honours and wealth: they lamented that they now
led a miserable life, because they had studied these
sciences for no other end, and thus had not cultivated
their Rational by means of them. Their speech
was slow and muffled. In the meantime there were
two conversing above my head, and when I asked who
they were, I was told that one of them was of the
highest distinction in the learned world, and it was
given me to believe that he was Aristotle. Who
the other was, was not stated. He was then let
into the state in which he had been when he lived
in the world, for every one can easily be let into
the state of life which he had had in the world, since
every state of his life remains with him. I was
surprised to find that he applied himself to the right
ear, and he spoke there, hoarsely, indeed, but still
sensibly. From the purport of what he said I apperceived
that he was of quite a different genius from those
Schoolmen who first arose, namely, that he hatched
what he wrote from his own thought, and from the same
source produced his philosophical system, so that the
terms which he invented, and applied to subjects of
thought, were forms of expression by which he described
interior things; also that he was excited to such
pursuits by a delight of the affection, and by a desire
of knowing the things that belonged to the thought
and the understanding; and that he followed obediently
whatever his spirit had dictated. This was the
reason he applied himself to the right ear, differently
from his followers, who are called Schoolmen, and who
do not proceed from thought to terms, but from terms
to thoughts, thus by a contrary way; and many of them
do not even proceed to thoughts, but stick fast entirely
in terms, their application of which, when they make
any, being to confirm whatever they want to, and to
invest falsities with an appearance of truth, according
to their eagerness to persuade. Consequently
for them philosophy is rather a means of becoming
foolish than a means of becoming wise; and therefore
they have darkness instead of light. Afterwards,
I conversed with him on analytical science, saying
that a little child, in half an hour, speaks more
philosophically, analytically, and logically, than
he could describe in a volume, because all things
of human thought and consequently of human speech
are analytical, and the laws thereof are from the
spiritual world; and that he who wants to think artificially
from terms is not unlike a dancer who wants to learn
to dance from a knowledge of the motory fibres and
muscles; if he were to keep his mind (animus)
fixed on that knowledge whilst dancing, he would hardly
be able to move a foot, and yet, without that knowledge,
he sets in action all the motory fibres that are scattered
throughout the whole of his body, and, in due measure,
the lungs, diaphragm, sides, arms, neck, and all the
other parts, to describe all which volumes would not
suffice; and that the case is just like this with those
who want to think from terms. He approved of