Many in the learned world have toiled laboriously in search of the soul; but because they knew nothing of the spiritual world and of man's state after death, they could only frame theories of the operation of the soul in the body, not of its nature. The only idea they have been able to reach of what the soul is like is of something most pure in the ether, and of its containing form as of something ethereal. Concerning this, however, they have ventured only generalities lest they ascribed anything natural to the soul, knowing that the soul is spiritual. Now, because they had conceived such an idea of the soul and yet know perfectly well that the soul operates in the body and produces everything that has to do with its sensation and motion, they have, as was said, laboured hard in research on the operation of the soul in the body, which some have held to be effected by influx and some by harmony. But as nothing has been discovered in this way in which the mind, desirous of seeing if it be so, can acquiesce, it has been granted me to speak with angels, and to be enlightened on this subject by their wisdom, of which the following is a summary. Man's soul, which lives after death, is his spirit, and it is man in complete form; the soul of this form is the will and understanding and the soul of these is love and wisdom from the Lord. These two faculties are what constitute man's life, which is from the Lord alone. For the sake of reception of Him by man, the Lord causes it to appear that life, is, as it were, man's own; but, lest he should ascribe life to himself as his own and thus withdraw himself from reception of the Lord, the Lord has also taught that everything of love, which is called good, and everything of wisdom, which is called truth, come from Him, and nothing of them from man; and since these two are life, that everything of life which is life comes from Him.