_Reader._ No, sir. If this last assertion were true, it would follow that every child would be lifeless at its birth; for without a soul no animal life can be conceived. What is “gradually developed” is not the substance of the soul, but the exercise of its faculties. This is a point already settled. As to your other assertion, that the question has not yet been decided by the physicians, I need only say that, although there are different opinions regarding the time of the animation of the embryo, yet no physician (unless he is a materialist) denies that the embryo is animated long before its nativity. Hence your notion of a ready‐made soul lying in wait, and suddenly rushing in when the child is born, is only a dream of your fancy or an unworthy attempt at ridiculing the proceedings of nature. What you add about the development of the child’s mind by means of the senses, education, and example does not prove the _subjective_, but only the _objective_, growth of the mind, as you yourself seem to concede (p. 162). And as the objective growth means an accidental acquisition of knowledge without any substantial change of the soul, hence nothing that you may say in refutation of innate ideas can have the least weight or afford the least ground against the doctrine of the immortality and substantiality of the soul. XVII. The Idea Of A God. _Reader._ From the non‐existence of innate ideas you infer, doctor, that “the idea of a God, or the conception of a supreme personal being, who created, who governs and preserves the world, is not innate in the human mind, and therefore is not incontrovertible” (p. 184). On the other hand, you say with Luther that “God is a blank sheet, upon which nothing is found but what you have yourself written” (_ibid._) Do you mean that our notion of God is merely subjective—that is, a creation of our fancy without any objective foundation? _Büchner._ Yes, sir. “We can have neither any knowledge nor any conception of the _absolute_—of that which transcends the surrounding sensual world. However much metaphysicians may vainly attempt to define the absolute, however much religion may endeavor to excite faith in the absolute by the assumption of a revelation, nothing can conceal the defect of the definition. All our knowledge is relative, and results from the comparison of surrounding sensible objects. We could have no notion of darkness without light, no conception of high without low, of heat without coldness, etc.; absolute ideas we have none. We are not able to form any conception of ‘everlasting’ or ‘infinite,’ as our understanding, limited by time and space, finds an impassable barrier for that conception. From being in the sensual world accustomed to find a cause for every effect, we have falsely concluded that there exists a primary cause of all things, although such a cause is perfectly inaccessible to our ideas, and is contradicted by scientific experience” (p. 179).