_Büchner._ How can a soul exist without ideas? And, if all ideas come through our senses, how can a soul exist without being united to the organs? “Daily experience teaches us that man begins his intellectual life only with the gradual development of his senses, and in proportion as he enters into a definite relation to the external world; and that the development of his intellect keeps pace with that of his organs of sense and his organ of thought, and also with the number and importance of the impressions received. ‘Every unprejudiced observer,’ says Virchow, ‘has arrived at the conviction that thought is only gradually developed in man.’ The new‐born child thinks as little, and has as little a soul, as the unborn child; it is, in our view, living in the body, but intellectually dead.... The embryo neither thinks nor feels, and is not conscious of its existence. Man recollects nothing of this state, nor of the first period of his existence in which the senses were dormant; and this perfect unconsciousness proves his spiritual non‐existence at that period. The reason can only be that, during the fœtal state, there are no impressions whatever received from without, and so weak and imperfect are they in the first few weeks that the intellect cannot be said to exist” (p. 159). _Reader._ It is plain that the new‐born child cannot form an idea of exterior objects without the use of his senses. But is it true that the new‐born child is not conscious of its own existence? Certainly not; for, without a previous knowledge of its own existence, it would never be able to attribute to itself the feelings awakened in it by exterior objects. The mind cannot say, _I feel_, if it is not already acquainted with the _I_. Nor does it matter that “man recollects nothing of the first period of his existence.” Recollection is impossible so long as the brain has not acquired a certain consistency; and therefore whatever happens with us in the first period of our existence leaves no durable trace in our organs, and is entirely forgotten. Hence your assertions “that the senses of the new‐born child are dormant, and that its perfect unconsciousness proves its spiritual non‐existence,” are both false. The child feels its being, its senses are quite ready to receive impressions, and its soul is quite alive to such impressions.