usable for physical bodies has been used over and over again—­so that each atom would have several owners.  The mere solitary fact of the existence of cannibalism is to my mind a sufficient reductio ad absurdum of the theory that the particular set of atoms I shall happen to own at death (changed every seven years, they say) will be mine in the next life—­and all the other insuperable difficulties (such as people born with bodily defects) are swept away at once if we accept S. Paul’s “spiritual body,” and his simile of the grain of corn.  I have read very little of “Sartor Resartus,” and don’t know the passage you quote:  but I accept the idea of the material body being the “dress” of the spiritual—­a dress needed for material life.

    Ch.  Ch., Dec. 13, 1885.

Dear Edith,—­I have been a severe sufferer from Logical puzzles of late.  I got into a regular tangle about the “import of propositions,” as the ordinary logical books declare that “all x is z” doesn’t even hint that any x’s exist, but merely that the qualities are so inseparable that, if ever x occurs, z must occur also.  As to “some x is z” they are discreetly silent; and the living authorities I have appealed to, including our Professor of Logic, take opposite sides!  Some say it means that the qualities are so connected that, if any x’s did exist, some must be z—­others that it only means compatibility, i.e., that some might be z, and they would go on asserting, with perfect belief in their truthfulness, “some boots are made of brass,” even if they had all the boots in the world before them, and knew that none were so made, merely because there is no inherent impossibility in making boots of brass!  Isn’t it bewildering?  I shall have to mention all this in my great work on Logic—­but I shall take the line “any writer may mean exactly what he pleases by a phrase so long as he explains it beforehand.”  But I shall not venture to assert “some boots are made of brass” till I have found a pair!  The Professor of Logic came over one day to talk about it, and we had a long and exciting argument, the result of which was “x -x”—­a magnitude which you will be able to evaluate for yourself.

    C. L. Dodgson.

As an example of the good advice Mr. Dodgson used to give his young friends, the following letter to Miss Isabel Standen will serve excellently:—­

    Eastbourne, Aug. 4, 1885.

I can quite understand, and much sympathise with, what you say of your feeling lonely, and not what you can honestly call “happy.”  Now I am going to give you a bit of philosophy about that—­my own experience is, that every new form of life we try is, just at first, irksome rather than pleasant.  My first day or two at the sea is a little depressing; I miss the