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[153] [A Short Account of Benjamin Franklin, 1825] Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis The son of a lawyer and a farmer, Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) loved reading the classics and John Locke. At sixteen, he became for two years secretary to a Polish gentleman whom he accompanied to his country. Then, as he needed to make a living, he decided to study medicine. Being of delicate health, in 1778, he chose to live in Auteuil, where he met Mme. Helvétius, thanks to Turgot. He became a surrogate son to her who had lost her only boy many years before; he went on living in her house after getting married, and inherited her estate. He died of apoplexy a few years after his benefactor. As a physician, he was more of a theoretician than a practitioner. In 1789, he published his first book, Observations sur les hôpitaux (Observations on Hospitals). He became a close friend of leading revolutionaries, Mirabeau and Condorcet, attending the former in his final illness, and marrying the latter’s sister-in-law. In the 1790s, he was appointed to many important positions in scientific institutions and in politics. His agnosticism and his interests in scientific and philosophical developments made him a welcome addition to the société of Auteuil. Politically, he was a republican who actively supported Napoleon’s coup d’état in November 1799, a choice he was to regret. His ideas on biology and medicine, on the nature of man, are a synthesis of the theories of Locke, the materialist La Mettrie, the theorist of sensibility Albrecht von Haller and the sensualist Condillac. He reached a more integrated conception of the human organism, emphasizing the importance of physiology for scientific progress; he rejected a dualistic conception of human nature, though he is not a materialist in the usual sense of the word. His ideas are related to those of Helvétius, though he never met him. His memoir of Benjamin Franklin glows with kindness and his admiration for the great American diplomat, who clearly enjoyed telling him about his past life. Cabanis also impressed Franklin, who secured his election to the American Philosophical Society (as a foreign member) in 1786, even before he had published any important work. franklin in his own time [154] such was benjamin franklin, certainly more extraordinary in the eyes of his friends, more worthy of being observed in his daily life than he was great in the eyes of America and Europe. He attended the birth of his own country, so to speak: his name is to be found at the vanguard of all its great achievements. In many ways, the emancipation of the United States was accomplished by him. His memory is hallowed by that revolution, the most useful to human happiness to have occurred on earth at that time, and by one of the most brilliant discoveries of physics. Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis. [He snatched lightning from the sky and scepters from tyrants.—Turgot] But those achievements which epitomize his public life leave aside the most precious in him. His personality was much more valuable than his fame. Benjamin Franklin depicted himself in Memoirs only a fragment of which has been published so far; but that was published by his enemies or incumbents of the Cabinet of Saint James’s. They provided dull notes, to which his family should have responded sooner by publishing the rest of the work. In the meantime we will offer here a few insights I have from Franklin’s own lips, in the course of an intimate connection which lasted several years. It is well-known that he was born in Boston in 1705; that he was a printer and bookseller in Philadelphia; that he entered public life only after retiring from trade, about the age of forty; and that his first experiments with electricity happened at about that time. That might seem an unnecessary reminder; but some details from his early life must not be ignored, for they give the key to his personality, or rather because they bring to our knowledge those circumstances which laid the basis of his personality. His father and mother were prosperous artisans whose daily labor provided all their income. In childhood Franklin wanted nothing; his soul was not injured by need; and the first examples he came across were of hard work, thrift, common sense, virtue and the happiness produced by an industrious life. His mother is said to...

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