This is substantially the process every time we hold intercourse by means of speech. The operation is ever imperfect in all, and more imperfect in some than in others. We make mistakes in translating our own intuitions and emotions. We make still greater mistakes in taking off from the wires, and in re-translating the conceptual language which brings to us the feelings and intuitions of others. But there is no other way. The author of our spiritual and material constitution hath literally _shut us up_ to this, and we can not get out of the limits within which He has confined our intercourse with other spirits. Clairvoyance boasts of having broken through them, or over them; but clairvoyance is yet a fact to be established. Even, too, if it has any claims upon our belief, it will doubtless be found, in the end, to be only a stenographic shortening of some of the steps, without being, in reality, any more an _immediate_ action of mind upon mind than the ordinary process. Spirit can only communicate with spirit through outward symbols, and by more or less steps, all of which may be regarded as _outward_ to the most interior effect. By long familiarity this circuitous chain assumes to us the appearance of directness. But in truth we never see each other; we never hear each other; if by the terms be meant our very _self_--our very spiritual form, our very spiritual voice. Even to our human soul may be accommodated without irreverence the language which Paul applies to the Deity. Even of us it may be said, although in a far lower sense, "_Our invisible things are only understood by the things that are done_," even our temporal power and humanity. Each soul is _shut up_ in an isolation as perfect, in one sense, as that which separates the far distant worlds in the universe. Had there been round each one of us a wall of adamant a thousand feet in thickness, with only the smallest capillary apertures through which to carry the wires of telegraphic signals, we could not, as to the essential action of the spirit, be more secluded than we are at present. We say the essential, or first action of the soul--for doubtless there may be various degrees of difficulty or facility in the modes of mediate communication. But in this more spiritual sense each one of us exists by himself. We live apart in utter loneliness. The seclusion of each spirit knows no infraction. Its perfect solitude has never been invaded by any foreign intrusion.