Queries

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Questions put by Benjamin Franklin to his Junto, a club for mutual improvement that he founded in Philadelphia in 1727:

  • How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind? (His own answer: “It should be smooth, clear, and short.”)
  • Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe; or is it impossible, as others believe?
  • Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?
  • What is wisdom? (“The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.”)
  • Is any man wise at all times and in all things? (“No, but some are more frequently wise than others.”)
  • Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?
  • Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?
  • Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?
  • If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?
  • Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?
  • Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?
  • Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?
  • Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?

From Carl Van Doren’s biography. “New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth’s sake. … In time the Junto had so many applications for membership it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned.”

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Points of Pride

She’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring
That drives the rod that turns the knob that works the thingumebob,
And it’s the girl that makes the thing that holds that oil that oils the ring
That works the thingumebob THAT’S GOING TO WIN THE WAR!

— Popular song of 1942

“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales”

— Popular song of 1927

Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist. ‘There,’ people of wide experience would say, ‘There goes the sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.’

— G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904

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Two Solutions

[O]ur self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus,

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Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do.

— William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

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Suggestion

As to your method of work, I have a single bit of advice, which I give with the earnest conviction of its paramount influence in any success which may have attended my efforts in life — Take no thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. That was a singular but very wise answer which Cromwell gave to Bellevire — ‘No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going,’ and there is much truth in it. The student who is worrying about his future, anxious over the examinations, doubting his fitness for the profession, is certain not to do so well as the man who cares for nothing but the matter in hand, and who knows not whither he is going!

— William Osler, advice to students, McGill College, 1899

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Making Trouble

[Thomas Chaloner] had a trick sometimes to goe into Westminster hall in a morning in Terme time, and tell some strange story (sham), and would come thither again about 11 or 12 to have the pleasure to heare how it spred; and sometimes it would be altered, with additions, he could scarce knowe it to be his owne.

— John Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1697

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The Paradox of Trust

My success as a salesman depends on trust: Before I can close a sale with you, you have to trust me. But this requires me to act deliberately in a way that appears sincere. It’s not enough simply to be sincere and hope that you notice this; my best interests are served by actively cultivating this impression. And this kills true sincerity — now I’m self-consciously promoting an appearance.

“If sincerity is a natural and unforced conformity between avowals and actions, then it does not make sense to try to be sincere or to devise strategies for becoming more sincere, both of which require the deliberate attempt to achieve a state that cannot be brought about by calculation,” writes Monmouth College philosopher Guy Oakes. “Their self-consciousness — their knowledge of the circumstances of their role and the conditions required for its performance — rules out the possibility of sincerity. Sincerity produces insincerity.”

(Guy Oakes, “The Sales Process and the Paradoxes of Trust,” Journal of Business Ethics 9:8 [August 1990], 671-679.)

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Deal

Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him; and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world.

— John Selden, Table Talk, 1689

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“A Happy Retort”

I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. One day that grave and reverend personage, the Master of his college, happening to meet him, remonstrated with him thus: ‘Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say I never look out of my window but I see you jumping over those railings.’ Mr. Dash was equal to the emergency, for he respectfully replied, ‘And it is a curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings without seeing you looking out of that window.’

— Frederick Locker-Lampson, Patchwork, 1879

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