Robert Southey to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 2 September 1796: 'IN your Magazine for June, a Correspondent, who signs himself M.H. has defended the system of Helvetius, and asserted that “nothing can be more monstrous and hypothetical, than the notion of a child (whose mind having received no impression, is a total blank, without a single idea) being born with a power of discrimination, a correct judgment, &c.”'