Positive reconstruction · reader-scoped, not an inferred-absence lacuna
This reconstruction covers the readable fraction of Thomas Jefferson's formation -- attested reading and writing only, not the whole of a life.
Thomas Jefferson and Analysis of the work of Dupuis (Origine de tous les Cultes)
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to Analysis of the work of Dupuis (Origine de tous les Cultes).
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by Destutt de Tracy.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (Explicit first-person completed reading: 'I have been contented with the humble achievement of reading the analysis of his work [Dupuis] by Destutt Tracy, in two hundred pages octavo.' Author in-passage (Destutt Tracy), work identified as his analysis of Dupuis; the catalogue's only Tracy entry is the Ideologie (a different work), so proposed as a new Work.). Self-report reliability discount 0.9: Strengthened by precise bibliographic specificity ('the analysis of his work by Destutt Tracy, in two hundred pages octavo') and a self-deprecating, non-boastful frame ('the humble achievement'); retrospective but concrete.