What especial laws may appertain to this supersensuous domain of nature, of course we can not know, and it is therefore impossible for us to pronounce how far a spirit is free, or not free, at all times to manifest itself; and we can, therefore, at present, advance no reason for these manifestations not being the rule instead of the exception. The law which restrains more frequent intercourse may, for anything we know to the contrary, have its relaxations and its limitations, founded in nature; and a rapport with, or the power of acting on, particular individuals, may arise from causes of which we are equally ignorant. Undoubtedly, the receptivity of the corporeal being is one of the necessary conditions, while, on the part of the incorporeal, the will is at once the cause and the agent that produces the effect; while attachment, whether to individuals or to the lost joys of this world, is the motive. The happy spirits in whom this latter impulse is weak, and who would float away into the glorious light of the pure moral law, would have little temptation to return, and at least would only be brought back by their holy affections, or desire to serve mankind. The less happy, clinging to their dear corporeal life, would hover nearer to the earth; and I do question much whether the often-ridiculed idea of the mystics, that there is a moral _weight_, as well as a moral _darkness_, be not founded in truth. We know very well that even these substantial bodies of ours are, to our own sensations (and, very possibly, if the thing could be tested, would prove to be in fact), lighter or heavier, according to the lightness or heaviness of the spirit—terms used figuratively, but perhaps capable of a literal interpretation; and thus the common idea of _up_ and _down_, as applied to heaven or hell, is founded in truth, though not mathematically correct, we familiarly using the words _up_ and _down_ to express _farther_ or _nearer_, as regards the planet on which we live. Experience seems to justify this view of the case; for, supposing the phenomena I am treating of to be facts, and not spectral illusions, all tradition shows that the spirits most frequently manifested to man have been evidently not in a state of bliss; while, when bright ones appeared it has been to serve him; and hence the old persuasion, that they were chiefly the wicked that haunted the earth, and hence, also, the foundation for the belief that not only the murderer but the murdered returned to vex the living, and the just view, that in taking away life the injury is not confined to the body, but extends to the surprised and angry soul, which is— “Cut off, even in the blossom of its sin, Unhouselled, disappointed, unaneled; No reckoning made, but sent to its account With all its imperfections on its head.”