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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired
and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady,
uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived
the following method.
In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met
with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous,
as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name.
Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking,
while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every
other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental,
even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
