Clearly between the time he compiled his "Literary Bible" and this entry in the Memorandum book, a considerable change had taken place in Jefferson's mental world. What was dormant had been awakened, what was non-existent had been created. Let those who are looking for influences hunt for pale reflections of these maxims in the writings of the French philosophers. I cannot perceive any. I would even say that there is no distinct influence of Bolingbroke, for Jefferson borrowed from Bolingbroke methods of approaching certain problems rather than definite ideas. The young Virginian made use, for a short time only, of the critical reasoning employed by the English philosopher, but when it came to building anew, he gathered all the material, stone by stone and maxim by maxim, from the old Greek Stoics. It was a pessimistic yet courageous philosophy of life, far different from eighteenth-century optimism. By a strange anomaly, the son of the pioneer, the young man supposedly brought up under frontier influence, felt more kinship with Greece and republican Rome than with the philosophers of London, Paris or Geneva. During this early period of his life and when he had rejected the Christian system of ethics, the young Virginian found the moral props he needed in Homer's simple code of honor and friendship; in echoes from the Greek Stoics discovered in Cicero; and through them also was revealed to him a conception of patriotism and devotion to public duty which was to mold the rest of his life.
In the transformation that took place in Jefferson's attitude towards life, it would be unjust to leave out the influence exerted by Patrick Henry. The young student was present when Henry delivered his famous speech in the House of Burgesses in 1765 and ended the speech with the defiant declaration, "If this be treason make the most of it." "He appeared to me," wrote Jefferson, "to speak as Homer wrote; his talents were great indeed, such as I never heard from any man." From Henry he did not receive any particular political philosophy, but from him he learned the value of those striking formulas which remain in the memory of men, become mottoes and battle cries of political campaigns. He liked the vehemence and completeness of Henry's affirmation and when, in 1770, he wrote in his memorandum that maxim of all revolutionists and radicals of every age--_fiat justitia ruat coelum_, let there be justice, even if the heavens should crumble down--he was thinking as much of the Virginia orator as of the Romans of old.