I believe that all the beings whom I have seen here are real; but if I can find one that is not,--a being which I cannot feel when I touch it and which cannot respond to my questions,--I shall have a datum for my hypothesis that thought-forms of beings, as well as things, may have sufficient cohesion to seem real. It is undoubtedly true that there is no spirit without substance, no substance without spirit, latent or expressed; but a painting of a man may seem at a distance to be a man. Can there exist deliberate thought-creations here, deliberate and purposive creations? I believe so. Such a thought-form would probably have to be very intense in order to persist. It seems to me that I had better settle this question to my own satisfaction before talking any more about it. LETTER XIV A FOLIO OF PARACELSUS THE other day I asked my Teacher to show me the archives in which those who had lived out here had recorded their observations, if such existed. He said: “You were a great reader of books when you were on the earth. Come.” We entered a vast building like a library, and I caught my breath in wonder. It was not the architecture of the building which struck me, but the quantities of books and records. There must have been millions of them. I asked the Teacher if all the books were here. He smiled and said: “Are there not enough? You can make your choice.” I asked if the volumes were arranged by subjects. “There is an arrangement,” he answered. “What do you want?” I said that I should like to see the books in which were written the accounts of explorations which other men had made in this (to me) still slightly known country. He smiled again, and took from a shelf a thick volume. It was printed in large black type.[2] “Who wrote this book?” I asked. “There is a signature,” he replied. I looked at the end and saw the signature: it was that used by Paracelsus. “When did he write this?” “Soon after he came out. It was written between his Paracelsus life and his next one on earth.” The book which I had opened was a treatise on spirits, human, angelic, and elemental. It began with the definition of a human spirit as a spirit which had had the experience of life in human form; and it defined an elemental spirit as a spirit of more or less developed self-consciousness which had not yet had that experience. Then the author defined an angel as a spirit of a high order which had not had, and probably would not have in future, such experience in matter.