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The Sources, Significance, and Date of Franklin's “An Arabian Tale”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur Stuart Pitt
Arthur Stuart Pitt*
Affiliation:
The United States Naval Academy
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Extract

At first glance Franklin's little story, An Arabian Tale, appears to be one of the most insignificant and inconsequential of his writings. Economically composed in fewer than three hundred words, it scarcely covers a page in any printed text. But despite the simplicity and brevity of the tale, and the lack of any literary values of plot, suspense, or climax —it is, indeed, hardly a “tale” at all—it is surprising that the piece has been so consistently neglected, for it is of vital importance to the history of Franklin's thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1942 , pp. 155 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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References

Note 1 in page 155 The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. A. H. Smyth (New York, 1905–07), x, 124–125.

Note 2 in page 155 MS not preserved. First printed in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D., ed. W. T. Franklin (London, 1817–18), 326–327. Reprinted in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston, 1840), ii, 193–194, as one of the pieces of which the date “could not be ascertained with precision” (Idem, x, 449), but conjecturally dated 1779 (Idem, x, 460); in The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. John Bigelow (New York and London, 1887–88), vi, 261–262, and dated 1779; in Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 123–124, without comment; and in Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections, ed. F. L. Mott and C. E. Jorgenson (New York, 1936), pp. 519–520, with the comment “Date unknown.”

Note 3 in page 155 Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 124.

Note 4 in page 156 After 21 Jan. 1768; Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield (New York, 1877), ii, 540–541.

Note 5 in page 156 Franklin to James Hutton, 7 July 1782; Writings, ed. Smyth, viii, 561.

Note 6 in page 156 22 Aug. 1784; quoted in Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections, p. cxxxvii.

Note 7 in page 156 Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 124. Cf. “First Principles” in Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion: “I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being, Author and Father of the Gods themselves. For I believe that Man is not the most perfect Being but one, rather than as there are many Degrees of Beings his Inferiors, so there are many Degrees of Beings superior to him.” Idem, ii, 92.

Note 8 in page 156 The Great Chain of Being. A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge [Mass.], 1936).

Note 9 in page 157 Idem, p. 59. Franklin's interest in this philosophical concept is not unique in American thought; for a convenient summary see I. W. Riley, American Philosophy. The Early Schools (New York, 1907), pp. 195–304, noting especially the citations from the following varied sources (references are to pages in Riley): Samuel Langdon [President of Harvard College], Discourse (1775), pp. 205–206; Ezra Stiles [President of Yale College], “Birthday Memoir” and “Review [of Stiles' readings in deistic authors],” pp. 212–213; William Samuel Johnson [President of King's College], letter to Bradford, 17 March 1728–29, pp. 220–224; William Smith [1727–1803], A General Idea of the College of Mirana (New York, 1753), pp. 225–226; and Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, 31 October 1819, pp. 274–275. For a very explicit statement see also Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1795): “If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled, and as it were crouded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as world to some numerous race, till animal existance becomes so exceedingly refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. M. D. Conway (New York, 1894–96), iv, 67–68.

Note 10 in page 157 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 59.

Note 11 in page 158 Idem, pp. 183–184. See also Kenneth MacLean, John Locke and English Literature of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1936), p. 142.

Note 12 in page 158 See A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Ch. ii, “The Genesis of the Idea in Greek Philosophy: the Three Principles,” pp. 24–66.

Note 13 in page 158 See Franklin. Representative Selections, ed. Mott and Jorgenson, p. cxxx, and n. 448.

Note 14 in page 158 Locke and Leibniz.

Note 15 in page 158 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 184.

Note 16 in page 158 Kenneth MacLean, John Locke, p. v.

Note 17 in page 158 Writings, i, 242–243. The Autobiography records vaguely that Franklin read Locke's Essay “about the time” he was “about 16 years of age.” If there is any chronological order or accuracy in his account of his reading, one may suppose that he was a little older, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, when he read Locke.

Note 18 in page 159 John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1894)' iii, vi, 12.

Note 19 in page 159 Ibid.

Note 20 in page 159 The section in question (Writings, ed. Smyth, i, 238–244) was composed some fifty years after the events it records, and such few references to actual dates as there are lack reassuring definiteness or exactness. The chronological table in Franklin. Representative Selections, ed. Mott and Jorgenson (p. cxlii) makes no attempt to assign dates for Franklin's reading of these authors, collecting them all in one period, 1718–23. Despite a retentive memory, it is doubtful if Franklin could remember, at the age of sixty-five, the exact order in which he had read books fifty years before.

Note 21 in page 160 Writings, ed. Smyth, i, 241, 243.

Note 22 in page 160 Ibid.

Note 23 in page 160 New-England Courant, no. 48 (2–9 July 1722); see also T. G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620–1730 (New Haven, 1920), p. 187.

Note 24 in page 160 Writings, ed Smyth, i, 241–242.

Note 25 in page 160 No. 519 (25 October 1712).

Note 26 in page 160 The Spectator, ed. Henry Morley (London, n. d.), p. 739.

Note 27 in page 161 Writings, ed. Smyth, ii, 391.

Note 28 in page 161 Idem, ii, 242.

Note 29 in page 161 Idem, i, 245.

Note 30 in page 161 Idem, ii, 242–243.

Note 31 in page 161 Ll. 1146 ff.

Note 32 in page 161 Essay on Man, i, 233–246.

Note 33 in page 162 The Seasons, “Summer,” ll. 333–337.

Note 34 in page 162 Idem, “Spring,” ll. 374–378.

Note 35 in page 162 Writings, ed. Smyth, vi, 9.

Note 36 in page 162 Kenneth MacLean, John Locke, p. 142.

Note 37 in page 163 Night Thoughts, vi, 714–734.

Note 38 in page 163 Buffon died in 1788, by which time the Histoire totaled 36 volumes, but it was continued by others to 1804, and enlarged to 44 volumes, succeeding volumes from 1750 simply being uniformly added to the set from time to time. The “first edition” of the Histoire may therefore be said to be the 44 volumes issued during the period, 1750–1804.

Note 39 in page 163 I M. Hays, Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, in The Record of the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Benjamin Franklin ... (Philadelphia, 1908), iii, 348.

Note 40 in page 163 Writings, ed. Smyth, ix, 622.

Note 41 in page 163 The contents indicate that the letter should be dated 1788.

Note 42 in page 163 Calendar, ed. Hays, iii, 331.

Note 43 in page 163 Franklin to Benjamin Rush, 25 July 1774; Writings, ed. Smyth, vi, 236–237.

Note 44 in page 164 Idem, i, 418–419; see also Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938), p. 163.

Note 45 in page 164 [George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon], Histoire Naturelle (Paris, 1750–1804), i, 12–13, 20, 38.

Note 46 in page 164 Paradise Lost, v, 153–204.

Note 47 in page 164 Writings, ed. Smyth, ii, 96–97.

Note 48 in page 165 Paradise Lost, v, 472–179, 482–487.

Note 49 in page 164 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 220.

Note 50 in page 164 Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 84.

Note 51 in page 164 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 201.

Note 52 in page 164 Writings, ed. Smyth, viii, 451–452.

Note 53 in page 166 Speech in the Convention at the Conclusion of its Deliberations, idem, ix, 608.

Note 54 in page 166 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 200.

Note 55 in page 166 Benjamin Franklin to Charles Carroll, 25 May 1789, Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 7.

Note 56 in page 166 A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 207

Note 57 in page 167 Writings, ed. Smyth, x, 130.

Note 58 in page 167 Kenneth MacLean, John Locke, p. 142.

Note 59 in page 168 Receipt of this piece acknowledged in a letter from Georgiana Shipley to Benjamin Franklin, 6 May 1781; see Calendar, ed. Hays, iii, 371.

Note 60 in page 168 Writings, ed. Smyth, viii, 208.

Note 61 in page 168 Idem, vii, 357–362.

Note 62 in page 168 Idem, vii, 414–416.

Note 63 in page 168 The literary form of An Arabian Tale probably derives from the Oriental tales in the Spectator, such as the Vision of Mirzah (#159), or the story of Alnaschar, the Persian glass-man (#535).