Mr. Hefelbower's description of the growth of free thought might appropriately be applied to Franklin's _Articles_: "As the supernatural waned in radical Deism, the ethical grew in importance, until religion was but a moral system on a theistic background."[i-458] Although the metaphysical portions of this work are far too neighborly and casual to be inspiring and provocative of saintliness, the ethical conclusions (would that they were uttered less consciously and complacently!) are worthy of the introspective force of New England's stern mind, of the classic tradition of Socrates and Aristotle, and of England's unbending emphasis on the middle way.[i-459] One could learn from the _Articles_ how to be just, if he did not discover what is meant by the beauty of holiness. In 1728 Franklin, though bewildered by the tenuousness of metaphysics, based his religion on the "everlasting tables of right reason," plumbing the "mighty volumes of visible nature." He was thus our pioneer scientific deist, who discovered his chief sanction in popularized Newtonian physics. Following Franklin's formal profession of deism buttressed by Newtonian science in 1728, one must depend on scattered references to plot the persistence of his philosophic ideology. His _Dialogues between Philocles and Horatio_ (1730), borrowed[i-460] from Shaftesbury's _The Moralists_, suggest that his _moral_ speculations were dual and not reconciled; he seems torn between humanitarian compassion and the self-development of the individual, unable to decide which is the nobler good. One may observe that this moral bifurcation was inveterate in Franklin's mind, never resolving itself into a fondness for the idea that human nature is inexorably the product of institutions and outward social forms. _A Witch Trial at Mount Holly_ suggests that he felt free to handle scriptures with Aristophanic levity. His intellectual conviction of a matchless physical harmony, as yet unmatched in the world by a corresponding moral harmony, is joyously seen in _Preface to Poor Richard, 1735_: Whatever may be the Musick of the Spheres, how great soever the Harmony of the Stars, 'tis certain there is no Harmony among the Stargazers; but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange Curs....[i-461] Even Polly Baker is made to appeal to "nature and nature's God,"[i-462] discovering in her bastard children the Deity's "divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies." In _Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania_ (1749) Franklin remarked in a note on Natural Philosophy that "Proper Books may be, Ray's _Wisdom of God in the Creation_, Derham's _Physico-Theology_, [Pluche's?] _Spectacle de la Nature, &c._"[i-463] _Poor Richard_, in addition to prognostications of weather, survey of roads, Rabelaisian wit, and aphoristic wisdom, was a popular vehicle for the diffusion of a Newtonianism bordering on a mild form of deism.[i-464]