysterious,
nothing brilliant nor dazzling; it is the water of life, the water
which all creatures stand in need of." (Here it was written on the
margin,--Deep springs are yet to be bored for, and to be found here)
"The man of the past eighteenth century had no idea of the people,
could have none, for it was wrung and refined out of the free thinking
that prevailed even to the very end of the century, even to the
revolution.

"He who creates anew stands in a strange and hostile, or, at least,
independent attitude towards that which already exists.

"Franklin is the son of this age; he recognizes only the in-born worth
of men, not the inherited. (Deeper boring is yet to be done here)."

With paler ink, evidently later, it was written,--

"It is not by chance, that this first not only free-thinking,--for many
philosophers were this,--but also free-acting man was a printer.

"In the sphere of books lies not the heroism,--I believe that the
period of heroic development is past,--but the manhood of the new age.

"Because our influence is exerted through books, there can be no longer
any grand, personal manifestation of power." (Here were two
interrogation-points and two exclamation-points in brackets, and there
was written in pencil across this last remark,--"This can be better
said.")

Then at the conclusion there was written in blue ink,--

"Abstract rules can form no character, no human being, and can create
no work of art. The living man, and the concrete work of art contain
all rules,