PART II.
IMMORTALIZATION.
"Dear Sir,—I am deeply interested. I have never read anything of your Publications except the New Mola.[1] On the 61st page of that work, under Sedition XIX, I find a single sentence in capitals: the same thought I have been inclined to believe for more than thirty years:—'All People Do Not Have Souls!' My dear sir, do you mean it? Have you said something more about this somewhere else in your publications? … Oh, do you guess how my soul hungers in viewing the table of contents of the extraordinary Works published by your House:—and you will guess I have a soul?
"Praying that your valuable life may be long preserved, and that you may continue to enlighten the millions as only you can,
"I am, your true friend,
E. B. MERRILL,
E. B. Merrill, Esq.—Sir: The following Paper, in substance, is the reply to the questions involved in the "Mola" and your letter. In response to your interrogatories, allow me to say that:—All things are generally reputed and believed to reproduce their kinds. That is regarded as a determinate rule, and strict, unswerving law of nature. But it is not wholly true, nor an unchangeable law, because there is a law of spontaneous generation both in the faunal and floral departments of nature,—both vegetable and animal life produced by other than seed germination, some of which have, and
- ↑ See notice at end of Vol.
