FROM BEN FRANKLIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Franklin (1706-1790) is an exemplar of the American dream, a supreme gadget man, and an optimistic Founding Father.  In this passage from his Autobiography, he 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--painter and organizer of the first U.S. science/natural history museum--applied Enlightenment principles to nature in his self-portrait, representing himself standing at the entry way to his Philadelphia museum.