inquiry, “What are such visions sent for?” The question implies a supposition of miraculous power, exerted for a temporary and special purpose.  But would it not be more rational to believe that all appearances, whether spiritual or material, are caused by the operation of universal laws, manifested under varying circumstances?  In the infancy of the world, it was the general tendency of the human mind to consider all occasional phenomena as direct interventions of the gods, for some special purpose at the time.  Thus, the rainbow was supposed to be a celestial road, made to accommodate the swift messenger of the gods, when she was sent on an errand, and withdrawn as soon as she had done with it.  We now know that the laws of the refraction and reflection of light produce the radiant iris, and that it will always appear whenever drops of water in the air present themselves to the sun’s rays in a suitable position.  Knowing this, we have ceased to ask what the rainbow appears for.

That a spiritual form is contained within the material body is a very ancient and almost universal belief.  Hindoo books of the remotest antiquity describe man as a triune being, consisting of the soul, the spiritual body, and the material body.  This form within the outer body was variously named by Grecian poets and philosophers.  They called it “the soul’s image,” “the invisible body,” “the aerial body,” “the shade.”  Sometimes they called it “the sensuous soul,” and described it as “all eye and all ear,”—­expressions which cannot fail to suggest the phenomena of clairvoyance.  The “shade” of Hercules is described by poets as dwelling in the Elysian Fields, while his body was converted to ashes on the earth, and his soul was dwelling on Olympus with the gods.  Swedenborg speaks of himself as having been a visible form to angels in the spiritual world; and members of his household, observing him at such times, describe the eyes of his body on earth as having the expression of one walking in his sleep.  He tells us, that, when his thoughts turned toward earthly things, the angels would say to him, “Now we are losing sight of you”:  and he himself felt that he was returning to his material body.  For several years of his life, he was in the habit of seeing and conversing familiarly with visitors unseen by those around him.  The deceased brother of the Queen of Sweden repeated to him a secret conversation, known only to himself and his sister.  The Queen had asked for this, as a test of Swedenborg’s veracity; and she became pale with astonishment when every minute particular of her interview with her brother was reported to her.  Swedenborg was a sedate man, apparently devoid of any wish to excite a sensation, engrossed in scientific pursuits, and remarkable for the orderly habits of his mind.  The intelligent and enlightened German, Nicolai, in the later years of his life, was accustomed to find himself in the midst of persons whom he knew perfectly well, but who were invisible