_Büchner._ For two reasons, sir. First, because “the question whether there be innate ideas is a very old one, and, in our opinion, one of the most important in relation to the contemplation of nature. It decides to some extent whether man, considered as the product of a higher world, has received a form of existence as something foreign and external to his essence, with the tendency to shake off this earthly covering, and to return to his spiritual home; or whether, both in his spiritual and bodily capacity, man stands to the earth which has produced him in a necessary, inseparable connection, and whether he has received his essential nature from this world; so that he cannot be torn from the earth, like the plant which cannot exist without its maternal soil. The question is, at the same time, one which does not dissolve itself in a philosophical mist, but which, so to speak, has flesh and blood, and, resting upon empirical facts, can be discussed and decided without high‐sounding phrases” (p. 157). The second reason is, that “if it be correct that there are no innate intuitions, then must the assertion of those be incorrect who assume that the idea of a God, or the conception of a supreme personal being, who created, who governs and preserves the world, is innate in the human mind, and therefore incontrovertible by any mode of reasoning” (p. 184). _Reader._ Do you mean, that, by refuting the theory of innate ideas, you will cut the ground from under the feet of the theist and the spiritualist? _Büchner._ Yes, sir. Such is the drift of my argumentation.