Note i-276 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

Franklin acknowledges his close reading of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Writings, I, 243). In 1749 he urges that Locke be read in the Philadelphia Academy (II, 387) and refers again to the great logician in Idea of the English School (III, 28). He is supposed to have defended in spirited debate Locke's treatise on Toleration (I, 179). The catalogues of the Philadelphia Library Company disclose that by 1757 all of Locke's works had been obtained. One may ask how an alert eighteenth-century mind could have escaped the impact of Locke's thought.

It is more difficult to establish satisfactorily a nexus between Rousseau's and Franklin's minds. Mr. George Simpson Eddy has kindly allowed us to consult his "Catalogue of Pamphlets, Once a Part of the Library of Benjamin Franklin, and now owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania" in which are included Rousseau's Preface de la Nouvelle Hélöise ... (1761) and Discours sur l'économie politique ... (1760). Even if Rousseau's mistress, Countess d'Houdetot, feted Franklin in 1781, and Franklin was acquainted with Rousseau's physician, Achille-Guillaume le Bègue de Presle, and directly in 1785 mentions Rousseau on child-education (Writings, IX, 334), one can not be sure to what extent Rousseau's writings may have aided Franklin in formulating notions similar to the social contract theory (IX, 138).