Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, describing Benjamin Franklin’s quest for self-improvement and, in the process, revealing how deeply ingrained in the American psyche are notions of self-optimization and moral perfectionism:

But of all of Franklin’s intellectual projects, the one he perfected the most was himself. Franklin both championed and embodied the Enlightenment’s premium on human plasticity and improvement. Having come from a modest family of soap and candlemakers, he did not want to wait for a higher power to bestow him with good fortune or condemn him to a life of modest means. So he took his life into his own hands. In his Autobiography (1791), he explained his “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection,” suggesting these were technologies of the self any reader could employ. Perfection meant turning the twelve virtues he wanted to cultivate into second nature: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity. When a Quaker friend gently reminded him that he had left out one virtue he could use a little more of—humility—Franklin conceded and added it to the list to bring it up to thirteen.