Franklin’s Virtues

Thirteen virtues in Franklin’s order

1. 1
   Temperance — Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. 2
   Silence — Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. 3
   Order — Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. 4
   Resolution — Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. 5
   Frugality — Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. 6
   Industry — Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. 7
   Sincerity — Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. 8
   Justice — Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. 9
   Moderation — Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. 10
    Cleanliness — Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. 11
    Tranquillity — Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. 12
    Chastity — Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. 13
    Humility — Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Repeated attention, an interrupted life

Imagine the satisfaction of ruling a fresh notebook: seven columns, thirteen lines and a page waiting to be spotless. Then someone arrives during the hour assigned to another task. A helpful comment exposes a mistake. Pride takes credit for the modest way you received it. Franklin’s narrative gives the notebook these interruptions, not merely a victorious last page.

The shared challenge is repeated attention without confusing a record of conduct with the whole person. The thirteen entries do different work: Silence leaves room to hear, Sincerity asks what speech makes clear, Resolution carries a defensible intention into action, and Justice asks whose claim or duty the plan has overlooked. Frugality and Industry can support useful work, while Moderation and Tranquillity ask what size a response deserves. The connections matter more than a competition to collect a flawless row of marks.

A reader can borrow the question of what to notice next without adopting every historical command or keeping a fault ledger. One small commitment, a shared shelf or a conversation can make an abstract aspiration testable. The resulting observation may revise the method as well as the person using it.

The virtues working together

Order and Justice

An orderly allocation is not fair merely because its columns match. Hearing a person with a different constraint may require changing the arrangement.

Resolution and discernment

Keeping a commitment matters; deciding whether it should still be kept matters too. A promise does not make harmful work defensible.

Industry and Temperance

Useful effort can leave space for meals, conversation and rest. Franklin’s own daily schedule is more varied than the detached instruction to be always employed.

Humility and an accurate account

The notebook can become another display of achievement. A correction is useful when it changes the work, not when it becomes a performance of being admirably correctable.

The experiment in its setting

An experiment, not a finished character

In Part II of his Autobiography, Franklin describes trying to turn conviction into habit. He wanted moral perfection, discovered that attention to one fault could leave another unnoticed, and devised a repeatable method. The attraction is concrete: a good intention needs somewhere to go tomorrow. The complication is just as concrete: a tidy record can tempt its keeper to confuse an unmarked page with a good life.

How his notebook worked

Franklin describes a separate page for each virtue, with seven columns for days and thirteen rows for the virtues. Each evening he marked faults with black spots. He gave one virtue special attention for a week while continuing to record the others, then moved through the sequence. His projected course took thirteen weeks, with four courses in a year. That describes his experiment; this reference page does not enroll you in it or ask you to count faults.

Why this order?

He expected earlier habits to support later ones: Temperance would help attention, Silence learning, Order the use of time, and Resolution persistence in the project. Frugality and Industry would ease debt and support independence, making Sincerity and Justice easier. This is Franklin’s account of a practical sequence, not a universal ranking of moral importance or a promise that financial comfort produces goodness.

The schedule met a visitor

His account gives Order the most trouble. Other people arrived on their own schedules, possessions resisted their allotted places, and relapses frustrated him. He compares the temptation to settle for imperfection with a customer who tires of turning a grindstone to polish an axe. The speckled axe story contains both relief and self-suspicion: perhaps a workable imperfection is enough; perhaps that reasoning is an excuse. The interesting question survives without requiring either answer in every case.

The method changed

Franklin says he first reduced the frequency of the courses, later did one only after several years, and eventually omitted the examinations amid travel and business. He reports improvement while admitting that perfection escaped him. This is a retrospective self-assessment, not independent proof that his system causes happiness or success. The old site’s story of a flawlessly disciplined achiever loses this useful friction.

Religion remains in the picture

The surrounding account includes prayer, religious belief and a wish that the method could serve people across religious sects. Humility’s precept names Jesus and Socrates. Franklin also quotes other writers near his notebook description; their words do not become his authorship merely because he copied them. Our selections below are his precepts and his own two schedule questions.

Read the aspiration beside the life

A list about Justice is not proof of a just life. The National Archives documents Franklin’s earlier ownership of enslaved people and his later leadership in the Pennsylvania abolition society. In 1790 he signed its petition to Congress seeking action against slavery. The later advocacy matters without cancelling the earlier wrong. Ask who was excluded from the opportunities, independence and moral attention celebrated by the story.

An inheritance you can reconsider

The contemporary adaptations in the thirteen readings are authored for virtue.net. They keep possible insights visible while changing demands we cannot endorse as universal: ceaseless work, emotional suppression, sexual reputation as a measure of worth, or failure-free resolve. They are neither Franklin quotations nor new canonical definitions. A reader may take repeated attention from the method while declining its fault ledger or any particular precept.

What the experiment can be mistaken for

The spotless record

A flattering page may omit what an honest one would notice. Marks describe an examination under a chosen method, not a complete measure of moral worth.

A historical success formula

Franklin credits habits with advantages in his life. His narrative also includes support, opportunity and exclusion; it does not prove that poverty or difficulty arises from defective conduct.

The inherited rule as universal duty

The original precepts retain their historical spelling and assumptions. Clearly labeled adaptations invite reconsideration; they do not turn new wording into a quotation or require belief in every rule.

Franklin’s two schedule questions

What good shall I do this day?

What good have I done to-day?

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography, Part II, daily schedule

Questions worth returning to

• Which original precept surprises you most, and why?
• Where does Franklin’s account revise the expectations of his own scheme?
• What could one modest observation teach you that a grand promise cannot?

Read the sources