That a spiritual form is contained within the material body is a very ancient and almost universal belief. Hindoo books of the remotest antiquity describe man as a triune being, consisting of the soul, the spiritual body, and the material body. This form within the outer body was variously named by Grecian poets and philosophers. They called it "the soul's image," "the invisible body," "the aërial body," "the shade." Sometimes they called it "the sensuous soul," and described it as "_all_ eye and _all_ ear,"--expressions which cannot fail to suggest the phenomena of clairvoyance. The "shade" of Hercules is described by poets as dwelling in the Elysian Fields, while his body was converted to ashes on the earth, and his soul was dwelling on Olympus with the gods. Swedenborg speaks of himself as having been a visible form to angels in the spiritual world; and members of his household, observing him at such times, describe the eyes of his body on earth as having the expression of one walking in his sleep. He tells us, that, when his thoughts turned toward earthly things, the angels would say to him, "Now we are losing sight of you": and he himself felt that he was returning to his material body. For several years of his life, he was in the habit of seeing and conversing familiarly with visitors unseen by those around him. The deceased brother of the Queen of Sweden repeated to him a secret conversation, known only to himself and his sister. The Queen had asked for this, as a test of Swedenborg's veracity; and she became pale with astonishment when every minute particular of her interview with her brother was reported to her. Swedenborg was a sedate man, apparently devoid of any wish to excite a sensation, engrossed in scientific pursuits, and remarkable for the orderly habits of his mind. The intelligent and enlightened German, Nicolai, in the later years of his life, was accustomed to find himself in the midst of persons whom he knew perfectly well, but who were invisible to others. He reasoned very calmly about it, but arrived at no solution more satisfactory than the old one of "optical illusion," which is certainly a very inadequate explanation. Instances are recorded, and some of them apparently well authenticated, of persons still living in this world, and unconscious of disease, who have seen _themselves_ in a distinct visible form, without the aid of a mirror. It would seem as if such experiences had not been confined to any particular part of the world; for they have given birth to a general superstition that such apparitions are a forerunner of death,--or, in other words, of the complete separation of the spiritual body from the natural body. A friend related to me the particulars of a fainting-fit, during which her body remained senseless an unusually long time. When she was restored to consciousness, she told her attendant friends that she had been standing near the sofa all the time, watching