senses surrounding you, these mysteries can never be made perfectly intelligible to your mind.  Spiritual natures are eternal and indivisible, but their modes of being are as infinitely varied as the forms of matter.  They have no relation to space, and, in their transitions, no dependence upon time, so that they can pass from one part of the universe to another by laws entirely independent of their motion.  The quantity, or the number of spiritual essences, like the quantity or number of the atoms of the material world, are always the same; but their arrangements, like those of the materials which they are destined to guide or govern, are infinitely diversified; they are, in fact, parts more or less inferior of the infinite mind, and in the planetary systems, to one of which this globe you inhabit belongs, are in a state of probation, continually aiming at, and generally rising to a higher state of existence.  Were it permitted me to extend your vision to the fates of individual existences, I could show you the same spirit, which in the form of Socrates developed the foundations of moral and social virtue, in the Czar Peter possessed of supreme power and enjoying exalted felicity in improving a rude people.  I could show you the monad or spirit, which with the organs of Newton displayed an intelligence almost above humanity, now in a higher and better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light from a purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind.  But prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of those states which the highest intellectual beings that have belonged to the earth enjoy after death in their transition to now and more exalted natures.”  The voice ceased, and I appeared in a dark, deep, and cold cave, of which the walls of the Colosaeum formed the boundary.  From above a bright and rosy light broke into this cave, so that whilst below all was dark, above all was bright and illuminated with glory.  I seemed possessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt that the light brought with it a genial warmth; odours like those of the most balmy flowers appeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds of music absorbed my sense of hearing; my limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that I seemed to rise from the earth, and gradually mounted into the bright luminous air, leaving behind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruins with which it was strewed.  Language is inadequate to describe what I felt in rising continually upwards through this bright and luminous atmosphere.  I had not, as is generally the case with persons in dreams of this kind, imagined to myself wings; but I rose gradually and securely as if I were myself a part of the ascending column of light.  By degrees this luminous atmosphere, which was diffused over the whole of space, became more circumscribed, and extended only to a limited spot around me.  I saw through it the bright blue sky, the moon and stars, and I passed