but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken." Compare with this the rules which Edwards drew up at nearly the same age to govern him in his writing about scientific matters: "1. Try not only to silence, but to gain. 2. To give but few prefatorial admonitions about the style and method. It doth an author much hurt to show his concern in those things. . . 4. Let much modesty be seen in the style. . . . 8. In the course of reasoning, not to pretend anything to be more certain, than every one will plainly see it is, by such expressions as,—It is certain,—It is undeniable, etc. 9. To be very moderate in the terms of art. Let it not look as if I was much read, or was conversant with books, or with the learned world. . . . 11. Never to dispute for things, after that I cannot handsomely retreat, upon conviction of the contrary. . . 5. Oftentimes it suits the subject and reasoning best, to explain by way of objection and answer, after the manner of Dialogue."

Each in his own way, it thus appears, they hit upon much the same arts of rhetoric. Of Edwards' early reading we know less than of Franklin's, but it is at least certain that Yale College had at the moment among its students a mind as open and lucid as that less profound one then industriously disciplining itself and laying canny plans in James Franklin's printing shop at Boston. Edwards too had read Locke (at fourteen) as well as his father's polemical books; he had written whimsically upon the materiality of the soul when he was ten or so; and by twelve he had produced his observant letter upon the flying spider in such prosé as boys rarely command. He very early acquired his life-long habit of writing,of reading and thinking pen in hand,—and his boyhood has left us a more abundant record than Franklin's. For the most part, the record is of philosophical or scientific affairs. No careful reader of his "Notes on the Mind" and "Notes on Natural Science" can avoid the conclusion that Edwards belongs with the phenomenal youths of the race. It is true that these Notes are undated, but he certainly began both series at fifteen or sixteen-an age at which Franklin was amusing Boston with the Dogood

papers-and formulated most of his ideas before the troubled period 1722-1725, so candidly recorded in his Diary, which drew Edwards away from the humaner concerns of his adolescence to his mighty, and appalling, labors in defence of High Calvinism. Before he was twenty he had moved beyond Locke to the idealistic position of Bishop Berkeley, whom Edwards had almost certainly never read; he had studied Newton, had reached an independent position with regard to the method of science, and had made important first-hand observations in nature. What he might have accomplished had he gone on with his youthful plans for great treatises on Mental and Natural Philosophy and Natural History we need not try to guess, large as his promise was, but we should remember the freedom and variety of his speculations at this stage. Franklin, at odds with accepted doctrines in Boston, would have subscribed to the preamble to "Notes on Natural Science": "Of all prejudices," it begins, "no one so fights with Natural Philosophy, and prevails more against it, than those of the Imagination. It is these, which make the vulgar so roar out, upon the mention of some very rational philosophical truths. And indeed I have known of some very learned men, that have pretended to a more than ordinary freedom from such prejudices, so overcome by them, that, merely because of them, they have believed things most absurd. And truly, I hardly know of any other prejudices, that are more powerful against truth of any kind, than those; and I believe they will not give the hand to any in any case, except to those arising from our ruling self-interest, or the impetuosity of human passions. And there is very good reason for it: for opinions, arising from imagination, take us as soon as we are born, are beat into us by every act of sensation, and so grow up with us from our very births, and by that means grow into us so fast, that it is almost impossible to root them out; being, as it were, so incorporated with our very minds that whatsoever is objected contrary thereunto, is, as if it were dissonant to the very constitution of them." Franklin, indeed, hardly stood on the side of the argument which contended for the reality of things not seen, but he was with Edwards in his confidence in the reason, in his desire to bring knowledge to the place of super

stition, and in his contempt for the vulgar who so "roar | out" at a new idea.

The resemblance between them as regards keenness of observation and range of curiosity was still more marked. We have only to compare, for instance, the journal which Franklin kept on his first return from England at the age of twenty with Edwards' long list of "Things to Be Considered, or Written Fully About." Franklin, of course, was gayer, more attentive to human traits and singularities, but nothing visible eluded his tireless eye or his easy pen, whether it was prices at Gravesend, or the harbor of Portsmouth, or the philosophy of drafts (checkers), or Newport oysters, or Carisbrooke Castle, or the treatment of a card sharper caught at his tricks, or the looks and habits of dolphins, or the pilot-fish which hang about sharks, or the little creatures found on floating pieces of gulf-weed, or the crab's mode of locomotion, or the eclipse of the moon, or the arts of the flying fish, or the reputed anatomy of the heron. Edwards, to judge by his manuscripts, though sharp-eyed for phenomena, looked past them more quickly than Franklin to causes and general laws. He speculated upon the nature and behavior of atoms; argued that the fixed stars are suns; commented on the difficulty in explaining why trees should grow from the seed into this or that form; shrewdly recorded his observations of the speed of sounds; sought to account for color, elasticity, evaporation, the single image which two eyes receive of one object, the disparity of the sun's heat in winter and summer; he pointed out that water is compressible, and loses its specific gravity upon freezing; he suggested that space contains some "etherial matter" considerably rarer than "atmospheric air"; and, anticipating Franklin's studies in lightning, declared that it could not be a solid, projected body but an "almost infinitely fine, combustible matter, that floats in the air, that takes fire by a sudden and mighty fermentation, that is some way promoted by the cool and moisture, and perhaps attraction, of the clouds."

Without much doubt Edwards would have been the equal of Franklin as a scientist had he continued in such studies, and the two might have divided between them that "New World of Philosophy" of which both had

visions, Edwards excelling in pure, Franklin in applied, science. Actually, however, both departed from their early common ground. Franklin went the way of invention following the popular bent of American science. Edwards, held back from the popular drift by his recluse disposition and by his speculative, mystical turn, went the way of theology, giving up not only natural science but also secular philosophy, in which he was more penetrating, or at least more imaginative, than Franklin. Of immaterialism Franklin seems never to have said more than that Philadelphia did not understand, in 1752, "those parts that savor of what is called Berkeleyanism" in Samuel Johnson's Elementa Philosophica which he had just published. He could not have known of Edwards' marvelous "Notes on the Mind," for they remained in manuscript for a century, and he would in all likelihood have passed them somewhat blithely by as tasting of enthusiasm and conducting to no useful end either in sense

or reason.

It is at the point where Edwards verges upon utilitarianism that they most distinctly part company. From both we have full and fascinating records of their early religious experiences. In the case of Franklin, skepticism was bred by the disputatious theologians whom he read in his father's library, and he was converted to Deism by the arguments of the very men who meant to combat it. He proceeded to the Deists themselves, particularly Shaftesbury and Collins, and later to Wollaston, whose Religion of Nature he set type for in London. But having been badly treated by the freethinkers whom he knew and having himself committed some unworthy acts during his period of freethinking, he coolly came to the conclusion that these doctrines were little better than the older ones against which he had rebelled, and so gave up theology for practical morality. "Revelation," he says, “had indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertain❜d an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably these actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered." When he was twenty-two he composed a set of Articles

of Belief and Acts of Religion which unites with a sane deism a considerable element of elevated emotion; and he later conceived the bold project of arriving at moral perfection. He found, he says simply, that it was harder than he had expected, but he persevered until the enterprise ceased to interest him, not without some complacency over the result. Thereafter he lived without any torments of self-scrutiny; bland, comfortable, kindly, philanthropic. Just before his death he answered certain queries from Ezra Stiles in a letter which throws light over his whole career and character, particularly in one unforgettable sentence. "As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble."

To Edwards such ease and peace would have been as incomprehensible as his own passionate introspections would have been to Franklin. The sense of an immanent God, constantly pressing close upon His creatures, lay at the very root of Edwards' nature. In his "Things to be Considered," side by side with his mathematical demonstrations, occur such passages as these: "To show how the Motion, Rest, and Direction of the Least Atom has an influence on the motion, rest and direction of every body in the Universe; and to show how, by that means, every thing which happens, with respect to motes, or straws and such little things, may be for some great uses in the whole course of things, throughout Eternity; and to show how the least wrong step in a note, may, in Eternity, subvert the order of the Universe; and to take note of the great wisdom that is necessary, in order thus to dispose every atom at first, as that they should go for the best, throughout all Eternity, and in the Adjusting, by an exact computation, and a nice allowance to be made for the miracles, which should be needful, and other ways, whereby the course of bodies should be