Jefferson's Letter About Ideas Being Free "Like the Air"

Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson of August 13, 1813 is one of the most famous writings on intellectual property. It contains this oft-quoted passage:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

When I looked for it, I couldn't easily find find a version of the letter that's highly suitable for printing and reading, so I've put the letter into two pdfs: one with typeset text, and another with images of the original pages, taken fron the files at the Library of Congress. These documents and others are available for free download from my Compendium of Intellectual Property.