“The human soul, of course, is already, in this life, connected with the members of the invisible world, and this connection is lasting and essential, while that with the body is accidental and transient. However a union of substances, that is, of active natures, cannot be supposed to exist without a reciprocal influence; consequently the human soul must have an effective influence upon the spirits to whom she is linked, and the members of the spiritual world must act reciprocally on our soul. But why are we not equally sensible of these reciprocal influences and communications, as of those which subsist between our soul and body? The cause of this is very obvious. The human spirit can have a clear idea only of the objects of the material world, because of its corporeal organ; it is, therefore, not even capable of a clear immediate contemplation of its own self, much less of its immaterial relations to other spirits: the difference which exists between those ideas which arise in our soul by means of its immateriality, and its communion with spiritual beings, and the ideas which it receives by the medium of the body, or abstracted from material objects, is so essential, that the ideas of the former kind cannot come in connection with those of the latter; for which reason we have either no notion at all of them, or, at most, a very obscure one; however, we become plainly conscious of them as soon as the union of the soul and its corporeal organ ceases.” “This, Hiermanfor, seems, in some measure to be the case when we are sleeping, and the sensitive organs are resting from their occupations. Should therefore those philosophers of antiquity, who have believed that in our dreams we are capable of being influenced by superior beings, and of receiving supernatural inspirations, be mistaken?”