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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: some time or other to publish it, I would not have any thing
in it that should prejudice any one, of any sect, against it.
I purposed writing a little comment on each virtue, in which I
would have shown the advantages of possessing it, and the mischiefs
attending its opposite vice; and I should have called my book THE
ART OF VIRTUE,<7> because it would have shown the means and manner
of obtaining virtue, which would have distinguished it from the mere
exhortation to be good, that does not instruct and indicate the means,
but is like the apostle's man of verbal charity, who only without
showing to the naked and hungry how or where they might get clothes
or victuals, exhorted them to be fed and clothed.--James ii. 15, 16.
 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |