LiXNEAX SOCllilY OF LONUOX. 43 



late as 1903, and his son shares his views and seems fully alire to his pre- 



eiTiinent merits I am still rather soeptieal, and look forward willi 



interest to the arrival of the Diary, which ought to settle the matter as 

 you say 



As a matter of fact, the pamphlet dated 1849 is not directly 

 mentioned in the obituary notice of 1903. 



AVhen the account of (jr. W. tSleeper in the ' The Truth Seeker' 

 for October, 1903, is carefully compared with the further re- 

 ferences to him in the obituary notice of his wife iu the same 

 journal, for January 13, 1912, certain dilferences are apparent. 



The earlier notice speaks of his "little book, entitled 'Educa- 

 tion and its Offspring — Civilization,' " of " various ideas put 

 forth in his numerous essays and speeches," and stat^es " he was 

 the first to advance the theory that germs cause most diseases, and 

 further maintained that life was due to other organisms diffused 

 throughout the atmosphere, requiring only favorable conditions 

 for its development. Numerous novel thoughts concerning ci\i- 

 lization likewise emanated from his mind, " 



There is no reference to the 1849 booklet, and the words I 

 have quoted give a very imperfect idea of its power and scope. 

 And yet a sentence in the notice, quoted as one of G. W. Sleeper's 

 " oft-repeated utterances," appears ahnost word for word * in the 

 pamphlet, viz., the sentence beginning "Of what lies beyond the 

 grave" and ending "need not fear to die" near the top of p. 17 

 (also p. 17 of the Appendix to this Address). 



The I'eferences in the obituary notice of 1912 are very different. 

 " The Origin of Life " and " The Dangers of the Unseen " are 

 spoken of as lectures published in 1849, while the main subjects 

 of both are set forth in brief but adequafe summaries. 



The above comparison strongly suggests that the 1849 book- 

 let was printed after G. W. Sleeper's death. The printer's 

 signature to the contract taken alone is probable evidence for 

 thirty or forty years after 1849. The special mention of the 

 house-fly as a carrier of disease is evidence for a much wid-jr 

 interval. 



I have carefully read more than once everything in print and 

 everything in manuscript by G. W. Sleeper that has been sent to 

 me by his son, and I fail to see any evidence of that ability which 

 would certainly be required to produce the booklet if it were 

 written to-day. The evidence of ability is probably chiefly dis- 

 played in fitting the accounts of modern discovery into the frarae- 

 Mork of an older phraseology. The conclusions of modern science 

 may well have been derived, as Sir George Warner suggests, from 

 a resume of recent discoveries in some scientific publication or 

 magazine. 



On the other hand, the fact that G. W. Sleeper is described 



* The only verbal differences are the substitution of " can " in the notice for 

 "may" in the booklet, and of " all his fellow-men " in the former for "all" 

 in the latter. There are also flight differences in punctuation, capital 

 letters, &.c. 



