1719. For these reasons let men beware of giving heed to those opinions which some persons would fain publish and inculcate, that spirits are altogether devoid of sense, or that spiritual essences lack all that kind of affection which they enjoyed while living in their bodies. I know the contrary, which has been demonstrated to me by a thousand and a thousand most sensible proofs of experience, as I can solemnly declare and attest; and if men are unwilling to believe from the weight which they attach to their suppositions and opinions in respect to spiritual essences; let them take heed to themselves when they come into the other life, where experience will compel them to believe what they do not credit in this world. In ancient times there were no men of such a faith in regard to spirits, but [they exist] at this day, when from the ratiocination of their own brain, and not from the Word of the Lord, they would explain the nature of spirits whom they deprive, by their definitions and conjectures, of all sensual properties, denying everything of the kind to their interior and intimate principles, when yet these are the things which merely manifest themselves in externals and which are perceived; and although they appear in externals, yet it is no otherwise than as they believe the eye sees, the ear hears, when at the same time they may know that the eye is merely an organ which transmits visibilities, while the interior minds [of men] are what see and hear, the sensorial power being utterly dead without things interior, as may be abundantly shown.)) ((((Hence now it may appear that there are senses in spirits or the spiritual essences of man, and moreover that they survive in souls after death, and that as long as a man is not in the truth of faith, he is made up of phantasies, which produce the effects before mentioned))))