Ben Franklin … implicit critique of Western Civilization
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-peter-collinson/
In my last post I quoted very briefly from that Benjamin Franklin letter.
The full paragraph shows that old Ben had some thoughts about the burdensomeness of our “civilized” life . . . vis-a-vis the relative naturalness and simplicity (and thus freedom) of Indian life . . .
[some spelling and punctuation below have been modernized]
The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labor appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians. In their present way of living, almost all their Wants are supplied by the spontaneous Productions of Nature, with the addition of very little labor, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labor when Game is so plentiful. They visit us frequently, and see the advantages that Arts, Sciences, and compact Society procure us; they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never shown any Inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts. When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. And that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger Brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness. They have few but natural wants and those easily supplied. But with us are infinite Artificial wants, no less craving than those of Nature, and much more difficult to satisfy . . .
And another paragraph shows some ecological consciousness:
Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of Providence and to interfere in the Government of the World, we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than Good. In New England they once thought Black-birds useless and mischievous to their corn, they made Laws to destroy them, the consequence was, the Black-birds were diminished but a kind of Worms which devoured their Grass, and which the Black-birds had been used to feed on increased prodigiously; Then finding their Loss in Grass much greater than their saving in corn they wished again for their Black-birds.
