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were read and discussed, and as we shall see, prizes were offered for essays on subjects of current interest. According to Voellmy [ v 1 pp 48-49], however, the good intentions and well-thought-out speeches of the Society produced little in the way of practical effects. It was, moreover, cursed with internal discord on moral and social questions right from its foundation, and its members were also objects of much suspicion among local people. Their better-educated neighbours thought the Society was a front for political intrigue, and the peasants resisted its efforts to change their ways of thinking and behaving, they preferred their "superstition, mental enslavement and moral stagnation".

Bräker took his membership very seriously, he missed only one meeting from the time he joined until the Society disbanded in 1791. As he himself admits, however, his strongest motive for seeking membership was to gain access to the Society's library. At the time of his joining this library consisted of about 200 volumes (it is known to have had 151 volumes in 1771 and 311 by 1782). Improving access to books, which in the 18th century were expensive even for quite well-off people, was one of the aims of the Society, and it was a condition of membership that a new member should provide "a useful book, in German" for the library [Böning, biog, p 103]. The library must have had other sources as well, probably donations or sums voted out of the general funds. Moreover, a comparison of Bräker's records of the books he read, and the catalogue of this library, shows that he was not completely dependent on it for access to books, he was certainly borrowing them from Ambühl and very probably also from Giezendanner.

Though small, the library contained books on a broad spectrum of subjects, and Bräker tried them all, with the exception of poetry and drama, which, probably because of religious scruples, he seems to have avoided at first. Later, however, his reading included the English poets Milton and Young and the German Klopstock. He discovered Shakespeare (in translation), and was so fascinated by this little-known (in his environment) English writer that he read through every play that "Great William" wrote, and eventually, in 1780, wrote his own criticism of them.. He was not limited to books published in the German-speaking countries, the library contained translations of many important works in English and French and other languages. He read books on history, medicine, philosophy, theology, astronomy, travel and natural history. He read authors old and new: Josephus, Plutarch, Lavater, Zimmermann, Sterne, Smollett, Cervantes, Goldoni, Molière, and the English "Spectator". Some works made a particular impression on him, such as Hirzel's "Scientific Farmer" (whose author he was to meet in 1782), and Butler's satire on religious enthusiasm and hypocrisy, "Hudibras", which he tried to imitate.

It is an impressive list, yet at the same time it shows how much ground he needed to make up, compared to the full-time scholars of the day. The historian Edward Gibbon, for example, who was a near contemporary of Bräker, was able to read more books in a year than Bräker probably did in his entire life. And Bräker was to pay a high price for the privileges of learning, he became alienated from many of his neighbours and even from his wife. His appetite for learning was, temporarily at least, satisfied, but his wish to associate with learned people became stronger and was not to be granted for several years. Some of the new ideas that reached him through reading would have disturbed him, though he was already independent enough in mind not to believe everything he saw in print, as he had done when he was a boy. I think that Bräker's membership of the Moral Society played a part in his life much more important than just a means of making up some of the deficiencies in his education; it began a time of mental and moral crisis of which, unfortunately, we do not have a complete record.

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