The Ephemera: An Emblem of Human
Life
by Benjamin Franklin
Franklin offers a relative sense of scale for an eventful life: a fly's seven hours. Franklin's clever
pun-- ephemera danica is the common mayfly-- perhaps a reference to our ephemeral, transitory
existence? The reader may not be surprised to learn that Franklin claims to "understand all the
inferior animal tongues." His letter to Madame Brillon is excerpted from a collection published in
1914, The Oxford Collection of American Essays, chosen by Branter Matthews.
TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY
YOU may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy
day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a
little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had
been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera,
whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within
the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared
to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal
tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can
give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened
through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their
national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their
conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now
and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians,
one a cousin, the other a moscheto; in which dispute they spent their time,
seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of
living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just,
and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor
any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign
music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was
single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy,
I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so
much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious
company and heavenly harmony.
"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived
and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could
not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some
foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary
that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined
considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its
course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in
cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I
have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred
and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen
generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and
grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I
must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I
cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all
my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to
enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my
compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit
of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our
present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like
those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in
philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My
friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind
me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what
will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of
all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin
Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"
To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the
reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a
few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the
ever amiable Brillante.
Benjamin Franklin
20 September, 1778
