What makes Franklin's observation so cunning is that he's not merely recommending education as morally worthy—he's reframing it as the shrewdest *financial* decision available, using the very language of commerce to elevate the mind. A person who learns accounting, languages, or even history doesn't just become "cultured"; she becomes someone whose judgment improves, whose options multiply, whose mistakes grow fewer and more costly to avoid. Consider the difference between a young person who reads widely before choosing a career and one who doesn't: the first might sidestep an entire decade of wrong turns simply because she understood something of human nature, economics, or her own temperament beforehand. Franklin, who was himself a printer turned inventor turned diplomat, knew that knowledge compounds like money in a ledger—except it never depletes and no one can steal it from you.