Abstract
SCHOLARS DEALING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT continue to recognize the documentary value of autobiography, a genre which discloses as much about collective social history as about individual private affairs. Not only does social consciousness weave itself into the autobiographical fabric, but the threads of class attitudes trace a sociomoral design of great subtlety. The perspectives suggested by this tapestry converge at the vanishing point of intellectual history, an infinitely large position capable of unifying all components of the picture. Among these perspectives, two important ones involve the relationship between the autobiographer's value system and the direction taken by his society's historical development. For example, Benjamin Franklin's personal code of behavior also summarized the ethos of a burgeoning society. The pragmatic character of American culture derived from the same axiological source as Franklin's. Therefore his autobiography may be taken as a gauge measuring his nation's bourgeois transformation and, eventually, its integration with the Enlightenment. In contrast, the problematic autobiography of Diego de Torres Villarroel1 raises other issues regarding Spain's class structure and the value system which sustained it. By Spanish standards. America's
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