Asher K. Sisneros
Dr. Gary North
American Literature
October 14, 2024
William Penn came from an affluent English family and inherited vast holdings in New England because of his father’s military service to the King of England. Naturally, those lands were named Pennsylvania. However affluent his father was, William Penn did not boast of his luxury. In many ways, he lived a middle-class lifestyle, working diligently and spending frugally. Part of this was because of his religious convictions as a Quaker. Fruits of Solitude (1682) was his attempt to pass on his wisdom to future generations through pithy adages and recommend middle-class/Quaker morality. To summarize Penn’s philosophy in one word, he believed in moderation.
For example, regarding temperance, he said: “eat to live; do not live to eat.”1 This is the classic distinction between a means and an end. While many people enjoy eating scrumptious delicacies that appease the heart and make her jolly, eating for its own sake ultimately results in gluttony. Eating should not be a chore. It should be enjoyable. But it should not consume people or be the center of their life. As Penn says, food is a means to live, not the reason for living. Thus the pleasure that comes from tasting the warmth of a freshly baked molten lava cake and letting the river of chocolate engulf one’s mouth in pure pleasure—oh, pure pleasure!—must not consume a person and become the focus of their life. Eating, like many pleasures, must be enjoyed in moderation.
Gold is another wonderful example! Although Penn was well acquainted with luxury and fine living, he denounced the love of gold, once again, calling it a means to an end. As he says, “Many that have” a lot “have lost all by coveting … Too few know when they have enough, and even fewer know how to employ it.”2 Unfortunately, greed has a way of consuming men. They dedicate their lives to amassing sizeable fortunes and great names for themselves but forget why. Often, those who worship gold as an idol pay a heavy price, and ambitious men lose the love of their families to attain material success. Penn advises his readers to shy away from pursuing wealth for its own sake. Ultimately, greed consumes a man until he does not know when it is enough, and he loses everything in the end. His point is to shy away from greed and avoid the love of money.
Instead of loving money, Penn advises his readers to love diligence and patience. As he put it, “Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.” Naturally, this was a play on Jesus’ words when He said His disciples could move mountains if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, i.e., very small. Jesus’ words spoke broadly to all Christians and the power they have through faith. Penn more or less applies this principle to a more confined domain and explains that in business, businessmen can more or less do anything if they are patient and diligent in their work. Thus success comes, not through the pursuit of gold, but through the pursuit of diligence. In the end, diligence wins. There will always be those examples of people who attained great things through luck, whether it be riches or influence. But relying on luck and not diligence is just gambling. The wise do not trust in gambling. The only sure means for one to attain their goals and “move mountains” is through patience and diligent hard work. There are no shortcuts.
These are just three examples of Penn’s middle-class morality. He discusses far more than business principles in his book Fruits of Solitude, even giving marriage advice, but these three points serve as an overview of his middle-class outlook. Just to restate three of Penn’s points that stuck out the most:
- Focus on the end, not the means;
- Do not pursue money for its own sake; and
- Patience and diligence win in the end.
- William Penn, Fruits of Solitude (1682), web. https://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com/Penn-Fruits.pdf, p. 8 ↩︎
- Ibid, p. 25 ↩︎
Asher Sisneros 