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                                                                                            Bowd. Coll. June 25th, 1847

Brother Joseph

   I received a letter from you June 13 containing Money, $35.00. I forget whether I have yet acknowledged its reception. I believe not; suppose I ought to have done it before now however.
Your last letter I received about one week since: and it probably deserves some what of answering.  Some if it had become rather Old for these times, Some things though ever improve by age.
 As for "Jeremy Bentham", I believe you advise me to read more before I judge of him. I do not think I am very likely to read him much. There is a deal of truth in the Old Minister's remark that "it is wrong to tread a good book;  --there are so many better ones." If I should undertake to read very book which is really twice as truly valuable as Bentham, I should have the work of more than one lifetime laid out. I guess that Bentham's warmest admirers do not think of denying his infidelity or Atheism. As to reading for ones self so as to judge, it is very plain that it will not do in all calls. Testimony is as valuable in the literary as in the physical world I am no more obliged to read "Paul de Kock" and "Eugene Sue" in order to determine they are not worth reading, than I am obliged to cross the Atlantic to determine the existence of such as city as Paris.  One must have opinions upon books he has never read, as well as upon things he has never seen. Another thing - the guilt of Bentham in giving the utterance might the 'bodying forth" to the great unspoken Atheism of the depraved human heart.  Think it over again. It must be so, -- it is but just too. If Genius must have its glorious reward for its great and good, it must also