Greetings, my friends. It is most gratifying to see responses from around the world to my first missive. It seems that my influence internationally is as great as ever it was. In answer to the correspondent who took up my comment on men of law—you are correct—I was very critical of lawyers. But are we not all liable to the sinister influence of self interest? I recognise that all human beings, including lawyers, are liable to defend corrupt practices from which they derive benefit. The difference between lawyers, churchmen, and politicians on the one hand, and most of the people on the other, was simply that the first groups possessed the means as well as the motive to pursue their private interests at the expense of the universal interest.

In my last address I promised to tell you a little more of my Auto-Icon; that is my body preserved in its cabinet here at UCL.

‘Auto-Icon’, I should add, is a word of my own coining (I have not infrequently found it necessary to create new words to express concepts for which existing language is inadequate), but I trust its sense will be self-explanatory: just as every man is his own best biographer, so, if my suggestions were to be followed, might every man be his own statue. I expounded my ideas on the subject in the final literary production of my lifetime, a pamphlet entitled ‘Auto-Icon; or, Farther Uses of the Dead to the Living’; but for many a year before this was composed the subject was a favourite one at my table, and, indeed, I bequeathed my body for dissection as early as my coming of age in 1769. Permit me to elaborate on some of the principal heads of the pamphlet here.

My proposal was to turn the dead to the beneficial account of the living. The soft and corruptible parts of the body would be employed for the purpose of anatomical instruction, while the comparatively incorruptible parts were to be preserved as a peculiar memorial to the individual. There would no longer be need of monuments of stone or marble. There would be no danger to health from the accumulation of corpses. Churchyards would gradually fade into desuetude. In their stead, I envisaged Auto-Icon galleries, the higher parts furnished with head-lengths alone, the lower floor with whole lengths, the two sexes alternating with one another, in the manner of Persians and Caryatides. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in their Auto-Icon state, might be disposed of in a gallanty-show in their own most Honourable House at Westminster. A country gentleman might alternate members of his family with the trees in the avenue leading to his dwelling, while the Auto-Icons of philosophers might become objects of pilgrimage. Indeed, as I justly observed in ‘Farther Uses’, ‘when Bentham has ceased to live (in memory will he never cease to live!) whom shall the Bentham Club have for its chairman? Whom but Bentham himself? On him will all eyes be turned—to him will all speeches be addressed’.

Why, I went farther, suggesting theatrical or dramatic expressions of Auto-Iconism, in which the Auto-Icons of illustrious persons might be made to move and appear to breathe and even speak by means of strings, wires, and other contrivances; and in which they might conduct dialogues with interlocutors, expounding their ideas in the arts and sciences to the enlightenment of the wider populace.

Of course, I saw that my ideas would be ridiculed; and to this day there are those who aver that I intended them merely as a jest at the expense of posterity. But I insist that my entirely serious intention was to question religious sensibilities about life and death, and to render our dead relations a source of good, and not of evil. And I maintain that my invention, were it to be more widely adopted, would go on producing its beneficial uses long after those detractors had sunk into the oblivion which they so well merited.

Following my death in 1832, my body, which I wished to be of use to medicine, became first the subject of a public dissection by my good friend, Dr Southwood Smith; and then, in accordance with the instructions I had left, was placed in the cabinet which it occupies to this day. I must clarify that what is contained there is in fact my skeleton, padded out and enclosed in a sort of body-shaped stocking: this is clothed in the apparel worn by me in my lifetime, while in my hand I hold ‘Dapple’, my familiar walking stick.

It was my firm intention that my preserved head should surmount my skeleton, and for ten years before my death I carried around in my pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Sadly, the experiment of mummification, despite my best endeavours to research the methods of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, was not a success. The process went disastrously wrong, robbing my head of facial expression and leaving a hideous monstrosity. In its stead, what I consider to be a very fair wax likeness is now in place.

It was not my idea that my Auto-Icon should be preserved in perpetuity at UCL, but by a mere matter of historical chance it passed to the College eighteen years after my death. Nonetheless, it is not unfitting that this is where I have come to rest, for not only was UCL founded in close accordance with my ideals, but it is also the repository in which the greater part of my voluminous papers is now preserved. Only now, through the laborious endeavours of a project based in the College, are they gradually coming to publication: I have no time now to expound on that topic, but through the wonders of the technology of the age, you may learn more of this project by clicking here.

In my next communication, I shall hope to convey to you my views on some of the issues of concern in the modern world.

Your ever laborious and devoted servant,

J.B.