It is curious to find that this supposed modern form of delusion, or else of communication with the spirit world, has been in existence in the Middle Empire for centuries, and it is only one of many things recently springing up in Europe which have been anticipated by the Celestials. A good deal of faith is attached to these ghostly utterances, and the ceremonies are conducted with solemnity. It may be observed that communication with the supernatural world by means of burned papers is not an isolated notion in the circle of Chinese ideas. Everything is considered as having an existence beyond that which it presents to the bodily eye. Even inanimate objects may be said to have a soul; and things (to use the word in its widest sense) have the same relationships to each other in their spiritual as in their visible existence. Thus, the spirits of the dead must eat, whether they be in heaven or hell, in clouds or sunshine. They devour not spiritual turnips, rice, and pork, but the soul or spiritual existence of visible turnips, rice, and pork; and, like other Chinese, they prefer fowl, ducks, and birds’-nest soup, when they can get these luxuries. So far is this carried, that in the “Universal Rescue,” to which I have already referred, separate bathing-rooms are set apart for spirits of the different sexes, in which they are supposed to perform their spiritual ablutions. Thus the present and the past, the visible and the invisible, are inseparably connected, while both are seen to shape the unformed future.