Daniel Higgins September13, 2000
             Transcending Life by Adapting the Concepts of Franklin, Emerson, and Thoreau
             Everyone one of us struggles daily to survive in a manner befitting our individual beliefs, hopes, aspirations, dreams, and goals. There is not a universal code on how exactly we should go about doing this. Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, and Waldo Emerson were some of the most unique thinkers influencing the way of thinking in America. Their concepts where simplistic in nature, with underlying themes based on Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is defined as an individual "transcending" their senses and gaining a better understanding of beauty, good, and truth through activities such as work, art, and being at one with nature. A course in "life" should enable an individual to maintain individuality while at the same time contributing to the good of the whole. Applying many concepts on life adapted by Franklin, Thoreau, and Emerson will allow an individual to reach their potential to live the best life they possibly can.
             "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of" (Franklin). Benjamin Franklin had many simple concepts that he lived by, but what made him so unique was that the application of all these concepts made him a very virtuous and honest man. He was a moral perfectionist, evident by his tedious struggle to live by thirteen virtues which he deemed to be the most important in benefiting himself and society. These virtues were temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. "My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues" (Franklin). Franklin was realistic in his quest for moral perfection, apparent by the fact that he began concentrating on one virtue at a time: "And like him who, having a garden to weed, does...