Marriage is the most natural state of Man, and therefore the state in which you will find solid happiness. It is the man and woman united that makes a complete human being. Separate she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he her softness, sensibility and acute discernment. Together they are most likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in that state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors…
Okay, the thing is… And don’t blame me, this is Ben’s thing, not mine… He wrote that in a letter to a friend that went on to give pages and pages of advice on how to find the perfect mistress.
Oh, Ben, you never did know how to keep a lid on your thing, did you?
Pouring My Art Out 
Do you believe in marriage?
I been doing it for 25 years
Men . . . đ
I know, right?
Ben’s quote is humble but somewhat a contradiction to ” how to find the perfect mistress.”
Right… he seems to be sending a rather mixed message.
He obviously is a confused man..lol
And the fact that he has been dead for 200 years probably hasn’t helped.
Back then a lot of “scholarly” thinking was based on personal observations and elucidated in letters to other scholars, etc. That’s why an early collection of letters belonging to an early scientist has such meaning – they were seldom about the topics we put in letters. I did soem research into early chemistry and when you get back to the 1700’s and 1800’s and before, you’re looking through correspondence for information.
And, oddly enough, I agree with Franklin’s assessmen on a spiritual level – although I would widen it to romantic love/relationship. Two make one much stronger than either of the two individuals. Obviously I don’t agree on a physical level – we’re all capable and competenet as individuals.
Cool Quote Art.
Well then there is the whole mistress thing which sort of distracts from his point.
Sorry, I misinterpreted that to mean wife. Mistress had a different leaning back then. My mistake.
I think they still use that word for that, don’t they?
It can be. there are 3 definitions; 1) a woman of power and control; 2) a woman in a relationship with a married man; and 3) an alternate form indicating a married woman – i.e. Mrs.
You meant 2 and I meant 1 or 3 (I was actually thinking 3)
Mistress of the house… I guess it just matters which house
I heard somewhere that ole Ben had fathered around 200ish illegitimate kids while in France. So not only was he a founding father of the U.S., he’s also a Father of France.
That may bean urban myth… He did have one illegitimate kid in the U. S. … Who was on the side of the British at the beginning of the Revolutionary war… And he took his grandson to France when he went to be ambassador… Who was the illegitimate son of his illegitimate son… But he was in his late 70’s then.
Whatever happened to the wife?
Leslie
Well she died eventually