FROM BEN FRANKLIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Franklin--exemplar of the American dream, supreme gadget man, and optimistic Founding Father--applies the Enlightenment belief in order and rationality to engineering the self):

  “I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul'd each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross'd these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.”

CHARLES WILLSON PEALE (1741-1827)

“THE ARTIST IN HIS MUSEUM”—1822

Peale applied Enlightenment principles to nature by creating the first rationally-classified American natural history museum.