300 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1859. tically sealed in a bottle, and heated up to a pressure of 100,000 

 atmospheres. It might make him behave himself, but perhaps 

 not. With kind regards to all, 



Yours very truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Sir John Herschel. 



Camden Street, May 18, 1859. 



MY DEAR SIR JOHN, Thanks for your pamphlet. I have not 

 had time to do more than glance at it, but will say what I think 

 when I have got through a heavy job of calculation a job of 

 life and death, as one may say, for it is all about premiums and 

 claims and assurances, &c., &c. 



Maurice de Biran, who died in 1824, aged about sixty, was a 

 philosophe, who speculated and died, even as a silkworm spins 

 and dies. He will be a gaudy moth, I dare say. His cocoon 

 was published by Victor Cousin in 1841 in four volumes. He 

 was very much against Napoleon in 1814, which means, I sup- 

 pose, that he had been his parasite theretofore. He was a public 

 man of some kind. Probably his will was an impulse to better 

 his condition, or butter his condition. He passes for an acute 

 thinker in France, but I have never seen a line of his writing. 



I believe that so much of cause as is not mere notion of pre- 

 cedent and consequent is derived from our own consciousness 

 of power exercised at will. If we had been rational posts, in- 

 capable of motion, chewing the cud on what passed before our 

 eyes, and if with a will incapable of action, I do not see how we 

 should have had any real notion of cause. What the will is I have 

 not the least idea, or whether it ought to be called the shall or 

 not. Query, if it be really correct to call it the will, how is a per- 

 son whose will is undecided said to be shilly-shally ? Ought it not 

 to be willy-wally ? Kind regards to the circle. 



Yours very truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Miss Sheepshanks. 



41 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road, N.W., 



August 24, 1859. 



MY DEAR Miss SHEEPSHANKS,- I do not know what you have 

 done with my dear friend's books. There are one or two which 

 I should recommend to be given to Trinity College library, if 



