Beginning of Essay
"God helps them that help themselves" (Poor Richards Almanack, 722), a phrase commonly quoted from "Poor Richard's Almanacks", illustrates the types of selfishness often seen during Benjamin Franklin's time. Or does it? Is wanting and striving for a better self so ....

Middle of Essay
.... so hard and long for had become no more than a night's dream erased by the morning sun. Democracy and self-advancement were in a race for the gold as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne thought. Benjamin Franklin's ideas begged to differ. He felt as though the democratic community and growing the ideology of individual advancement (Individualism and/vs. Community, 1306) could coexist together. Franklin, having risen from poverty, felt that he wouldn't have been able to be a man of such distinction if it had not been for Government that encouraged the advancement of self. He felt that without a Government no one man could be content with them ....