Before he became an economist, a statesman, a man of letters, a scientist, he had embraced scientific deism, primarily impelled by Newtonianism. We have observed that it is not improbable that his agrarianism, emphasis on free trade, and tendency toward laissez faire were partially at least the result of his efforts to parallel in economics the harmony of the physical order. Likewise, his views on education were conditioned by his faith in intellectual progress, in the might of Reason, which in turn was in part the result of his scientific deism. Then too, it may well be suggested that his theories of rhetoric were to some degree the result of his rationalistic and scientific habits of mind. We have also seen that his scientific deism was among the motivating factors of his belief in natural rights, which, coupled with his empirical awareness of concrete economic and political abuses issuing from monarchy and imperialistic parliamentarians, made him alive to the sovereignty of the people in their demands for civil and political liberty. This introduction, it is hoped, has made apparent the fact that the growth of Franklin's mind was a complex matter and that it was moulded by a vast multitude of often diverse influences, no one of which alone completely "explains" him. Puritanism, classicism, and neoclassicism were all important influences. Yet perhaps the _modus operandi_ of this myriad-minded colonial, this provincial Leonardo, is best explained in reference to the thought pattern of scientific deism. To see the reflection of Newton and his progeny in Franklin's activities, be they economic, political, literary, or philosophical, lends a compelling organic unity to the several sides of his genius, heretofore seen as unrelated. Franklin's mind represents an intellectual coherence--an imperfect counterpart to the physical harmony of the Newtonian order, of which all through his life he was a disciple. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote i-1: _The Works of John Adams_, ed. by C. F. Adams (Boston, 1856), f, 660.] [Footnote i-2: W. P. Trent, "Benjamin Franklin," _McClure's Magazine_, VIII, 273 (Jan., 1897).] [Footnote i-3: Cited in C. R. Weld's _History of the Royal Society_ (London, 1848), I, 146. For Baconian influence see I, 57 f. See also Edwin Greenlaw, "The New Science and English Literature in the Seventeenth Century," _Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine_, XIII, 331-59 (1925). Of dominant tendencies he stresses (a) a "new realism, or sense of fact and reliance on observation and experiment"; (b) the disregard for authority in favor of free inquiry; and (c) the development of faith in progress, inspiring men to improve their worldly condition.]