¹ Oeuvres du Marquis de Condorcet, eds. O'Connor, A. Condorcet and Arago, M. F., 2nd ed., 12 vols. (Paris, 1847–1849), Vol. 3, p. 420Google Scholar.

² Forster, Georg, “Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1790”, in ”Kleine Schriften,” Georg Forsters saemmtliche Schriften, ed. by his daughter, 9 vols. (Leipzig, 1843), Vol. 6, p. 207Google Scholar.

³ Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes, eds. Mott, F. L. and Jorgenson, Chester E. (New York, 1936), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Becker, Carl, review of the Franklin Institute's Meet Dr. Franklin, in American Historical Review, Vol. 50, p. 142 (Oct., 1944)Google Scholar. Cf. Henry Steele Commager's statement that it was the faith in reason which gave unity to Franklin's life. “Franklin, the American”, review of Van Doren's, CarlBenjamin, Franklin, in New York Times Book Review, Oct. 9, 1938, p. 1Google Scholar. Charles A. Beard explicitly referred to Franklin as an outstanding example of American writers on progress. Introduction to Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress (New York, 1932), p. xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Even after having achieved world-wide fame as a natural philosopher, he observed that we deserve reprehension if “we neglect the Knowledge and Practice of essential Duties” in order to attain eminence in the knowledge of nature. The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, Henry Albert, 10 vols. (New York, 1905–1907), Vol. 4, p. 22Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as Writings.)

₆ Autobiography, Writings, Vol. I, p. 22Google Scholar.

⁷ Parton, James, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Boston, 1897), Vol. I, p. 160Google Scholar. See also Writings, Vol. 2, p. 89Google Scholar. The authors who so far have most closely scrutinized Franklin's political thought do not see the relevance of many of the younger Franklin's remarks on human nature, arbitrary government, or the nature of political dispute to his concept of politics. See Eiselen, M. R., Franklin's Political Theories (Garden City, N. Y., 1928), p. 13Google Scholar; Miles, R. D., “The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin”, unpub. diss. (Univ. of Michigan, 1949), p. 36Google Scholar; Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections (cited in note 3), p. lxxxii. The most recent work in this field, Rossiter's, Clinton “The Political Theory of Benjamin Franklin”, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, pp. 259–93 (July, 1952)Google Scholar, pays no attention to Franklin's conception of human nature and his attitude towards the problem of power and the ends of political life. Rossiter's contention (p. 268) is that Franklin “limited his own thought process to the one devastating question: Does it work?, or more exactly, Does it work well?” Franklin, however, like everybody else, had certain ends and goals in view, and the question “Does it work?” is meaningless without the context of certain basic desiderata.

⁸ This little work has been omitted in the Smyth edition of Franklin's writings, because “the work has no value, and it would be an injury and an offence to the memory of Franklin to republish it.” Writings, Vol. 2, p. viGoogle Scholar. I t is, however, reprinted as an appendix to Parton, op. cit., Vol. 1, and has since been republished independently with a bibliographical note by Lawrence C. Wroth (New York, 1930).

⁹ See Schneider, Herbert, “The Significance of Benjamin Franklin's Moral Philosophy”, Columbia University Studies in the History of Ideas, Vol. 2, p. 298 (1918)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ In his Autobiography, Franklin acknowledges his debt to Shaftesbury and Collins for becoming “a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine.” Writings, Vol. 1, p. 244Google Scholar. The question of Franklin's attitude toward the great moral philosophers and of their influence upon him is considerably more difficult to determine than the same question with regard to John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. With the exception of authors named in the Autobiography, comments on books Franklin read are extremely rare. His library has not been preserved; there is, however, a list of books known to have been in Franklin's library at the time of his death (compiled by Dr. George Simpson Eddy in Princeton University; photostat in the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia). See also Mr.Eddy's, article, “Dr. Benjamin Franklin's Library”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, new series, Vol. 34, pp. 206–26 (Oct., 1924)Google Scholar. Except for comments in some English pamphlets, there exist nothing like the voluminous marginal notes of John Adams and Jefferson. Also he was not able to keep up a correspondence like Adams' or Jefferson's, discussing great problems from the perspective of a long life in retirement after the great events of their lives had taken place. Immersed in public business almost until his death, Franklin does not seem to have had much time left over for reading. Benjamin Rush told John Adams that “Dr. Franklin thought a great deal, wrote occasionally, but read during the middle and later years of his life very little.” October 31, 1807, in Rush, Benjamin, The Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. Butterfield, L. H., 2 vols. (Princeton, 1951), Vol. 2, p. 953Google Scholar. For a compilation of the authors with whom Franklin was acquainted, see MacLaurin, Lois Margaret, Franklin's Vocabulary (Garden City, N. Y., 1928)Google Scholar, Ch. 1, and Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections (cited in note 3), p. lv.

¹¹ Willey, Basil, The Eighteenth Century Background (London, 1940)Google Scholar, Ch. 3, passim.

¹² Pope's epitaph intended for Newton's tomb.

¹³ Willey, op. cit., pp. 47–48.

¹⁴ See Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936)Google Scholar. This brilliant analysis of that complex of ideas has been applied to Franklin only once, although it offers important clues for an understanding of Franklin's conception of human nature. Pitt, Arthur Stuart in “The Sources, Significance, and Date of Franklin's ‘An Arabian Tale’”, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 57, pp. 155–68 (03, 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, applies Lovejoy's analysis to one piece of Franklin's and does not refer to relevant writings of Franklin's youth in which this idea may also be found. Pitt's article is valuable in pointing out the sources from which Franklin could have accepted the idea directly, namely Locke, Milton, Addison, and Pope.

¹⁵ Parton, , Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (cited in note 7), Vol. 1, p. 605Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lovejoy, op. cit., pp. 199, 200.

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¹⁹ Autobiography, Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 226, 247Google Scholar (n.1).

²⁰ Parton, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 617.

²¹ Becker, Carl, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), p. 69Google Scholar.

²² Autobiography, Writings, Vol. 1, p. 296Google Scholar. See also Writings, Vol. 7, p. 412Google Scholar.

²³ See Writings, Vol. 1, p. 341Google Scholar; Vol. 2, p. 215; Vol. 3, p. 145; Vol. 9, p. 208; Vol. 10, p. 38.

²⁴ Bury, , The Idea of Progress (cited in note 4), p. 128Google Scholar.

²⁵ This distinction is Roland Bainton's. See his “The Appeal to Reason and the American Revolution”, in The Constitution Reconsidered, ed. Read, Conyers (New York, 1938), p. 121Google Scholar.

²⁶ Cf. A. O. Lovejoy's statement: “The authors who were perhaps the most influential and the most representative in the early and mid-eighteenth century, made a great point of reducing man's claims to ‘reason’ to a minimum.” “‘Pride’ in Eighteenth Century Thought” in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948), p. 68Google Scholar.

²⁷ Becker, Carl, Benjamin Franklin (Ithaca, 1946), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 31.

²⁹ Mandeville, Bernard, The Fable of the Bees, ed. Kaye, F. B., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1924), Vol. 1, pp. 48–49, 51Google Scholar. Franklin owned Mandeville's work, according to a list in the Mason-Franklin Collection of the Yale University Library. He was introduced to Mandeville during his first stay in London. Writings, Vol. 1, p. 278Google Scholar.

³⁰ The proof that the two dialogues between Philocles and Horatio were not written by Franklin and the identification of the two other pieces have been furnished by Aldridge, Alfred O., “Franklin's ‘Shaftesburian’ Dialogues Not Franklin's: A Revision of the Franklin Canon”, American Literature, Vol. 21, pp. 151–59 (May, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Writings, Vol. 1, p. 343Google Scholar; Vol. 2, pp. 168–69. The discourse on self-denial is printed in The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Bigelow, John, 10 vols. (New York, 1887–1888), Vol. 1, pp. 414–17Google Scholar. The last quote, written in 1768, is in Writings, Vol. 5, p. 159Google Scholar.

³¹ Writings, Vol. 2, p. 92Google Scholar; see also Vol. 10, p. 124 and note 14, above.

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³³ Franklin's marginal notes in [Wheelock, Matthew C.], Reflections Moral and Political on Great Britain and the Colonies (London, 1770), p. 48Google Scholar. Franklin's copy in the Jefferson Collection of the Library of Congress.

³⁴ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 651Google Scholar. See also Vol. 9, pp. 489, 530; Vol. 1, p. 226.

³⁵ Quoted by Bury, , The Idea of Progress (cited in note 4), pp. 221–22Google Scholar.

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³⁷ Writings, Vol. 9, pp. 521–22Google Scholar. See also Vol. 2, pp. 203, 393, and Vol. 9, pp. 600–1.

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³⁹ The Letters of Benjamin Franklin & Jane Mecom, ed. Van Doren, Carl (Princeton, 1950), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 489Google Scholar, and Vol. 4, p. 250. On another occasion Franklin acknowledged the weakness of reason by the use of a pungent folk saying: “An Answer now occurs to me, for that Question of Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday, which I once thought unanswerable, Why God no kill the Devil? It is to be found in the Scottish Proverb, ‘Ye'd do little for God an the Dell' were dead.’” To John Whitehurst, New York, June 27, 1763. Unpub. letter in the Mason-Franklin Collection of the Yale University Library. Cf. also Vol. 3, pp. 16–17, Vol. 4, p. 120, and Vol. 6, p. 424.

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⁴² Rev. Tyerman, L., Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2 vols. (London, 1876), Vol. 2, pp. 540–41Google Scholar, quoted in Benjamin Franklin, Representative Selections (cited in note 3), p. cxxxvi.

⁴³ The Letters of Benjamin Franklin & Jane Mecom (cited in note 39), pp. 124, 125–26. See also Writings, Vol. 2, p. 61Google Scholar; Vol, 4, p. 388; Vol. 9, p. 247.

⁴⁴ Writings, Vol. 2, p. 99Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Writings, Vol. 5, p. 325Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ The Letters of Benjamin Franklin & Jane Mecom (cited in note 39), p. 123.

⁴⁷ Writings, Vol. 3, pp. 5, 6Google Scholar. Cf. Benjamin Rush to John Adams: “The Doctor was a rigid economist, but he was in every stage of his life charitable, hospitable, and generous.” August 19, 1811, in Letters of Benjamin Bush (cited in note 10), Vol. 2, p. 1093Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Writings, Vol. 2, pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Lovejoy, , “‘Pride’ in Eighteenth Century Thought”, (cited in note 26), p. 62–68Google Scholar.

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⁵² Writings, Vol. 1, p. 337Google Scholar.

⁵³ Writings, Vol. 1, p. 374Google Scholar. For Franklin's acknowledgment of his own political ambition, see Writings, Vol. 5, pp. 148, 206, 357Google Scholar; Vol. 9, pp. 488, 621.

⁵⁴ Autobiography (end of the part written in Passy, France, 1784)Google Scholar, Writings, Vol. 1, p. 339Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Writings, Vol. 10, p. 62Google Scholar. See also Vol. 5, pp. 100, 112, 117, 133. See also Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press, 1758–1775, ed. Crane, Verner W. (Chapel Hill, 1950), pp. 59, 164, 232Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 591Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 23Google Scholar.

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⁵⁹ Writings, Vol. 2, p. 139Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 339–40Google Scholar. Cf. also Vol. 2, p. 196, and Vol. 4, p. 322.

⁶¹ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 659Google Scholar; see also p. 241.

⁶² Writings, Vol. 10, pp. 120–21Google Scholar. See also Vol. 4, p. 35.

⁶³ Writings, Vol. 7, p. 358Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Writings, Vol. 3, pp. 41–42Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Writings, Vol. 8, p. 28Google Scholar. Cf. the expression of the same idea 36 years earlier in Writings, Vol. 2, p. 242Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press (cited in note 55), p. 183.

⁶⁷ Marginal comments in Good Humour, or, A Way with the Colonies (London, 1766), pp. 26–27Google Scholar. Franklin's copy is in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. This comment is reprinted in A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Sparks, Jared (Boston, 1833), p. 229Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Jefferson to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814, and to Johnson, Judge William, June 12, 1823, quoted by Koch, Adrienne, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1943), pp. 19, 139Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Parrington, Vernon L., The Main Currents of American Thought, 3 vols. (New York, 1930), Vol. 1, pp. 176–77Google Scholar.

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⁷¹ Writings, Vol. 3, p. 339Google Scholar. See also Vol. 2, pp. 377–78; Vol. 4, pp. 94, 213.

⁷² Writings, Vol. 5, p. 204Google Scholar. See also Vol. 5, p. 261. Another sign of Franklin's antiradical attitude during his stay in England is his disgust with the Wilkes case. See Writings, Vol. 5, pp. 121, 133, 134, and 150Google Scholar. Also Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson, 1753–1785, ed. Van Doren, Carl (Philadelphia, 1947), p. 139Google Scholar.

⁷³ Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson, op. cit., pp. 34, 35.

⁷⁴ Writings, Vol. 10, p. 64Google Scholar. See for an elaboration of his arguments “On the Labouring Poor”, Writings, Vol. 5, pp. 122–27Google Scholar, and “On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor”, Writings, Vol. 5, pp. 534–39Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Oeuvres de Condorcet (cited in note 1), Vol. 3, pp. 401–2Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ See Selsam, J. Paul, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 (Philadelphia, 1926)Google Scholar, and Andrews, Charles M., The Colonial Period of American History, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1934–1938), Vol. 3, p. 320Google Scholar.

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⁷⁹ “Constitutional Reform” (1805), ibid., pp. 998–99.

⁸⁰ Writings, Vol. 3, p. 231Google Scholar. See also p. 309.

⁸¹ Writings, Vol. 9, pp. 564, 702Google Scholar. In 1788, Franklin repeatedly said that there was at present the “danger of too little obedience in the governed,” although in general the opposite evil of “giving too much power to our governors” was more dreaded. Writings, Vol. 9, p. 638Google Scholar; and Vol. 10, p. 7.

⁸² Writings, Vol. 9, p. 593Google Scholar.

⁸³ Writings, Vol. 6, pp. 370–71Google Scholar. For other attacks on the principle of hereditary honors and privileges, in connection with the Order of the Cincinnati, , see Writings, Vol. 9, pp. 162, 336Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Quoted by Haraszti, Zoltán, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁵ “Queries and Remarks …“, Writings, Vol. 10, pp. 58–61Google Scholar. For Franklin's disagreement with the bicameral system of the United States Constitution, see Writings, Vol. 9, pp. 645, 674Google Scholar. The paradox of Franklin's attitude is thrown into relief if one considers that even Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, raised his voice against the dangers of an “elective despotism,” and exalted “those benefits” which a “proper complication of principles” would produce. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Ford, Paul Leicester (New York and London, 1904–1905), Vol. 4, p. 19Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ April 14, 1767, in the William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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⁹⁰ Benjamin Vaughan to Lord Shelburne, November 24, 1782. Benjamin Vaughan Papers in the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Photostat in the Benjamin Vaughan Collection in the William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

⁹¹ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 138 (written in 1783)Google Scholar. See also Vol. 10, p. 59.

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⁹³ MacIver, R. M., “European Doctrines and the Constitution”, in The Constitution Reconsidered (cited in note 25), p. 55Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson (cited in note 72), p. 145 (written in 1764)Google Scholar. See also Writings, Vol. 6, p. 129Google Scholar; Vol. 9, p. 608.

⁹⁵ Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press (cited in note 55), p. 193; Writings, Vol. 2, p. 56Google Scholar; Vol. 3, p. 228. See also Vol. 3, 231; Vol. 5, p. 79.

⁹⁶ Writings, Vol. 9, p. 607Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Pope, , “Essay on Man”, Epistle 3, Selected Works (cited in note 17), p. 124Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ [Ramsay, Allen], Thoughts on the Origin and Nature of Government (London, 1769), p. 10Google Scholar. Franklin's copy in the Jefferson Collection of the Library of Congress. (My italics.)

⁹⁹ “Dogood Papers”, Writings, Vol. 2, p. 26Google Scholar. Cf. Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press (cited in note 55), p. 140.

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¹⁰¹ Ibid., pp. 12, 13.

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¹⁰³ Writings, Vol. 8, p. 304Google Scholar. (My italics.)

¹⁰⁴ Benjamin Franklin's Autobiographical Writings, ed. Van Doren, Carl (New York, 1945), pp. 184–85Google Scholar. Cf. Writings, Vol. 4, p. 269Google Scholar; Vol. 7, p. 390.