spirits, which he claims to see with his own eyes in the clearest light. And he assures us that, having spoken after their death with all his friends, he had nearly always found that those having died recently could persuade themselves with difficulty that they had died, because they beheld a similar world; also, that societies of spirits of the same inner state live in the same appearance in regard to the country and other things there, and that a change of state is accompanied by the appearance of a change of locality. The mass of wild and unspeakably absurd forms and figures which our dreamer believes to see quite clearly in his daily intercourse with spirits must be derived from the fact that, whenever spirits communicate their thoughts to the souls of men, these thoughts take the appearance of material things, which, however, present themselves to the subject only on the strength of their relation to an inner meaning, but, still, with all appearance of reality.
I have already stated that, according to our author, the many powers and qualities of the soul are in sympathy with those organs of the body which they govern. The whole outer man therefore corresponds to the whole inner man. If, then, a perceptible spiritual influx from the invisible world flows mainly into some one of the powers of the soul, he harmoniously feels its apparent presence also in the corresponding member of his outer man. Under this head he classifies a great variety of sensations in his body which he claims are always connected with spiritual contemplation. But their
