Of his plan of acquiring all these virtues, he says:
"My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these
virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my
attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix
it on one of them at a time; and when I had mastered
that, then to proceed to another."



HISTORY OF ETHICS 34I

Franklin kept a book account of his progress. He
says: "Though I never arrived at the perfection I had
been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it,
yet I was by the endeavor a better and a happier man/*

2. George Combe (1788-1858). — Combe was the first
advocate in Great Britain of the phrenological doctrines
of Gall and Spurzheim. The work by which he is best
known is entitled "The Constitution of Man Considered
in Relation to External Objects."

Combe was a highly gifted man. His writings are
attractive in style and elevated in thought. As a phi-
lanthropist, he took great interest in education and in
the treatment of the criminal classes. The doctrines
which he advocated, though unpopular at the time, have
become to be more favorably regarded.
His "Moral Philosophy" was published in 1840. His
fundamental principle is, that the laws of nature are at
once independent and harmonious, and that man best
fulfills God's will and subserves his own interest by dis-
covering the laws of nature and those relating to man —
the physical, the intellectual, and the moral — and by
conducting himself in harmony with their requirements.
