“It may be permitted to the writer to suggest, that through a fuller acquaintance with, and deeper observation of, the phenomena of ‘spirit revelation, occult, dark sayings’, etc., the truth has forced itself upon various philosophic minds, that in obedience to a primal law of spirit’s intercourse with spirit--it is always the essence or spirit of an idea or fact which is sought to be conveyed to the mind, and not the mere literal clothing of that idea or fact. This essence or spirit of the idea is the grain of true wheat alone needed; the form is simply the husk that clothes it for a temporary purpose, and must of necessity fall away from it as a dead thing. ‘In this material, matter-of-fact age, literal truth,’ says the Rev. James Smith, ‘the lowest of all truths in one sense, is generally regarded as the highest. But they are superficial thinkers who dabble only in literal truth or physical truth.’ This is a knowledge of Law Spiritual, without which progress is impossible for the student of psychology.” THE IDEA, NOT WORDS, CONVEYED.--If the idea was sent through the psychic-ether, as a wave of thought, it would translate itself into language, and the language of the receiving mind would be the one into which it would be translated. It would pass through space as the essence of thought, and the sensitive recipient would clothe it with the garments of words. Wm. Howitt, on his visit to Australia, had a dream which he regarded as having great importance as a fact in Mental Science. He says: “Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream of being at my brother’s at Melbourne, and found his house on a hill at the further end of the town, next to the open forest. The garden sloped a little way down the hill to some brick buildings below; and there were greenhouses on the right hand by the wall as you looked down the hill from the house. As I looked out the windows in my dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged trees, having a segregated appearance in their heads; that is, their heads did not make that dense mass like our woods. ‘There!’ said I, addressing some one in my dream, ‘I see your native forest of Eucalyptus!’ This dream I told to my sons, and to two of our fellow-passengers, at the time, and on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long before we reached the town, I saw this very wood. ‘There!’ I exclaimed, ‘is the very wood of my dream. We shall see my brother’s house there.’ And so we did. It stood exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; but there, over the wall of the garden, is the wood exactly as I saw it and now see it, as I sit at the dining-room window writing. When I look upon this scene I seem to look into my dream.” This mysterious perception of scenes and events which, after perhaps years, come before the dreamer or enter into his life, is supported by ample testimony. In the _Spiritual Magazine_, 1871, the author, speaking of this dream, gives further curious details: