Note i-440 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

Although Franklin indicates in his Autobiography that he delighted to listen to Mandeville hold forth at the Horns, there seems to be traceable in his writings no direct influence of Mandeville's thought. (One may wonder whether Franklin's use of the name "Horatio" in his 1730 dialogues between Philocles and Horatio could be traced to Mandeville's use of the name in his dialogues between Cleomenes and Horatio.) Mandeville's empirical view of man's essential egoism would have found sympathetic response from Franklin. On the other hand, Mandeville's ethical rigorism (see Kaye's Introd. to The Fable of the Bees) differs from the utilitarian cast Franklin sheds over his strenuous ethicism. One may suspect that like a Bunyan, a Swift, a Rabelais, Mandeville would have fortified Franklin against accepting too blithely Shaftesbury's faith in man's innate altruism, even if he did not short-circuit Franklin's growing humanitarianism.