38. There once came some spirits of Mercury to a certain spirit from our Earth, who, during his life in the world, had been most celebrated for his learning,--he was Christian Wolf--desiring to receive information from him on various subjects. But when they perceived that what he said was not elevated above the sensual things of the natural man, because in speaking he thought of honour, and wanted, as in the world (for in the other life every one is like his former self), to connect various things into series, and from these again and continually to deduce others, and so form several chains of such, which they did not see or acknowledge to be true, and which therefore they declared to be chains which neither cohered in themselves nor with the conclusions, and called them the obscurity of authority, they ceased to question him, inquiring only _what this was called and what that_. And because he answered these questions also by material ideas, and not by any that were spiritual, they departed from him. For in the other life every one speaks spiritually, or by spiritual ideas, so far as in the world he had believed in God; and materially, so far as he had not believed. As an opportunity here offers, I may relate how the case is, in the other life, with the learned who acquire intelligence by their own meditation kindled by the love of knowing truths for the sake of truths, thus for the sake of uses apart from worldly considerations; and how the case is with those who acquire intelligence from others without any meditation of their own, as is the practice of those who desire to know truths merely for the purpose of acquiring a reputation for learning, and of thereby attaining honour or gain in the world, and consequently not for the sake of uses apart from worldly considerations. I may here relate a certain experience concerning men of this character. There was apperceived a certain sound penetrating from beneath near the left side as far as the left ear: I observed that there were spirits who were attempting to force their way there, but I could not ascertain of what character they were. When they had forced their way, however, they spoke with me, saying that they were logicians and metaphysicians, and that they had immersed their thoughts in such [sciences] without any other end than that of acquiring a reputation for learning, and thus of attaining to 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