IT has been the opinion of many philosophers, both ancient and modern, that in the original state of man, as he came forth from the hands of his Creator, that knowledge which is now acquired by pains and labor was intuitive. His material body was given him for the purpose of placing him in relation with the material world, and his sensuous organs for the perception of material objects, but his soul was a mirror of the universe, in which everything was reflected, and, probably, is so still, but that the spirit is no longer in a condition to perceive it. Degraded in his nature, and distracted by the multiplicity of the objects and interests that surround him, man has lost his faculty of spiritual seeing; but in sleep, when the body is in a state of passivity, and external objects are excluded from us by the shutting up of the senses through which we perceive them, the spirit, to a certain degree freed from its impediments, may enjoy somewhat of its original privilege. “The soul, which is designed as the mirror of a superior spiritual order” (to which it belongs), still receives in dreams, some rays from above, and enjoys a foretaste of its future condition; and, whatever interpretation may be put upon the history of the Fall, few will doubt that, before it, man must have stood in a much more intimate relation to his Creator than he has done since. If we admit this, and that, for the above-hinted reasons, the soul in sleep may be able to exercise somewhat of its original endowment, the possibility of what is called prophetic dreaming may be better understood. “Seeing in dreams,” says Ennemoser, “is a self-illumining of things, places, and times;” for relations of time and space form no obstruction to the dreamer: things, near and far, are alike seen in the mirror of the soul, according to the connection in which they stand to each other; and, as the future is but an unfolding of the present, as the present is of the past, one being necessarily involved in the other, it is not more difficult to the untrammelled spirit to see what is to happen, than what has _already_ happened. Under what peculiar circumstances it is that the body and soul fall into this particular relative condition, we do not know, but that certain families and constitutions are more prone to these conditions than others, all experience goes to establish. According to the theory of Dr. Ennemoser, we should conclude that they are more susceptible to magnetic influences, and that the body falls into a more complete state of negative polarity.