It is believed by some people that when our bodies are asleep, our spirits are free to roam consciously through space, and experience things which we do not remember when we awake, but which appear to us at best as a dream. Something similar was the case with the gnomes. In their ethereal states they were individual powers, as distinct from each other as electricity is distinct from light, or heat from sound, and as such they were in possession of consciousness and perception of a spiritual kind, and capable of remembering all they had experienced while condensed into a corporeal form. But whenever they assumed corporeal bodies, they had no distinct recollection of what they had been doing while in a state of dissolution, and this was explained to me by the fact that while in their ethereal state their brains were not solidified enough to register and retain the impressions which they received; but the higher impressions which they received while in their corporeal forms they remembered also in their ethereal state, and whenever a gnome entered into the ethereal state he knew all that he had been doing in the same state before. Moreover, there was a state in which they lived in a semi-corporeal and semi-ethereal condition, and this was when they had not fully dissolved their forms, but merely assumed the shape of a globe of light. From all this it will appear that it is as difficult for a gnome to penetrate into our world as it is for us to penetrate into theirs, and even, as it often may happen, a gnome, while in his incorporeal form, visits mankind, he will not remember anything about it when he returns, or it will appear to him like a dream, and this may be the reason that our world has gained the reputation among the gnomes as being a dreamland, and nothing more. It may be a dreamland to them as theirs is to us. But they appeared to me to live and exist in their own sphere as much as we in ours. As to the rest, they were born, ate, drank, slept, married, and evaporated after death.