And well might he, without much compunction of conscience, think of ease in his high old age, for few men ever lived who made throughout their lives a more arduous and valuable use of their time. I know of no man in history whose mind was more incessantly active and more inexhaustibly fertile—not in abstract ideas and creations of fancy—for his imagination was not remarkable—but in observing things and phenomena and men and affairs and in drawing rapid conclusions from what he observed, and in making those conclusions practically useful. His was a wonderfully originating mind, not dependent upon suggestions or impulse from others, but seemingly always knowing what to do and doing it or seeing it done. And almost all he thought or said or did was calculated to do somebody some good.
I began by saying that no human being can study Benjamin Franklin's life without drawing some valuable lesson from it. There is a characteristic reason for this. With all his greatness—we may look upon him as one of the greatest men that ever lived—yet we find him so essentially, sympathetically, lovably human, that every human being feels near to him. There is in his greatness nothing that repels, or even in the least discourages approach.
He was full of human passion and frailty, like many other people. He overcame them, not by working himself up to lofty ethical abstractions, above the reach of the common run of men, but by common-sense reflections, which the most ordinary minds can understand and which even natures of a coarse moral fiber can follow; and by exertions of will, which everybody should be capable of. He set out, not as a self-conscious, wonderful genius to do great things, but as a clear, observing and active mind to do useful things; and doing many useful things in a manner intelligible to all, he became great.
