Franklin’s model of humility still has much to teach
Humility does not seem to be a virtue today. Watch a football game: A linebacker does his job – he tackles a guy – and jumps up in a dance as if he’d just cured cancer. Every other politician seems to think she’s got the answer, the only answer, if only we follow her example as the model. Me-ism is a serious disease that’s killing the idea we can learn from each other, if only we have the courage and smarts to shut up and listen.
Of all the people who had to learn this lesson the hard way, Benjamin Franklin sticks out – unlikely though it seems. We could put lots of adjectives next to Ben Franklin’s name – witty, snarky, provocative – but humble? In fact, Ben Franklin – born Jan. 17, 1706 – was forced to confront his own lack of humility as a young man.
We start with a wisecrack of his that you could easily find on the internet: “Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome (pride), I should probably be proud of my humility.” Funny and yes, he said it – typical Franklin, cutting and glib at the same time. But it’s not a meme that mocks humility. Instead, it’s testimony to a moment in his youth when a friend brought him up short.
Writing when he was 79 years old, Franklin tells us in his autobiography that in his youth he had listed a dozen virtues he needed to attain moral perfection. A Quaker friend noted Franklin’s frequent expressions of pride and didn’t hold back, telling Franklin he could be overbearing, arrogant and downright rude when someone tried to demonstrate he was wrong.
His Quaker friend had scored a point. Franklin added humility as the 13th goal. As a result of that conversation, he stopped using words of certainty and tried to draw back from believing himself right and others wrong all the time.
What happened when he adopted a humbler approach to the opinions of others?
“I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.”
Franklin wasn’t writing a quip at all, even if it does show up on Instagram and Facebook as if it were. He really did learn the hard way that he was arrogant and needed to work at being humble. Though he deliberately acted humbly so often it became a habit, he still struggled to practice what he preached.
In a 1755 letter, he advised, “Those who affect to be thought to know everything, and so undertake to explain everything, often remain long ignorant of many things, that others could and would instruct them in, if they appeared less conceited.” He was continually learning how to be humble.
So should we all.
Christopher M. Bellitto, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Kean University in Union. His latest book, from which this essay is adapted, is “Humility: The Secret History of a Lost Virtue,” (Georgetown University Press, 2023).