Paracelsus, who describes them under the names of _Talpa_, _Matena_, _Tortilleos_, _Permates_, etc. He says: “God has caused living creatures to exist in all the elements, and there is nothing empty of life. That which becomes manifested in the visible kingdom has come into existence by being generated in the upper regions. Without such a generation above, it could not have become manifested below.” (“Lib. Meteorum,” I. 4.) Since the modern discovery of the cholera, tubercle bacilli, and other micro-organisms spreading contagious diseases, it has been the opinion of many, that the presence of such microbes was the only and fundamental cause of such diseases; but still more recent investigations have shown such that the presence of these microbes does not constitute the whole cause; for they have been with impunity introduced into the human organism, and have also been found to exist in persons who had fully recovered from such a disease. This surely shows that there must be an influence causing the microbes to come into existence, after which they can spread and multiply if the conditions are favourable, and the fundamental cause of such epidemics is therefore not the presence of the microbes, this being merely a symptom, but the influences which cause them to come into existence, producing _states_ of which the bodies of these organisms are a product and expression and which appears to proceed from causes situated deeper than visible physical nature, if we do not mistake the form for the “spirit” of which the form is the symbol. “Human science knows how to philosophize about the things that come within its external observation; but Wisdom shows what is contained in the _Prima Materia_, which is a greater and higher knowledge than that of the _Ultima Materia_ (the physical plane).” (“Meteorum,” I. 4.) This “higher region,” from which such injurious influences originate, causing the growth of miasmas and microbes, is the “_astral plane_,” or the soul of the world, and as the evil states in the soul of the world are caused by the evil states of the human mind, it becomes comprehensible how epidemic diseases, pestilence and plague, no less than wars, are the ultimate results of disharmonies and depraved spiritual states in the soul of humanity. The greatest truth if seen through a perverted mind appears distorted as a caricature and superstition; it can be seen in its own light, only if properly understood.