but the inmost principles of nature in action?  What is religion but a device to catch and bind the vulgar?” Hereupon the rest vociferated, “Bravo!” After a few minutes they rushed forth, and in so doing they saw me at a distance looking attentively at them.  Being provoked at this, they ran out from the forest, and with a threatening countenance directed their course hastily towards me, and said, “What are you doing here, listening to our whispers?” I replied, “Why should I not? what is to hinder me? you were only talking together:”  and I related what I had heard from them.  Hereupon their minds (animi) were appeased, which was through fear lest their sentiments should be divulged; and then they began to speak modestly and to act bashfully; from which circumstance I knew that they were not of mean descent but of honorable birth; and then I told them, how I saw them in the forest as satyrs, twenty as calf-satyrs, six as panther-satyrs, and four as wolf-satyrs; they were thirty in number.  They were surprised at this, because they saw themselves there as men, and nothing else, in like manner as they saw themselves here with me.  I then taught them, that the reason of their so appearing was from their adulterous lust, and that this satyr-like form was a form of dissolute adultery, and not a form of a person.  This happened, I said, because every evil concupiscence presents a likeness of itself in some form, which is not perceived by those who are in the concupiscence, but by those who are at a distance:  I also said, “To convince you of it, send some from among you into that forest, and do you remain here, and look at them.”  They did so, and sent away two; and viewing them from near the above brothel-cottage, they saw them altogether as satyrs; and when they returned, they saluted those satyrs, and said, “Oh what ridiculous figures!” While they were laughing, I jested a good deal with them, and told them that I had also seen adulterers as hogs; and then I recollected the fable of Ulysses and the Circe, how she sprinkled the companions and servants of Ulysses with poisonous herbs, and touched them with a magic wand, and turned them into hogs,—­perhaps into adulterers, because she could not by any art turn any one into a hog.  After they had made themselves exceedingly merry on this and other like subjects, I asked them whether they then knew to what kingdoms in the world they had belonged?  They said, they had belonged to various kingdoms, and they named Italy, Poland, Germany, England, Sweden; and I enquired, whether they had seen any one from Holland of their party?  And they said, Not one.  After this I gave the conversation a serious turn, and asked them, whether they had ever thought that adultery is sin?  They replied, “What is sin? we do not know what it means.”  I then inquired, whether they ever remembered that adultery was contrary to the sixth commandment of the Decalogue. [Footnote:  According to the division of the commandments